Making a new cello: Pt. 22, the scroll.

Now that the body is all done we can turn our attention to the real fun stuff, the scroll. It’s like recess back in elementary school: kickball on a summer’s day. Of course, it serves its purpose – the pegs have to go somewhere. But a simple square box would suffice; that seashell shape (called the volute) -- that unwinding curlicue, serves no purpose whatsoever but to delight the soul. Odd, then, that it’s one of the first things you turn to when you look at an instrument. But perhaps it’s not so odd: since it’s purely decorative, it more than anything else shows the aesthetic sensibility of the maker, let alone their skill. Some would go further and say that it reveals not just the character of the instrument but that of the maker themselves, for that matter.

Whenever the name Guadagnini came up, back when I worked for Nigo, he would scowl and say “Vas brut man.” “What are you talking about?” we would ask. If it was a particular instrument that happened to have come in and was lying on the bench he would pick it up and point to the scroll. “Jasus Chryse,” he would say. “Looka deese. Vas brut man,” he would repeat.

Lest you think I’m slighting Nigo in trying to portray the way he spoke, nothing could be further from the truth. He was an Armenian, born in Istanbul before the Genocide (in fact, he called it Stamboul). So he grew up speaking Armenian and Turkish; he then spent several years in Paris in the 1920’s, learning violinmaking in the shop of Marcel Vatelot (and where he sat next to, among others, Eugene Sartory). So he also spoke fluent French. When the Turks began making life difficult again for the Armenians in the 1950’s (although at least this time they didn’t march them all out into the desert to die), he closed his shop, uprooted his family, and emigrated to New York City, where he worked with Simone Sacconi. And that’s when he learned English. He had a thick accent, but it was a wonder to behold: like the ebullient and over-the-top playing you hear from the oldest recordings of the great violinists of fin de ciecle Europe. But make no mistake about it; he had one of the most inquisitive natures I've ever come across; an intellectual curiosity that extended to just about any subject.

One of the great things about Nigo – although, admittedly also sometimes the most exasperating – was that he always spoke his mind; perhaps because of the environment of suppression he was raised in, he was incapable of trimming his opinions to fit the times. Some thought him obstinate, stubborn, and at times downright contrary – who could ever forget him getting to his feet at a Violin Society Meeting and launching into what he might have framed as a question but was really barely this side of a diatribe (while next to him his wife Alice, to whom he was devoted, would be straightening the hem of his jacket)? Yes, he was all those things; but he was also passionate about violins. He loved them in a way that was genuine and from the heart. As he did people, I might add. I remember him on more than one occasion dressing down a musician – and among those coming into his shop were the best of the best – for not showing the proper care and respect for their instrument. “Jasus Chryse!” he would exclaim, bouncing up and down for emphasis – “Vy you do like thees? You are not the owner, you are only the custodian! Should be you care!” And he would look out the window, shaking his head in genuine frustration and disappointment; it was as if someone had hit a child. The musician would stand there, hangdog; but they always came back – they knew he was right.

But, to him, Guadagnini was a brute – and of that the scroll was evidence enough. I have to admit that, leaving JB aside, he did have a point: makers and scrolls do resemble each other, in much the same way as do people and their dogs.

I’m sorry; I just can’t resist a digression. Talking about Nigo reminds me of a story he told me once about when he had his shop in Istanbul. As part of his westernization of the country, Kemal Attaturk had caused a Conservatory to be established, and it attracted the top soloists. I don’t recall whether Nigo had anything to do with it, but at one point Marcel Vatelot was asked to come and give a lecture on violins. He arrived and was escorted into the main auditorium by the Director. On stage were a lectern and two chairs, of which he took one, and the Director the other. After chatting amiably for several minutes, the Director glanced at his watch and said “Well, I think it’s time to begin.” Vatelot was taken aback: aside from the two of them, there was not a single person in the auditorium. Not wanting to be rude, he said, “Now?” “Of course,” the Director said, “It’s time.”

Vatelot rose from his seat, went to the lectern, and began his lecture, his voice echoing across the empty rows. About five minutes in, when he had recovered from the sheer absurdity of the situation and was actually getting into the lecture, a door in the back opened and a man entered. He walked down the aisle, turned into one of the first rows, and took a center seat. As he settled in, Vatelot ground to a halt like a car with a punctured tire. He stopped, and turned to the Director. “Should I start over?” he asked. “Don’t bother,” the Director replied. “He doesn’t speak French.”

Nigo could not abide liars; or cheats, or frauds. In people or instruments -- he drew no distinction, for to him they were different aspects of the same world. The fake violin offended him as deeply as the crooked dealer; bad playing made him wince as much as the ill-cut f-hole. “Should be look,” was his highest accolade, and as he said it he would be taking your arm to call your attention to a violin, a set of f-holes, a particularly fine scroll; and as you looked, you could feel his pleasure at your sharing what he had seen. Teaching was as much a passion for him as fiddles; the Oberlin summer violin and bow program, as diverse and broad as it now is, grew out of his initial seminar on violin restoration. And he knew sound; he knew the secret of how to call it forth, how to make the wood come alive and sing. When he was listening to an instrument, he would sit back, his arms crossed and his chin in his hand, and if it was right, he would nod. It made no difference what it was – the greatest Guarneri or the most pedestrian of commercial efforts -- what mattered was how it sounded, and that it was making the best sound possible.

