Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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STAINER STAINEE 669
out ; the top and bottom volutes of the/s are
rounder and more nearly of a size than in the
Cremona instruments, butthe wood is ofthe finest
quality ; the finish, though varying in the
different classes of instruments, invariably indicates
a rapid and masterly hand ; and the
varnish is always rich and lustrous. It is of
all colours, from a deep thick brown to a fine
golden amber, equal to that of Cremona ; and
in his best works the exterior alone would justify
the celebrity of the maker. But to understand
the secret of Stainer's success the violin must
be opened, and it then appears that the thicknesses
ofthe wood and the disposition of the-blocks
and linings are identical with those of the
Cremona makers. The difference will become
more obvious when an old German viol is
examined. It will be found that the older
German makers, though they finished their
instruments with great care and sometimes
withlaborious ornament, settled theirdimensions
and thicknesses by guess, and used no linings
at all. Stainer's instruments are poor in respect
of tone. The combination of height and flatness
in the model diminishes the intensity of the
tone, though it produces a certain sweetness and
flexibility. Popular as the model once was, the
verdict of musicians is now unanimous against
it, and the Stainer instruments are now valued
less for practical use than as curiosities. The
violins, which are found of three different sizes,
are the best worth having ; the tenors arc good
for little. The violins are abundant enough,
even after allowing for the vast number of
spurious instruments which pass under the
maker's name ; but they vary greatly in value,
according to their class, and the condition in
which they are. Their value greatly decreased
during the 19th century. A fine specimen
that would have brought £100 a century
ago will now scarcely produce £20, and the
inferior instruments have depreciated in proportion.
Small instruments of the common
sort, which may be bought very cheap, are useful
for children. Stainer's best instruments
have written labels : some of the common ones
have in very small Roman letterpress in the
middle of a large slip of paper, Jacobus '
Stainer
in Absom prope Oenipontum Anno (1678).'
It is not impossible that some of these may
have been made by other hands under his
direction. B. J. P.
[On the authority of Herr S. Eiif, whose
naiTative of Stainer's life the above account
follows, Stainer's father— Martin Stainer
married Sabina Grafinger, by whom he had three
sons :
(1) Paul, who became a master-joiner
and married Ursula Dankler ; (2) Mark, who
migrated to Austria where he established himself
as a violin-maker but attained no celebrity
(3) Jacobus, the subject of this biography.
This last, by his marriage with Margaret Holzhamraer,
left eight daughters, two of whom died,
single and in poverty, shortly after their mother
in 1689. It must be borne in mind that the
generally accepted date of Stainer's death, 1683,
is only approximate. This date appears ou the
tablet attached to his house, and also on the handsome
monumental stone erected to his memory
in Absam Church in 1842 by the Pastor Herr
Lechlatner. The sole evidence that goes to
prove that Stainer no longer existed in 1684 is
the purchase of his house by his brother-in-law
Blasius Kiel, after which Stainer's widow and
eight daughters became homeless wanderers.
This house is to-day ' a well-to-do picturesque
chdlet, standing in its own garden and courtyard,
half overgrown by a flourishing plum-tree
that springs from the south-east corner. ' It was
bought by Stainer from his brother-in-law,
Paul Holzhammer, on Nov. 12, 1666, and
Blasius Kiel, as already mentioned, bought it
for seven hundred florins in 1684. On a tablet
affixed to the front of the house is the following
inscription
In diesem Hause lebte seiner Eunst Jakob Stainer,
der Vater der deutscben Geige, Geboren zu Absam 14
Juli 1621, hier gestorben 1683.
Although this house was restored, and to
some extent reconsti-ucted in 1820, the balcony
on which Stainer was known to store his wood
still remains and is employed by its present
owners for the like purpose. Within, the house
is bereft of all relics of the great violin-maker,
save the actual bench at which Stainer laboured.
No attempt to gather any record of Stainer's
life was made for over one hundred years after
his death ; but the deficiency was filled in with
numberless romances about the ' father of the
German fiddle,' from 1825, when the Orangenbluter
published a story entitled 'Jacob
Stainer,' to 1878, when a version of Dr. Schuler's
novel was published at Innsbruck in the form
of a play from the pen of Josef Erler, which
adaptation was entitled DesKaisers Geigenmadier
m Tirol. Other fanciful versions of Stainer's
life have appeared from time to time in various
German newspapers and periodicals ; a full list
of these, together with the earliest trustworthy
account of Stainer, is given by Herr S. Riif in
his biography of the maker.
Riif, Der Geigenmadier Jacobus Stainer von
Absam in Tirol, Innsbruck, 1872 ; Oka, F.,
J. S. der erste deutscfte Meister in Geigenhau
published in the Neue Berliner Musikzeitung
Nos. 22, 23, 31, May 7, June 1854 ; Otto,
A Treatise on the Stricture and Preservation of
the Violin (first edition (German), 1817 ; three
English editions translated by John Bishop) ;
Stoeving, Von der Violins ; Wasielewski, Die
Violine ;
Von Lutgendorff, Die Geigen- und
Lautenmiacher ; Hawkins, History of Music ;
Vidal, Les Instruments d, Archet ; Grillet, Les
AncStres du Violon ; Pearce, Violins and Violitt-
Making ;
Reade, A Lost Art Revived ; Racster,
Chats on Violins (containing an English transla-