Antonio Stradivari
A romanticized print of Antonio Stradivari examining an instrument. No authentic portrait has been discovered.
Born	1644 Cremona, Italy
Died	18 December 1737 (aged 92–93)
Nationality	Italian
Education	Apprenticeship with Nicolò Amati
Spouse	1. Francesca Feraboschi 2. Zambelli Costa
Work
Practice name	luthier

Antonio Stradivari (1644 – 18 December 1737) was an Italian luthier and a crafter of string instruments such as violins, cellos, guitars, violas, and harps. Stradivari is generally considered the most significant and greatest artisan in this field. The Latinized form of his surname, Stradivarius, as well as the colloquial, "Strad", is often used to refer to his instruments. It is estimated that he made 1,000 to 1,100^[1][2] instruments and that around 650 of these instruments have survived^[3] including 450^[1] to 512^[2] violins.

Biography[link]

Family background and early life[link]

Panorama of Cremona, with the Torrazzo di Cremona visible

Stradivari's ancestry consisted of notable citizens of Cremona, dating back to at least the 12th or 13th century. The earliest mention of the family name, or a variation upon it, is in a land grant dating from 1188.^[4] The origin of the name itself has several possible explanations; some sources say it is the plural of Stradivare, essentially meaning "toll-man" in a Lombard variety of Italian, while others say that the form "de Strataverta" derives from "Strada averta", which, in a Cremonese dialect of Italian, means "open road".^[5]

Antonio's parents were Alessandro Stradivari, son of Giulio Cesare Stradivari, and Anna Moroni, daughter of Leonardo Moroni.^[6] They married on 30 August 1622, and had at least 3 children between 1623 and 1628: Giuseppe Giulia Cesare, Carlo Felice, and Giovanni Battista. The baptismal records of the Parish of S. Prospero then stop, and it is unknown whether they had any children from 1628 to 1644.^[7] This blank in the records may be due to the family leaving Cremona in response to war, famine, and plague in the city from 1628 to 1630,^[8] or the records may have been lost due to clerical reforms imposed by Joseph II of Austria in 1788.^[9] The latter explanation is supported by the word Cremonensis (of Cremona) on many of Stradivari's labels, which suggests that he was born in the city instead of merely moving back there to work.^[10] Antonio was born in 1644, a fact deducible from later violins.^[11] However, there are no records or information available on his early childhood, and the first evidence of his presence in Cremona is the label of his oldest surviving violin from 1666.^[12]

Stradivari likely began an apprenticeship with Nicolò Amati between the ages of 12 and 14,^[13] although a minor debate surrounds this fact. One of the only pieces of evidence supporting this is the label of his 1666 violin, which reads, "Alumnus Nicolai Amati, faciebat anno 1666".^[14] However, Stradivari did not repeatedly put Amati's name on his labels, unlike many of his other students.^[15] Stradivari's early violins actually bear less of a resemblance to those of Amati than his later instruments do.^[11] M. Chanot-Chardon, a well-known French luthier, asserted that his father had a label of Stradivari's stating, "Made at the age of thirteen, in the workship of Nicolò Amati". This label has never been found or confirmed.^[14] Amati would also have been a logical choice for Antonio's parents, as he represented an old family of violin makers in Cremona, and was far superior to most other luthiers in Italy.^[13]

An alternative theory is that Stradivari started out as a woodworker: the house he lived in from 1667 to 1680 was owned by Francesco Pescaroli, a woodcarver and inlayer. Stradivari may even have been employed to decorate some of Amati's instruments, without being a true apprentice. This theory is supported by some of Stradivari's later violins, which have elaborate decorations and purfling.^[16]

Assuming that Stradivari was a student of Amati, he would have begun his apprenticeship in 1656–58 and produced his first decent instruments in 1660, at the age of 16. His first labels were printed from 1660 to 1665, which indicates that his work had reached a quality sufficiently high enough for him to offer it directly to his patrons. However, he probably stayed in Amati's workshop until about 1684, so as to use his master's reputation as a launching point for his career.^[17]

Marriage and early career[link]

Antonio Stradivari's second house, the No. 2 Piazza San Domenico

Stradivari married his first wife, Francesca Feraboschi, on 4 July 1667.^[18] Francesca was the young widow of the burgher Giacomo Capra, with whom she had two children, and who had been shot by Francesca's brother on the Piazza Garibaldi (formerly the Piazza Santa Agata).^[19] After their marriage, Stradivari moved into a house known as the Casa del Pescatore, or the Casa Nuziale, in his wife's parish. The couple had a daughter, Giulia Maria, three to four months later.^[20] They remained in this house until 1680, during which time they had four more children: Catterina, Francesco, Alessandro, and Omobono, as well as an infant son who lived for only a week.^[21]

Stradivari likely developed his own style slowly. His violins often used slightly smaller dimensions.^{[citation needed]} A notable exception to this is the 1697 Hellier violin, which had much larger proportions.^[22] Stradivari's early (pre-1684) violins are in strong contrast to Amati's instruments from the same time period; Stradivari's have a stronger, more masculine build, and less rounded curves, with the purfling set farther in.^[23][24]

