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Violino arpa

Violino arpa

Violino arpa, Thomas Zach, Vienna, 1873, inv. 1359

Violino arpa, Thomas Zach, Vienna, 1873, inv. 1359

Violino arpa

Violino arpa, Thomas Zach, Vienna, 1873, inv. 1359

Violino arpa, Thomas Zach, Vienna, 1873, inv. 1359

This curious violin with its elongated shape appears to have escaped from a Salvador Dali painting! It is illustrative of nineteenth-century inventiveness in the search for perfection in instrument-building.

Its designer, Thomas Zach, had as convoluted a life as the form of his instrument. He began as a miller’s assistant in Bohemia, later becoming an apprentice violin maker in Prague. Thereafter, he worked in Budapest for a few years and then spent an itinerant period in Hungary and Romania. In 1865, he met Prince Sturdza in Bucharest, who boasted of having come up with a concept for the ideal violin, one based on elliptical shapes. According to him, the sound volume of the instrument would be enhanced by increasing the capacity of the sound-box. Zach put the prince’s theory into practice by building a series of instruments with bizarre shapes, but the results were, alas, disappointing, the violins producing only a nasal and unclear sound.

However, Zach did not confine himself exclusively to innovative and avant-garde designs. He spent the final years of his life in Vienna, where he made violins of fine quality and trained various Hungarian violin makers.