Vahakn Yedvard Nigogosian, photographed in 1987 by Giovanni Rufino (I worked at Nigo's with his brother Charles, now a violinmaker, dealer, and restorer on Long Island). It's from an article I wrote on Nigo for Strings. Volume Two, Number Two (Fall 1987).

And so now; onto the scroll. A wonder of design, its genesis is as shrouded as the rest of instrument; the amazing thing is that the scrolls on the first known classical violins, those made by Andrea Amati in the mid-1500’s, are already masters of the form, as refined as any in the succeeding four centuries. Or even more so; my first love was the cello scroll in the Sacconi book; dated 1545, it’s the oldest extant cello scroll known, and it is absolute perfection. When it comes to scrolls, the Amati are unsurpassed, at least in my opinion; in their effortless fluency and elegance they call to mind a Mozart aria. The shape unwinds from the eye to the pegbox without a pause, like a hawk circling and finally coming to light on a tree.

There are of course all sorts of theories of their design – the golden section, the Fibonacci series, and so on; but so far I haven’t found one that works, either in reproducing the design of the great makers, or generating a new model. Where does mine come from? I don’t remember, to tell you the truth; it’s sort of evolved over time. I use the pattern, but then in carving it end up doing it mostly freehand, and by eye; and then if I like what I end up with, I make a new pattern. Which is infinitely easier these days – you can photograph the scroll with a digital camera and then enlarge or shrink it a millimeter at a time, and if you want, print it directly onto acetate for a template.

You start with a neck block: a big chunk of fine-grained maple. It’s absolutely critical that the split be perfectly straight for the neck to be stable. I take the neck block and cut off the extra parts:

And then, you see that small piece at the bottom? I take that and split it with a knife to see how straight the split is in the neck:

If it’s off a bit, I can correct in the way that I cut the scroll and neck; but sometimes it’s off like this:

And then sorry, amigo, it’s the wood stove for you – no matter how knockout the flames are, or how tight the grain. You have to expect a small amount of movement in string height with a cello as the seasons change; but the best way to minimize it is to make sure the split is absolutely straight. No amount of killer flame is worth a neck that goes up and down like a yoyo.

Since the neck block is usually tapered (it’s quartered out of the log, just as the back and top are), I have to glue a piece of wood on the side to be able to square it up and cut it on the bandsaw:

I then level the top of the block, which will be the surface that the fingerboard sits on, and square the sides on the joiner-planer:

You can see that this block is almost true as it is; there is very little of the added piece of wood left once I’ve squared it up. I’ve traced the template on it and drawn lines with the square that I’ll extend around to the other side, so that I can be sure that the template sits exactly the same on each side. If it’s off just a tiny bit – even just half a millimeter – the scroll will appear lopsided when viewed from the front. Here I am, tracing the template on the other side:

And the result:

You can see that the taper is more pronounced on this side; it doesn’t matter, because the side that rests on the bandsaw table is square. The next step is to cut the profile of the scroll, as close to the line as I can while leaving enough to smooth the curves. I don’t care too much whether the actual curves, in the end, match the template – much more important is that they flow smoothly. In fact, if it follows the template too closely – if you ‘split the pencil line’ as we used to say at school – the result can look stale; too perfect and exact. But then, maybe that’s just my way of excusing a certain native sloppiness. In any case, here it is, all cut out:

And now it’s time to start cutting away the sides. All that will be left of the width of the scroll block will be the tiny part of the ears; the rest goes. I lay out the taper of the pegbox, and the turn of the volute up as far as I can go:

I can take off the sides of the neck and the pegbox on the bandsaw. After that I use a backsaw:

It’s one that I got the first year of violinmaking school; when it gets dull I use a small triangular file and sharpen it, tooth by tooth. Then I can trim the angular cuts into rough curves, with first a knife and then a gouge:

This is just to get most of the excess wood out of the way; I’ll do the final shaping later, so I spend as little time on this as possible. The first final shaping is of the sides of the pegbox. I use a knife to lay out the taper:

And then a chisel to remove the rest of the wood:

I finish it following the usual rule of rough tool to smooth: first with a rasp, then a file, and then a scraper. Once the sides of the pegbox are done I can then carve out the inside – first by drilling it:

And then finishing with chisels. This is hard work – it’s maple, after all, and you’re chopping into endgrain – but you have to also be very, very careful; the sides of the pegbox can easily split, especially if the wood has any figure to it. I do it all with a chisel, with only a couple of strokes of a file at the end to take out the chisel marks. I do it by eye, too, rather than using the caliper to make sure that the walls are perfectly even; if it’s straight and true to the eye that’s good enough. I then use a rasp and a file to finish the unwinding curves of the profile of the pegbox:

This is not the way I learned to do it. At the school, we trued the block after we cut it out on the bandsaw. But you end up truing a vast amount of wood that you’re going to cut off. The idea was to make the curves on each side the same. But why? Who cares? I’ve never looked at a scroll to see if the sides are exactly the same; and you only have to look at a few of the old masters to know that that was the last thing on their minds. In fact, they sometimes give the impression that they finished one side before turning their attention to the other, and never gave a thought to how they matched. If the block is true, and the bandsaw table and blade are when you cut it out, then that’s as close as it needs to be.

The pegbox is now done; the next step is to finish the turns of the volute --