By 1680, Stradivari had acquired at least a small, yet growing, reputation. In 1682, a Venetian banker ordered a complete set of instruments, to be presented to King James II of England.^[25] The fate of these instruments is unknown. Cosimo de' Medici bought another five years later.^[26] Amati died in 1684, an event which was followed by a noticeable increase in Stradivari's production.^[25] The years 1684 and 1685 also marked an important development in his style — the dimensions he used generally increased, and his instruments were more in the style of Amati's work of the 1640s and 1650s.^[27] Stradivari's instruments underwent no major change in the next five years,^[28] although in 1688 he began cutting a more distinct bevel and began outlining the heads of instruments in black, a quite original improvement.^[29]

Stradivari's early career is marked by wide experimentation, and his instruments during this period are generally considered of a lesser quality than his later work.^[30] However, the precision with which he carved the heads and inserted the purfling quickly marked him as one of the most dextrous craftsmen in the world, a prime example of this being the 1690 "Tuscan" violin.^[31] Pre-1690 instruments are sometimes termed "Amatisé" but this is not completely accurate; it is largely because Stradivari created many more instruments later on that people try to connect his early work with Amati's style.^[32]

Stradivari moved out of the Casa Nuziale by 1680, and purchased a house now known as No. 1 Piazza Roma (formally No. 2 Piazza San Domenico).^[20] The house was just doors away from those of several other violin making families of Cremona, including the Amatis and Guarneris.^[33] Stradivari probably worked in the loft and attic, and he stayed in this house for the rest of his life.^[34] Stradivari's wife Francesca died on 20 May 1698, and received an elaborate funeral five days later.^[35]

"Golden" period and later years[link]

In the early 1690s, Stradivari made a pronounced departure from this earlier style of instrument-making, changing two key elements of his instruments. First, he began to make violins with a larger pattern than previous instruments, which are usually dubbed "Long Strads".^[36] He also switched to using a darker, richer varnish, as opposed to a yellower varnish similar to that used by Amati.^[37] He continued to use this pattern until 1698, with few exceptions. After 1698, he abandoned the Long Strad model and returned to a slightly shorter model, which he used until his death. The period from 1700 until the 1720s is often termed the "golden period" of his production.^[38] Instruments made during this time are usually considered of a higher quality than his earlier instruments. Late-period instruments made from the late 1720s until his death in 1737 show signs of Stradivari's advancing age. These late instruments may be a bit less beautiful than the Golden Period instruments, but many nonetheless possess a fine tone.

Stradivari married his second wife, Zambelli Costa, on 24 August 1699. They had five children from 1700 to 1708—Francesca Maria, Giovanni Battista Giuseppe, Giovanni Battista Martino, Giuseppe Antonio, and Paolo.^[35] Stradivari died on 18 December 1737. He is buried in the Church of San Domenico.^[39]

Stradivarius instruments[link]

Antonio Stradivari, by Edgar Bundy, 1893: a romanticized image of a craftsman-hero

Stradivari's instruments are regarded as amongst the finest bowed stringed instruments ever created, are highly prized, and are still played by professionals today. Only one other maker, Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù, commands a similar respect among violinists. However, neither blind listening tests nor acoustic analysis have ever demonstrated that Stradivarius instruments are better than other high-quality instruments or even reliably distinguishable from them.^{[40][41][42][43]}

Fashions in music, as in other things, have changed over the centuries, and the supremacy of Stradivari's and Guarneri's instruments is accepted only today. In the past, instruments by Nicolò Amati and Jacob Stainer were preferred for their subtle sweetness of tone.

While the usual label for a Stradivarius instrument, whether genuine or false, uses the traditional Latin inscription, after the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890, copies were also inscribed with the country of origin. Since thousands of instruments are based on Stradivari's models and bear the same name as his models, many unwary people are deceived into purchasing forged Stradivarius instruments, which can be avoided by having an instrument authenticated.

Many violinists and cellists use Stradivari instruments in their work. Yo-Yo Ma currently uses the Davidov Stradivarius,^[44] Julian Lloyd Webber employs the Barjansky Stradivarius,^[45] and, until his death in 2007, Mstislav Rostropovich played on the Duport Stradivarius.^[46] The Soil of 1714 is owned by virtuoso Itzhak Perlman.^[47] The Countess Polignac is currently played by Gil Shaham.^[48] The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra uses several Stradivari instruments that were purchased by the Österreichische Nationalbank (Austrian National Bank) and other sponsors: Chaconne, 1725; ex-Hämmerle, 1709; ex-Smith-Quersin, 1714; ex-Arnold Rose, ex-Viotti, 1718; and ex-Halphen, 1727.

