In the movie, “The Red Violin,” the journey of a fiddle (“violin” and “fiddle” are used interchangeably = bluegrass license) takes place that spans four centuries and five countries. The birth takes place in Cremona, Italy, in 1681. The violin maker, Nicolo Bussotti, has created a masterpiece, which coincides with his wife’s pending delivery of a child. Just when everything seems right, everything goes wrong.
During the labor Bussotti’s wife and child die. The child Nicolo had hoped would one day become a violin virtuoso. Nicolo then immediately set about varnishing the bare wood of his violin creation, but with a twist. The varnish is mixed with some of his dead wife’s blood, the result being a red colored violin. Distraught and depressed, Nicolo eventually donates his masterpiece violin to an orphanage in Austria.
Now in Vienna in 1793 at the orphanage, the Red Violin makes its way into the hands and young life of a brilliant violin prodigy by the name of Kaspar Weiss. But then the fiddle renews its relationship with death, as the youngster’s weak heart fails, and his days of life are no more. The violin is buried with Kaspar so that he can “play it in heaven,” only later to be stolen by grave robbing gypsies, who take it to England.
Now in Oxford in the late 1890’s, the fiddle makes its way from the gypsies into the greedy grasp of a wealthy aristocrat, Frederick Pope, a classical violinist who composes his own music. Frederick’s passion is not limited to creating music, and spreads to and beyond his jealous girlfriend, who catches Frederick with another woman, gets a pistol, aims at Frederick, misses, and the bullet hits the Red Violin, grazing its neck and detaching the strings and tailpiece. Frederick and his girlfriend part ways, leaving the damaged fiddle in the hands of Frederick’s Chinese servant, who returns to Shanghai, and sells it to an antique dealer. For thirty years the violin stays on display in the shop, and then is sold to a young woman with her daughter. Years later, during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Chinese government gets ahold of the 4 string, wood and wire masterpiece, and eventually ships it to Montreal for appraisal and sale at auction.
Now in 1997 at the Montreal auction, an appraiser, a Mr. Morritz, realizes that the original violin masterpiece created by Nicolo Bussotti is going to auction (by now the Red Violin has become well known in worldwide violin circles, and is famous). At the auction house Morritz manages to replace the original violin with a copy before it goes to bid, and he ends up with the original Red Violin, which he plans to give to his daughter. The movie ends. It is fiction.
If I had the chance to make up the story from there, I’d have Morritz’s daughter play the violin for a few years, one day forget and leave the fiddle in it protective hard case on the top of her car, and drive off. Then some Canadian finds it, eventually takes it down to the CBA Fathers’ Day Festival in Grass Valley, and gives it to one of the Kids On Bluegrass who plays fiddle.
Awhile back I met a lady at a FDF Grass Valley Festival who had a fiddle with an interesting story of its own. She bought the fiddle in 2013 from man in Vermont. He was given the violin by his grandmother, who got it as a gift from her husband, who purchased it in 1917 from the Koblenz (Germany) Opera’s Concert Master, who used the violin as his principal instrument from 1900 to 1917. The violin stayed with the grandmother in Europe, and eventually went to Paris, France in 1924 where the grandmother lived (she performed and toured Europe as a violinist). The label on the violin reads, “1670,” but it was probably made later than that, since it is a copy of an original Jacobus Stainer violin (Stainer made his now famous violins in the 1600s). It is estimated that this fiddle is 150-200 years old. When I asked the ninety year old lady at Grass Valley what she liked about the fiddle, she answered, “I found something older than I am that still works!” The fiddle now resides in California. The question is, where will it travel next?
What is your musical instrument’s journey?
