I just happened to have finished, after working on it for six weeks or so, a piece for my new-to-me violin. I put the final touches on the score, part, and cover last night, very close to midnight.
I spent many years coveting a lovely German violin made in 1791 by Johannes Doerffel of Klingenthal in Geoffrey Seitz's violin shop in Saint Louis, Missouri, and I finally took it home with me this past August. Because of its soprano voice and magical high register, I named it “Antonia,” after a character in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story “Councillor Krespel.” Antonia is the central figure in this 1818 German story concerning a violin maker and his daughter, who had the voice of a violin. Here is a revealing excerpt from the story.
He had scarcely bowed the first notes when Antonia cried out joyfully, “Why, it’s me — I am singing again.”I am sure that my violin, my Antonia, was being played somewhere in Europe during the time that Hoffmann was writing his story.
Truly, the silvery, bell-like tone of the instrument had a special and marvelous quality of its own. It seemed to come from the human breast. Krespel was deeply stirred. He played perhaps more compellingly than ever before. And when, with his fullest power, he would storm over the strings in brilliant, sparkling scales and arpeggios, Antonia would clap her hands and cry, delighted, “Ah! I did that well. I did that splendidly!” Often she would say to him, “I should like to sing something, father.” And then he would take the violin from the wall, and play her favorite songs, those which she used to sing. Then she was quite happy.
"But," You say. "Isn't My Antonia a book by Willa Cather?"
Of course it is. But Cather's novel (and central character) sports a diacritical mark over the initial Á.
[Since my friend Daniel Morganstern is celebrating his eighty-fifth birthday in a couple of weeks, I dedicated the piece to him.]
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