The London sales of The Mendelssohn at £902,000 ($1,776,940) in 1990^[49] and The Kreutzer for £947,500 ($1,591,800) in 1998^[50] constitute two top selling Stradivari. A record price paid at a public auction for a Stradivari was $2,032,000 for the Lady Tennant at Christie's in New York, April 2005.^[51] On 16 May 2006, Christie's auctioned Stradivari's 1707 Hammer for a new record of US$3,544,000.^[52] On 2 April 2007, Christie's sold a Stradivari violin, the 1729 Solomon, Ex-Lambert, for more than $2.7 million to an anonymous bidder in the auction house's fine musical instruments sale. Its price, US$2,728,000 including the Christie's commission, far outdid its estimated value: $1 million to $1.5 million.^[53] On 14 October 2010, a 1697 Stradivari violin known as "The Molitor" was sold online by Tarisio Auctions for a world-record price of $3,600,000 to renowned concert violinist Anne Akiko Meyers. The price was the highest on record for any musical instrument sold at auction. On 21 June 2011, a 1721 Stradivari violin known as "Lady Blunt" was auctioned by Tarisio to an anonymous bidder for £9,808,000 ($15,932,115) with all proceeds going to help the victims of the Japan earthquake.^[54] This was over four times the previous auction record for a Stradivari violin. The c.1705 Baron von der Leyen Strad was auctioned by Tarisio on April 26, 2012 for $2.6 million.^[55]

Publicly displayed collections of Stradivari instruments are those of the U.S. Library of Congress with three violins, a viola, and a cello, the Agency of National Estates of Spain, with a quartet of two violins, the Spanish I and II, the Spanish Court cello, and the Spanish Court viola, exhibited in the Music Museum at the Palacio Real de Madrid (Royal Palace)^[56] and the Royal Academy of Music's Collections with several instruments by Antonio Stradivari, including the Joachim (1698), Rutson (1694), the Crespi (1699), Viotti ex-Bruce (1709), Kustendyke (1699), Maurin (1718) and the Ex Back (1666) violins, Ex Kux (1714), and the Archinto (1696) violas, the Marquis de Corberon (1726) and the Markevitch (1709) celli.^[57][58] The Musee de la Musique in Paris displays several beautiful Stradivari instruments that formerly belonged to the Paris Conservatory.

The collection of The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra had the largest number of Stradivari in its string section, purchased in 2003 from the collection of Herbert R. Axelrod, until it recently^[when?] decided to sell them off. A collection assembled by Rodman Wanamaker in the 1920s contained as many as 65 stringed instruments by such masters as Stradivari, Gofriller, Baptiste and Giuseppe Guarneri. Included was The Swan, the last violin made by Stradivari,^[59] and soloist instrument of the great Cuban 19th century virtuoso Joseph White.^[60] The collection, known as The Cappella, was used in concerts with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski before being dispersed after Wanamaker's death. The Vienna Philharmonic uses four violins and one cello. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has three Stradivari violins dated 1693,^[61] 1694^[62] and 1717.^[63] The National Music Museum, in Vermillion, South Dakota, has in its collection one of two known Stradivari guitars,^[64] one of eleven known viola da gambas, later modified into a cello form, one of two known choral mandolins, and one of six Stradivari violins that still retain their original neck. In the interests of conservation, the Messiah Stradivarius violin—on display in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England—has not been played at all in recent years.^[65]

In fiction[link]

In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, Sherlock Holmes owns and plays a Stradivari violin.^[66][67]

In one episode of The Simpsons the family is at a flea market where Homer is looking through a box. He stumbles upon a Stradavarius and then remarks "Strada-who-vius?" before tossing the instrument aside.

In 1987, the Soviet detective television mini-series Visit to Minotaur used Stradivari's life story as a parallel to the main storyline, which featured an investigation into the theft of a Stradivari violin in Moscow in the early 1980s.^[68] The original Stradivarius violin that appears in the series belonged to David Oistrach. Coincidentally, in May 1996, nine years after the series was made, this violin was stolen from Moscow's Museum of Musical Culture. It was successfully recovered in 2001.

The 1989, Italian TV movie biopic, Stradivari, was filmed in Cremona, directed by Giacomo Battiato, and starred Anthony Quinn as Antonio, Lorenzo Quinn as Young Antonio and Stefania Sandrelli as his second wife Zambelli.^[69]

The film The Red Violin was inspired by one of Stradivari's violins, the Red Mendelssohn (1721),^[70] which is currently played by Elizabeth Pitcairn, heiress to the PPG Industries fortune, whose grandfather purchased it for her 16th birthday for $1.7 million at auction at Christie's London. She is one of the few soloists who performs the Red Violin Chaconne composed for the film by John Corigliano. The notion that the fictional violin is red because it is painted with the blood of the maker's wife, who died during childbirth, is a creation of the filmmaker and is yet unsubstantiated. The real violin is called "The Red Mendelssohn" because of a unique red stripe on its top right side, but how the stripe came about is unknown.

In the Broadway musical Urinetown, a Stradivari instrument is briefly mentioned in a single line, "Play it on your / Stradivari / He's not sorry / Not a shred!" as a high-status, political symbol.

