Forget-me-Nots
Chris Franks remembers a cherished violin
IT was the spring of 1983 when I first met him. I was 18 and coming up to my A level music exam. I needed a better violin but decent instruments cost thousands, so I’d devised a cunning plan: borrow one from a famous maker, keep it for a few weeks on the pretence of trying it out, do the exam, then give it back. With suitable apologies, of course.
The maker was Wilfred Saunders and Dad and I had come to the workshop at the bottom of his garden. It was an Aladdin’s cave, scented with lumber yard and linseed oil and crammed with tools, boxes, racks of bows and various necks, bellies and scrolls waiting to be assembled. Hanging on the washing line outside were instruments in progressive stages of varnish from yellow to terracotta red. Every so often one caught the evening sun, firing the wood-grain into life. But for the World War II black Bakelite telephone, it could have been 18th-century Cremona.
“So you’re after a new violin?” he said.
“That’s right,” I said.
He had a soothing velvety voice and his dark eyes were so piercing he seemed to be reading my thoughts. Would he see through my little scheme?
“Well, this one should do you,” he said, handing me a gleaming violin. “This is Rowan.” He named his instruments, this one after Rowan Armour-Brown, another maker. “I could let you have her for £2,100.” God!
“Have a quick play now but you’ll want to take her away for a few weeks, get to know her.”
Aha! The plan was working!
As I tuned up, Dad pointed to the washing line.
“So, what do you do if it rains?”
“When the kids were young it was a bit of a rush,” Wilf said. “First the violins came in, then the clothes, then last of all the babies. They were waterproof.”
We all smiled.
I played the opening of Lennox Berkeley’s Elegy, a mournful line in the violin’s low register. My heart clenched, and a friendship that was to last nearly 20 years began.
Wilfred Saunders was born in Nottingham in 1927. At school, he had a gift for woodwork and became an apprentice joiner at 14. He developed an interest in music, but it was when he came across the book Violin Making As It Was And Is by Edward HeronAllen that his life changed. In a 1978 interview with Mary Anne Alburger,” he recalled: “I was so fascinated. It was like reading a good novel, the whole lot in one go.”
He retired at 21 and set out to
become a violin maker. Though self-taught, he took advice from other craftsmen of the time, including Arthur Richardson and Lawrence Cocker. He married Janet in 1955 and with three young children to provide for he began to turn out four to five instruments a year. By 1958 he had made 16 violins and 17 violas, selling one to John Chambers, principal viola of the Philharmonia Orchestra. He believed in studying other makers, not just great masters like Stradivari but also his contemporaries, noting both the good to adopt and the bad to avoid.
“The knack is keeping your mind open so you can learn,” he said, “but not vacillating so much you can’t settle to anything. You’ve got to collect all the different ideas and crystallize them into your own.”
He began to specialise in violas and by the early 1960s was developing his own style of instrument, which Richardson suggested he show to the virtuoso, Lionel Tertis. At that time, Tertis and Richardson were designing a new larger viola for greater tonal power. Tertis provided Saunders with the design drawings. From them, Saunders made another instrument and the relationship that launched his international reputation began.
“I made a Tertis model,” said Saunders. “It was one of those that just came right and he used it for the last ten years of his playing career.”
Tertis was an awkward character, though, and when he fell out with Richardson, Saunders became his main instrument-making partner.
“He was a fidget,” said Saunders. “You’d fit a bridge, then he’d chisel a bit off, then a bit more, then it was too low. You’d get a telegram: ‘Playing a recital at the Wigmore Hall Friday. Can you fit me a bridge Friday morning?’ So you’d catch an early train and wind up scratching about, fitting a bridge on a card table in the back of the Wigmore Hall.”
In return, Tertis did Saunders many favours, showing his violas to other players, including members of the Israel Philharmonic. In 1962,
Saunders received commissions for six instruments, all for players in the orchestra. One was for Daniel Benjamini, the principal violist and also a member of the Tel Aviv String Quartet. The quartet were admirers of Saunders’ work, as Saunders’ son Jacob, also a violin maker, remembers:
“The quartet always visited Dad’s workshop during the Israel Philharmonic’s annual London tour, coming from Nottingham station in four taxis – one each!”
Tertis was an eccentric and by insisting on certain damaging changes to instrument setup that he was convinced improved the tone, he often fell out with makers. The relationship with Saunders ended for other reasons, though, as Jacob recalls:
“In my father’s case, the last straw was when Tertis invited him to his wedding. He went all the way to Birmingham on the train, only to discover that he had been invited to the service but not the reception!”
Another great player Saunders worked with was Peter Schidlof, violist for the Amadeus Quartet. He would often show Schidlof his latest viola, but his comments could be brutal: “Why did you make the pegs stick out like that? It looks like a bloody aeroplane!”
Schidlof’s feedback was invaluable, though, and he would play passages on his Stradivarius and on Saunders’ latest instrument, allowing Saunders to make direct comparisons.
By the 1970s, Saunders was established as a maker of the highest quality. Though known for their brand new finish – Saunders shunned the practise of antiquing – his instruments epitomised the most painstaking traditionalism. He took great care over his wood, holding pieces at the point of balance and tapping them to hear them ring, and sun-drying them for years so that they had finished warping before he started work. He kept notes on every build – the type of wood, the dimensions, the varnish ingredients – and believed in discerning judgement rather than technological advances in his quest for continuous improvement.
In 1982, he won the silver medal for a viola at the Antonio Stradivari International Triennial Violin Making Contest, a premier event regarded as the Olympics of violin making. He wrote numerous articles for trade journals and by 1997, was himself being written about, described as the elder statesman of British violin making. He was awarded the MBE in 2003 and in his late years, served on the judging panel of the Violin
Society of America’s instrument making competitions. He died in
2004, leaving 164 violas, 52 violins and five cellos, an impressive tally that bears testament to his unwavering vision. For him, instruments had just one purpose and creating the perfect sound was his life’s mission.
For those who knew him, though, his instruments were more than just music-making devices. They were a source of pride, of amusing tales about his lively banter and dry wit. They were things you cherished and to “own a Wilf” was like having a little part of him all to yourself. His instruments continue to be used by players around the world today. Some are still with the Saunders family, like violin number ten that he gave to wife Janet on their engagement, and his very first violin that he never finished and was completed after his death.
As for Rowan, my plan almost worked. Those exam pieces sounded fabulous, though I think I was the only one in that workshop who didn’t realise what was happening. Dad did, and within minutes he was feeling poorer. Wilf had known all along.
“The best instrument is always the one you’re just going to make,” he once said, “the one that’s not quite finished.”
For me, it will always be the one I never gave back.
Wilf Saunders quotes from The Violin Makers: Portrait of a Living Craft, M A Alburger (Gollancz, 1978). Thanks to Kay and
Jacob Saunders.