Giuseppe Guarneri

The most illustrious member of the house of Guarneri, Bartolomeo was the son of Giuseppe Giovanni Battista, thus the grandson of Andrea Guarneri,[8] both noted violin makers themselves. Andrea learned his trade as an apprentice of Nicolò Amati, to whom Stradivari was also apprenticed. Undoubtedly, Giuseppe learned the craft of violinmaking in his father's shop.

Giuseppe Guarneri's style has been widely copied by luthiers since the 19th century. Guarneri's career is a great contrast to that of Stradivari, who was stylistically consistent, very careful about craftsmanship and finish, and evolved the design of his instruments in a deliberate way over seven decades. Guarneri's career was short, from the late 1720s until his death in 1744. Initially he was thought to be a man of restless creativity, judging by his constant experimentation with f-holes, arching, thicknesses of the top and back and other design details. However, what has become clear is that, like other members of his family, he was so commercially overshadowed by his illustrious and business-savvy neighbor, Antonio Stradivari, that he was unable to command prices commensurate with his rival, hence needed to make more instruments and work hastily. Indeed, two of the five violin makers of the Guarneri family, the two Pietros—of different generations—left Cremona, the first for Mantua, the second for Venice, apparently because business prospects in Cremona were so stunted by the presence of Stradivari. From the 1720s until about 1737, Guarneri's work is quick and accurate, although he was not overly concerned with quality of finish. However, from the late 1730s until his death, his work shows increasing haste and lack of patience with the time needed to achieve a high quality finish. Some of his late violins from circa 1742 to 1744 have scrolls that can be crudely carved, the purfling hastily inserted, the f-holes unsymmetrical and jagged.

Nonetheless, many of these late violins, in spite of the seeming haste and carelessness of their construction, possess a glorious tone and have been much coveted by soloists. His output falls off rather dramatically in the late 1730s, and the eccentricity of the works following that period gave rise to the romantic notion that he had been imprisoned for killing a rival violin maker (actually it was one of the Lavazza brothers in Milan to whom this occurred), and even the unlikely fiction that he made violins in prison. Such stories were invented during the nineteenth century and were repeated by the biographers of the Guarneri family, the Hills, in their 1931 work; while the Hills did not take them at face-value, it did feed into their idea that Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù must have been temperamental and mercurial, rather than simply overworked and commercially unsuccessful. More recent data shows that business was so bad during the later period of his life that he had to relegate violin-making to the sideline and earn his living as an innkeeper (refuting the "prison" myth).

Violin Il Cannone, once owned by Niccolò Paganini

It has also become known that some of the violins emanating from his shop and bearing his label were actually the work of his German wife, Katarina Rota, who apparently returned to Germany after her husband's death in 1744. While every other member of his family, the Stradivari family, Nicolò Amati, and a peculiarly large number of makers, lived long lives—Stradivari living and working to age 93—Guarneri died at only 46. There is thus the possibility that the odd qualities of finish in his later instruments—ironically, those most highly prized and expensive—were due not only to stress and haste but also to encroaching illness. It is also worth noting that the tone of both Stradivari and Guarneri did not come into their own until late in the 18th century, that the high-built instruments of Amati and Stainer were the only ones prized during the 18th century. While it is true that players, then as now, preferred old instruments, Stradivari made one of the handsomest livings of all violin makers during his lifetime. It is also customary to conflate Stradivari and Guarneri in this regard, but even the Hills hinted that such was not the case in their styles, the Guarneri always bearing traces of Amati, and even Stainer, the latter Stradivari "would have none of."[9] Moreover, Guarneri's instruments were recognized by a world-class soloist three decades before Stradivari's were likewise championed; by the 1750s, Gaetano Pugnani is known to have acquired and preferred a Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù violin, but it is not until the 1780s that his pupil, Giovanni Battista Viotti, became an advocate of Stradivari instruments. Of course, Pugnani's advocacy is usually forgotten when Niccolò Paganini became the most noted Giuseppe Guarneri player three generations later.

Accomplished violinists such as Salvatore Accardo, Sarah Chang, Nikki Chooi, Timothy Chooi, Kyung-wha Chung, Eugene Fodor, Augustin Hadelich, Jascha Heifetz, Yi-Jia Susanne Hou, Joseph Joachim, Leila Josefowicz, Nigel Kennedy, Leonid Kogan, Henning Kraggerud, Fritz Kreisler, Gidon Kremer, Yang Liu, Kerson Leong, Robert McDuffie,[10] Anne Akiko Meyers, Midori, Elmar Oliveira, Ruth Palmer, Itzhak Perlman, Rachel Barton Pine, Maud Powell, Michael Rabin, Aaron Rosand, Charlie Siem, Marie Soldat, Isaac Stern, Henryk Szeryng, Arve Tellefsen, Richard Tognetti, Uto Ughi, Henri Vieuxtemps, Tianwa Yang, Eugène Ysaÿe, Zvi Zeitlin, and Pinchas Zukerman, have used Guarneri del Gesù violins at one point in their career or even exclusively.

Virtuoso Niccolò Paganini's favorite violin, Il Cannone Guarnerius of 1743, and the Lord Wilton of 1742, once owned by Yehudi Menuhin, are del Gesù instruments. In addition, the Vieuxtemps Guarneri—once owned by Henri Vieuxtemps—was sold in 2013 close to its asking price of $18 million USD, making it the most expensive instrument in the world. Jascha Heifetz owned a c. 1740 Guarneri del Gesù from the 1920s until his death in 1987. It was his favorite instrument, even though he owned several Stradivarius. One of Norwegian virtuoso Ole Bull's favorite instrument was the del Gesù violin of 1744 named after Bull, which is also believed to be the last work of Guarneri del Gesù.[11]

(From the Cozio Archive)[12]