In the second installment of the Final Fantasy Tactics Advance video game series, Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift, Stradivari is a wood used to create the items Edaroya Scriptures, Sage's Robe, and Faerie Shoes.

In the video game Fallout 3, the player is tasked with retrieving the Soil Stradivari (Itzhak Perlman's current violin) from a vault.

Episode 36 of the anime series Detective School Q deals with a mystery involving a violin, which is mentioned to be 'Superior to the famed Stradivarius'.

Episode "Pulling Strings" of the television series White Collar has Neal Caffrey searching for a missing Stradivarius violin.

Episode "The Scheherazade Job" of the television series "Leverage" has Alec Hardison play a Stradivarius violin.

See also[link]

• Amati
• Giuseppe Guarneri
• List of Stradivarius instruments
• W.E. Hill & Sons

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Faber, Toby (2006). Stradivari's Genius: Five Violins, One Cello, and Three Centuries of Enduring Perfection. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-375-76085-7. 
• Fuller-Maitland, John Alexander; Grove, George; Pratt, Waldo Selden (1922). "Stradivari, Antonio". Grove's dictionary of music and musicians. 4. Philadelphia: Theodore Presser Company. pp. 707–712. http://books.google.com/books?id=5vRLAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA707#v=onepage&q&f=false. Retrieved 27 November 2010. 
• Hart, George (1875). The violin: its famous makers and their imitators. London: Dulau. http://books.google.com/books?id=qzEDAAAAQAAJ. Retrieved 2011-08-05. 
• Henly, W (1961). Antonio Stradivari: Master Luthier. Brighton: Amati Publishing. 
• Hill, W. Henry; Hill, Arthur F; Hill, Alfred E (1963). Antonio Stradivari: His Life & Work. New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-20425-1. 
• Petherick, Horace (1900). Antonio Stradivari. New York: Scribner. 
• Pigaillem, Henri (2001). Stradivarius: sa vie, ses instruments. Paris: Zurfluh. 
• Pollens, Stewart (2010). Stradivari. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-87304-8. 

External links[link]

• Nippon Music Foundation
• Stradivari Society
• Violin Making at The Violin Site
• The National Music Museum
• Real Conservatorio Superior de Música, Madrid
• Information on Antonio Stradivari
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Antonius Stradivarius

Articles[link]

• Secrets of the Stradivari
• Wali, Kameshwar C. (Spring 2000). "William F. Fry: A Physicist's Quest for the "Secrets" of Stradivari". Wisconsin Academy Review 46 (2). http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/wiacrev/wiacrev-idx?type=HTML&rgn=DIV1&byte=603354&q1=&q2=&q3. 
• Cremona Violins - A Physicist's Quest for the Secrets of Stradivari by Kameshwar C Wali - Preface, Chap. 1
• Digital Stradivari: computer models of violins reveal master luthier’s techniques, 13 November 2009

Videos[link]

• William F. "Jack" Fry: Solving the Stradivarius Secret; Video Lecture (25 March 2009)

Historical Books[link]

• Antoine Stradivari, luthier célèbre connu sous le nom de Stradivarius By François-Joseph Fétis, Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume

Eric Grossman
Background information
Born	(1964-11-25) November 25, 1964 (age 47)
Origin	United States
Instruments	Bass guitar
Associated acts	K's Choice L.A. Guns

This article is about the musician. For the marathon runner, see McNaughton Park Trail Runs

Eric Grossman (b. November 25, 1964,^[1][2] New York) is an American musician, best known for playing bass and recording gold and platinum albums with the European band K's Choice.^[3][4]

Biography[link]

Grossman was born in 1964 in New York, the older of two boys. Both of his parents worked in the optical business—his father owned a shop. Grossman attended Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, California, graduating in 1982. He went on to study music theory at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, California, but dropped out to focus on his music. It was also at Pierce College that he met Dr. Gerald Eskalin, founder of the L.A. Jazz Choir, with whom he performed in the late 1980s. In the early 1990s he performed in the band Iannello, playing with guitarist Joel Shearer and drummer Jimmy Paxson for six years.

It was through Shearer that Grossman connected with K's Choice. Shearer had been playing with the band Super 8, which had the same manager as K's Choice. The manager recommended Grossman to the leaders of K's Choice, at a time when they were auditioning for a new bass player. Grossman won the part, and in 1997 toured with K's Choice in support of their album Paradise in Me. He then joined the band full time, and with them has recorded four gold and platinum records, including Almost Happy and Cocoon Crash. His work with the band included thousands of performances, and many appearances on European television, such as the French program Taratata. He also appeared with the band on a 1999 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Doppelgangland".

Grossman currently lives with his wife and children in St. Louis, Missouri. Since 2005, Grossman has also been recording and touring with singer/songwriter Sarah Bettens, and in 2007 he began performing with Javier Mendoza. In 2011, he began playing with Dilana Smith from the hit television show, Rock Star Supernova.

