Violins are one of the vital complicated musical devices but created and the expertise of its track has not modified a lot in 500 years.
There are lower than a handful of violin makers in South Africa. Luthier Albertus Bekker has been constructing violins since he was 19.
And whereas it was a passion throughout his company profession, Bekker ditched fits and ties throughout lockdown to focus all his consideration on constructing violins.
He calls it half artwork, half craft and lovingly produces the devices from his workshop at residence in Linden, Johannesburg.
When Bekker talks violins and music, his tone softens and his manner exudes absolute ardour.
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Bekker’s love for violins started by happenstance.
His siblings have been all piano educated and, he stated, when the time got here for him to be taught an instrument, he reckoned that his mother and father should have been bored with listening to piano scales all day.
He was ushered in a stringed path and fell in love.
Watch: South Africa’s violin craftsman Albertus Bekker
His first try to builda violin was when he was 19 and arrived residence from a European backpacking journey.
It was throughout this vacation that he visited the German capital of violin-making, Mittenwald, and he was impressed.
Bekker nonetheless has the unique backing board of his debut try, however he stated that the instrument was a failure.
He was on a beer funds attempting to make champagne with low cost wooden.
He stated: “When I got home, I just went to a timber store and bought whatever I could afford. It was a start, but not a good one.”
More than 30 years later, Bekker’s violins have carried out within the arms of musicians all around the world, together with Australia, Germany and the US.
“That is the greatest reward of all, hearing your instrument on stage and listening to the beauty that it produces.”
Bekker stated: “The violin is, of all of the devices, closest to the human voice. The human ear is delicate in a very slender vary of frequencies and, by the way, it’s the identical frequency that a child cries at.
“And if you may make a violin that’s sturdy throughout these frequencies, it’s a lot extra highly effective. “You attempt to mimic the human voice. You have full management over the frequencies you produce as a result of it isn’t fretted like a guitar.
“And you have the whole vibrato thing going, that is like singers, so remarkably like the human voice and very emotive.”
Violins as we all know it have been created in Italy, across the sixteenth century, with the oldest instrument nonetheless in existence inbuilt 1654, and named after the then king of France, Charles IX.
Since then, not a lot has modified in howviolins are made.
Maplewood and spruce are the 2 woods used to assemble the instrument. It’s strung with cat intestine and horsehair is tensed throughout the participant’s bow.
But cat intestine has nothing to do with feline insides.
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“It is dried sheep gut. That is what they used in the old days, too, to string violins. Nowadays, it is synthetic with a metal winding.”
The horsehair is true to today.
“We use actual horsehair to string the bow. There is nothing artificial that comes near producing the sound that actual horsehair can.
“It is imported from Mongolia or China and Siberia and is expensive.”
Bekker stated that he adopted the identical “recipe” to make his violins that has been round for half a millennia.
“Some of the color used typically comes from stuff known as dragon’s blood, which is sort of toxic as properly.
And a lot of the substances within the varnishes are medieval.”
Bekker estimates that it takes between 50 to 100 hours to take the instrument from lifeless plank to star of the stage.
A completed, handmade Bekker violin can price upwards of R50,000.