Discography[link]

K's Choice bassist[link]

• 1998, Cocoon Crash, sold over 1,000,000 copies, and went platinum in Belgium and Holland
• 2001, K's Choice Live
• 2002, Almost Happy
• 2004, 10: 1993-2003 Ten Years Of K's Choice

Other[link]

• 2005, Scream, Sarah Bettens
• 2007, Shine, Sarah Bettens

Disambiguation note[link]

Eric Grossman, the bassist, has no relationship with Eric Grossman, the violinist.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• MySpace page
• http://www.ibmring1.com/Spirit/SpiritSept%2006.pdf
• http://www.kschoice.org/biography2.asp?p=3

External links[link]

• http://thechoice.free.fr/eric_us.html
• http://drusillasbtvs.tripod.com/id87.htm#eric_grossman
• http://www.todayweremember.com/birthdays/November25.php

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Tagged since March 2010. Very few or no other articles link to it. Please help introduce links to this page from other articles related to it. Tagged since August 2010.

Satu Vänskä (1979-^[1]) is a Finnish violinist.

Early life[link]

Born in Japan, Vänskä has played the violin since the age of three. Having moved back to Finland at a young age, Satu continued to play, taking on violin study at the Lahti Conservatorium and Sibelius Academy. In her teens Satu studied violin at Hochschule für Musik in Germany. This led to her performances with the Munich Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, at the Tuusulanjärvi Festival, and at Festivo Aschau.

Accomplishments[link]

Satu has received high acclaim for her violin excellence, most notably the Young Soloist of the Year (1998) award^[1], named by Sinfonia Lahti, and receiving the honor of attending master classes with Kuhmo Violin School, Finland, at the age of eleven.

In early 2009 Satu helped launch the Sydney Conservatorium of Music's Sensational Sundays concert series, playing Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata.^[2]

Current news[link]

Satu is currently Assistant Leader of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, traveling nationally and internationally with her Tommaso Balestrieri violin. In 2011, she became the custodian of the only Stradivarius violin in Australia.^[3]

References[link]

External links[link]

• BIS
• Finland Australia Chamber of Commerce Newsletter
• Classical Music by Satu Vänskä
• Players of the Australian Chamber Orchestra
• The Munich Philharmonic
• Daily Telegraph link

Da Vinci usually refers to Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Italian Renaissance polymath. It may also refer to:

Places[link]

• Leonardo da Vinci Airport - the main international airport in Fiumicino, Rome, Italy
• Leonardo da Vinci High School - a New Technology High School in Davis, California
• Leonardo da Vinci High School Buffalo, New York - a college prep school in Buffalo, New York.
• Da Vinci (lunar crater) - a crater on the Moon
• Da Vinci Research Park - a science park located in Brussels

Ships[link]

• Leonardo da Vinci - a Conte di Cavour class battleship of the Italian navy
• Leonardo da Vinci - a Marconi class submarine of the Italian Navy.
• SS Leonardo da Vinci - an ocean liner in service for Italian Line between 1960 and 1978.
• GTS Da Vinci - a cruise ship owned by Club Cruise

Television[link]

• Da Vinci's Inquest - a 1998 Canadian dramatic television series
  • Da Vinci's City Hall - a 2005 spinoff of Da Vinci's Inquest

Technology[link]

• Da Vinci Surgical System - a robotic surgery system
• da Vinci Systems - Color Correctors
• The da Vinci Project - a planned suborbital manned spacecraft
• Texas Instruments DaVinci - a system-on-a-chip for digital video
• Da Vinci Machine - a Sun Microsystems project aiming to prototype the extension of the Java Virtual Machine to add support for dynamic languages

Music[link]

• Da Vinci (band) - a Portuguese pop rock band
• Da Vinci's Notebook - an American a cappella group.

Other[link]

• Pierino da Vinci, sculptor, Leonardo's nephew
• Giulietta da Vinci - fictional character from the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough
• Da Vinci Tower - a proposed 420-metre (1,378 ft), 80-floor tower in Dubai, United Arab Emirates
• Davinci Academy of Science and the Arts - a charter high school in Ogden, Utah.
• Leonardo da Vinci programme
• Da Vinci's Challenge - a board game
• Da Vinci (restaurant) - Michelin starred restaurant in Maasbracht, Netherlands

See also[link]

• Vinci (disambiguation)
• The Da Vinci Code (disambiguation) - the novel by Dan Brown and related items

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

From the film Stage Door Canteen, 1943

Signature of Yehudi Menuhin

Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM, KBE (22 April 1916 – 12 March 1999) was an American violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. He was born to Russian Jewish parents in the United States, but became a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and of the United Kingdom in 1985. He is often considered to be one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century.

Early life and career[link]

Yehudi Menuhin with Bruno Walter (1931). According to Henry A. Murray, Menuhin wrote: "Actually, I was gazing in my usual state of being half absent in my own world and half in the present. I have usually been able to 'retire' in this way. I was also thinking that my life was tied up with the instrument and would I do it justice?" (Yehudi Menuhin, personal communication, 31 October 1993).

Yehudi Menuhin was born in New York City, United States, to Bielorussian Jewish parents from what is now Belarus. His sisters were the concert pianist and human rights worker Hephzibah Menuhin and the pianist, painter, and poet Yaltah Menuhin. Through his father Moshe Menuhin, a former rabbinical student and anti-Zionist writer, Menuhin was descended from a distinguished rabbinical dynasty.

Menuhin began violin instruction at age four under violinist Sigmund Anker; his parents had wanted Louis Persinger to be his teacher, but Persinger refused.^[1] Menuhin displayed extraordinary talents at an early age. His first solo violin performance was at the age of seven with the San Francisco Symphony in 1923. Persinger then agreed to take Menuhin as a student. When the Menuhins went to Paris, Persinger suggested Yehudi go to his own teacher, Eugène Ysaÿe. He did have one lesson with Ysaÿe, but did not like his method or the fact that he was very old.^[1] Instead, he went to the Romanian composer and violinist George Enescu, after which he made several recordings with his sister Hephzibah. He was also a student of Adolf Busch. In 1929 he played in Berlin, under Bruno Walter's baton, three concerti by Bach, Brahms and Beethoven. In 1932 he recorded Edward Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor for HMV in London, with the composer himself conducting, and between 1934 and 1936 he made the first integral recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin.

World War II musician[link]

Yehudi Menuhin performed for Allied soldiers during World War II, and accompanied English composer Benjamin Britten to perform for inmates of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, after its liberation in April 1945. He returned to Germany in 1947 to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler as an act of reconciliation, becoming the first Jewish musician to do so following the Holocaust. He said to critics within the Jewish community that he wanted to rehabilitate Germany's music and spirit. After building early success on richly romantic and tonally opulent performances, he experienced considerable physical and artistic difficulties caused by overwork during the war as well as unfocused and unstructured early training (reportedly he said "I watched myself on film and realized that for 30 years I'd been holding the bow wrong").^{[citation needed]} Careful practice and study combined with meditation and yoga helped him overcome many of these problems. His profound and considered musical interpretations are nearly universally acclaimed. When he finally resumed recording, he was known for practicing by deconstructing music phrases one note at a time.

He and Louis Kentner (brother-in-law of his wife, Diana) gave the first performance of William Walton's Violin Sonata, at Zürich on 30 September 1949.

Menuhin continued to perform to an advanced age, becoming known for profound interpretations of an austere quality, as well as for his explorations of music outside the classical realm.

World interactions[link]

Menuhin credited German-Jewish philosopher Constantin Brunner with providing him with "a theoretical framework within which I could fit the events and experiences of life".^[2]

In 1952 Menuhin met and befriended the influential yogi B. K. S. Iyengar before he had come to prominence outside India. Menuhin arranged for Iyengar to teach abroad in London, Switzerland, Paris and elsewhere. This was the first time that many Westerners had been exposed to yoga.

Following his role as a member of the awards jury at the 1955 Queen Elisabeth Music Competition, Menuhin secured a Rockefeller Foundation grant for the financially strapped Grand Prize winner at the event, Argentine violinist Alberto Lysy. Menuhin made Lysy his first and only personal student, and the two toured extensively throughout the concert halls of Europe. The young protégé later established the International Menuhin Music Academy in Gstaad, in his honor.^[3]

Menuhin made several recordings with the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who had been criticized for conducting in Germany during the Nazi era. Menuhin defended Furtwängler, noting that the conductor had helped a number of Jewish musicians to flee Nazi Germany.

In 1962, he established the Yehudi Menuhin School in Stoke d'Abernon, Surrey. He also established the music program at The Nueva School in Hillsborough, California, sometime around then. In 1965 he received an honorary knighthood from the British monarchy. In the same year, Australian composer Malcolm Williamson wrote a violin concerto for Menuhin. He performed the concerto many times and recorded it at its premiere at the Bath Festival in 1965. Originally known as the Bath Assembly,^[4] the festival was first directed by the impresario Ian Hunter in 1948. After the first year the city tried to run the festival itself, but in 1955 asked Hunter back. In 1959 Hunter invited Yehudi Menuhin to become artistic director of the Festival. Menuhin accepted, and retained the post until 1968.^[5]

Menuhin also had a long association with Ravi Shankar, which began with their 1966 album West Meets East. During this time, he commissioned composer Alan Hovhaness to write a concerto for violin, sitar, and orchestra to be performed by himself and Shankar. The resulting work, entitled Shambala (c. 1970), with a fully composed violin part and space for improvisation from the sitarist, is the earliest known work for sitar with western symphony orchestra, predating Shankar’s own sitar concertos, but Menuhin and Shankar never recorded it. Menuhin also worked with famous jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli in the 1970s on Jalousie, an album of pop music of the 1930s arranged in chamber style.

At the Edinburgh Festival in 1957 Menuhin premiered Priaulx Rainier's violin concerto Due Canti e Finale, which he had commissioned Rainier to write. He also commissioned her last work, Wildlife Celebration, which he performed in aid of Gerald Durrell's Wildlife Conservation Trust.

In 1983 Menuhin and Robert Masters founded the Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists. Now one of the world's leading competitions for young violinists, many of its prizewinners have gone on to become prominent violinists, including Tasmin Little, Nikolaj Znaider, Ilya Gringolts, Julia Fischer, Daishin Kashimoto and Lara St. John.

In 1991 Menuhin was awarded the prestigious Wolf Prize by the Israeli Government. In the Israeli Knesset he gave an acceptance speech in which he criticised Israel's continued occupation of the West Bank:

"This wasteful governing by fear, by contempt for the basic dignities of life, this steady asphyxiation of a dependent people, should be the very last means to be adopted by those who themselves know too well the awful significance, the unforgettable suffering of such an existence. It is unworthy of my great people, the Jews, who have striven to abide by a code of moral rectitude for some 5,000 years, who can create and achieve a society for themselves such as we see around us but can yet deny the sharing of its great qualities and benefits to those dwelling amongst them."^[6]

In 1997 Menuhin and Ian Stoutzker founded the charity Live Music Now, the largest outreach music project in the UK. Live Music Now pays and trains professional musicians to work in the community, bringing the experience to those who rarely get an opportunity to hear or see live music performance.

Menuhin's pupils included Nigel Kennedy, Nicola Benedetti, and the violists Paul Coletti and Csaba Erdélyi. He owned and played several notable instruments; arguably the most famous of which is the Lord Wilton Guarneri del Gesù (1742).

In the 1980s Menuhin wrote and oversaw the creation of a "Music Guides" series of books; each covered a musical instrument, with one on the human voice. Menuhin wrote some, while others were edited by different authors.

Later career[link]

Menuhin with Stéphane Grappelli taken by Allan Warren, 1976

Menuhin regularly returned to the San Francisco Bay Area, sometimes performing with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. One of the more memorable later performances was of Edward Elgar's Violin Concerto, which Menuhin had recorded with the composer in 1932.

On 22 April 1978, along with Stéphane Grappelli, Yehudi played Pick Yourself Up, taken from the Menuhin & Grappelli Play Berlin, Kern, Porter and Rodgers & Hart album as the interval act at the 23rd Eurovision Song Contest for TF1. The performance came direct from the studios of TF1 and not that of the venue (Palais des Congrès), where the contest was being held.

Menuhin hosted the PBS telecast of the gala opening concert of the San Francisco Symphony from Davies Symphony Hall in September 1980.

During the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, Menuhin made jazz recordings with Stéphane Grappelli, classical recordings with L. Subramaniam and albums of Eastern music with the great sitarist Ravi Shankar. In 1983 he founded the Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists in Folkestone, Kent.

His recording contract with EMI lasted almost 70 years and is the longest in the history of the music industry. He made his first recording at age 13 in November 1929, and his last in 1999, when he was nearly 83 years old. He recorded over 300 works for EMI, both as a violinist and as a conductor. In 2009 EMI released a 51-CD retrospective of Menuhin's recording career, titled Yehudi Menuhin: The Great EMI Recordings.

In 1990 Menuhin was the first conductor for the Asian Youth Orchestra which toured around Asia, including Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong with Julian Lloyd Webber and a group of young talented musicians from all over Asia.

Personal life[link]

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin and author Paulo Coelho captured at the Annual Meeting 1999 of the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland

Yehudi Menuhin was married twice. He married Nola Nicholas, daughter of an Australian industrialist, and sister of Hephzibah Menuhin's first husband Lindsay Nicholas. They had two children, Krov and Zamira (who married pianist Fou Ts'ong). Following their 1947 divorce he married the British ballerina and actress Diana Gould, whose mother was the pianist Evelyn Suart (who had played with artists such as Eugène Ysaÿe and Karel Halíř), and whose stepfather was Admiral Sir Cecil Harcourt. Menuhin and Gould had two sons, Gerard and Jeremy, a pianist. A third child died shortly after birth.

The name Yehudi means 'Jew' in Hebrew. In an interview republished in October 2004, he recounted to New Internationalist magazine the story of his name:

Obliged to find an apartment of their own, my parents searched the neighbourhood and chose one within walking distance of the park. Showing them out after they had viewed it, the landlady said: "And you'll be glad to know I don't take Jews." Her mistake made clear to her, the antisemitic landlady was renounced, and another apartment found. But her blunder left its mark. Back on the street my mother made a vow. Her unborn baby would have a label proclaiming his race to the world. He would be called "The Jew."^[7]

Menuhin died in Martin Luther Hospital,^[8] Berlin, Germany, from complications of bronchitis.

Soon after his death, the Royal Academy of Music acquired the Yehudi Menuhin Archive, one of the most comprehensive collections ever assembled by an individual musician.

Violins[link]

Menuhin used a number of famous violins including the Giovanni Bussetto 1680, the Giovanni Grancino 1695, the Guarneri filius Andrea 1703, the Soil Stradivarius, the Prince Khevenhüller 1733 Stradivari, the Guarneri del Gesù 1739, and the Lord Wilton 1742 Guarneri del Gesù.

Awards and honours[link]

• Freedom of the City (Edinburgh, Scotland, 1965)
• In 1965, while he was still an American citizen, Menuhin was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, which entitled him to use the postnominal letters KBE, but not to style himself Sir Yehudi. After Menuhin gained British citizenship in 1985, his knighthood was upgraded to a substantive one, and he became Sir Yehudi Menuhin KBE.
• The Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding (1968).^[9]
• The Léonie Sonning Music Prize (Denmark, 1972)
• Nominated as president of the Elgar Society (1983)
• The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize (1984)
• The Kennedy Center Honors (1986)
• Appointed a member of the Order of Merit (1987)
• His recording of Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor with Julian Lloyd Webber won the 1987 BRIT Award for Best British Classical Recording (BBC Music Magazine named this recording "the finest version ever recorded").
• The Glenn Gould Prize (1990), in recognition of his lifetime of contributions
• Ambassador of Goodwill (UNESCO, 1992)
• In 1993 Menuhin was made a life peer, as Baron Menuhin of Stoke d'Abernon in the County of Surrey.^[10]
• The Konex Decoration (Konex Foundation, Argentina, 1994)
• Honorary Doctorates from 20 universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the University of Bath (1969).^[11]
• In the European Parliament in Brussels, the room in which concerts and performances are held is called the "Yehudi Menuhin Space".
• Menuhin was honored as "a Freeman" of the cities of Edinburgh, Bath, Reims and Warsaw.
• He held the Gold Medals of the cities of Paris, New York and Jerusalem.

Cultural references[link]

The catchphrase "Who's Yehoodi?" popular in the 1930s and 1940s was inspired by Menuhin's guest appearance on a radio show, where Jerry Colonna turned "Yehoodi" into a widely recognized slang term for a mysteriously absent person. It eventually lost all of its original connection with Menuhin.

Yehudi Menuhin was also 'meant' to appear on The Morecambe and Wise Show but could not do so as he was 'opening at the Argyl Theatre, Birkenhead in Old King Cole'. He was replaced by Eric Morecambe in the famous "Grieg's Piano Concerto by Grieg" sketch featuring the conductor André Previn.

A picture of Menuhin as a child is sometimes used as part of a Thematic Apperception Test.^[12]

Bibliography[link]

• Menuhin, Diana (1984). Fiddler's Moll. Life With Yehudi. New York: St Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-28819-0. 
• Menuhin, Yehudi (1977). Unfinished Journey. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-394-41051-3. 
• Menuhin, Yehudi (1997). Unfinished Journey: Twenty Years Later. New York: Fromm Intl. ISBN 0-88064-179-7. 
• L. Subramaniam, Y. Menuhin; Directed by Jean Henri Meunier (1999) (documentary film). Violin From the Heart (DVD). 
• Bailey, Philip (2008). Yehudiana – Reliving the Menuhin Odyssey|Book One. Australia: Fountaindale Press. ISBN 978-0-9804499-0-7. 
• Bailey, Philip (2010). Yehudiana - Reliving the Menuhin Odyssey Book Two. Australia: Fountaindale Press. ISBN 978-0-9804499-1-4. 
• Burton, Humphrey (2000). Yehudi Menuhin: a life. Northeastern. ISBN 978-1-55553-465-3. 

Films[link]

• 1943 – Menuhin was a featured performer in the 1943 film, Stage Door Canteen. Introduced only as "Mr. Menuhin," he performed two violin solos, "Ave Maria" and "Flight of the Bumble Bee" for an audience of servicemen, volunteer hostesses and celebrities from stage and screen.
• 1979 – The Music of Man (television series)
• The Mind of Music

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Official website for Yehudi Menuhin
• Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists
• Text and pictures from Yehudi Menuhin by french film director Bruno Monsaingeon
• Yehudi Menuhin Center Saanen/Gstaad Schweiz
• Yehudiana, Reliving the Menuhin Odyssey. A book, by Philip Bailey
• International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation
• The International Music School Founded by Yehudi Menuhin
• Live Music Now – Charity founded by Yehudi Menuhin
• PBS Series American Masters Yehudi Menuhin
• YouTube-Elgar Performance
• From the Sitar to the Guitar – The 1995 concerts featuring Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar
• Youtube Paganini Concerto: Third Movement
• Youtube: Paganini's Moto Perpetuo
• Yehudi Menuhin playing duos in the parc des Buttes Chaumont, Paris
• New biography (Yehudiana, a Menuhin family biography).
• Yehudi Menuhin's life in Alma
• Yehudi Menuhin interview by Bruce Duffie, January 31, 1987