The ‘Lady Blunt’ Stradivarius
By Robert Lewin
Originally published in the May 1971 issue of The Strad magazine
Reproduced with the permission of the The Strad, www.thestrad.com
Which is the finest 
violin in the world? A remarkable question, and virtually one impossible to answer, for violins, like people, possess infinite variations, moreover like people again they have their secrets which reveal themselves only when you have lived with them a while. You can only fully savour a few violins in one lifetime. There are no coldly impersonal instant tests for determining a violin’s ranking, like calculating the fastest car via the factual evidence of a stop watch. You can not measure the pleasure and uplift a certain violin confers. Women are made to be loved not understood, said Wilde, and violins are to be played, not compared.
Yet it is intriguing to try to estimate which violin out of all those in existence might be rated the most desirable. Conceding the majority verdict over many generations that the supreme maker is Stradivari then we might resolve the question by another one – which is the best Strad? On the short list are quite a few claimants, the Messie is an obvious choice; there is the Emperor, the Alard, the Betts, the Tuscan, and other noted competitors.
Indulging a highly romantic vein, imagine you are invited out to play this very evening, and your host, the perfect host, a man of immense wealth and influence, regardful of your musical comfort, armed too with the uncanny powers of the Slave of the Lamp in the story of Aladdin from the Arabian Nights, promises to conjure up for your entertainment any violin you care to name. Which is it to be?
Perhaps you would call for the Messie as the number one choice, Strad’s long renowned masterpiece, a wonderful violin in mint condition. Yet the Messie would not be my choice, simply because to enjoy it for one night only it suffers something of the very defect of its purity. Because it has so rarely been played, at this moment I would award the crown to a violin approaching the Messie’s unchallenged state of preservation but also with such grace and maturity in its sounds which only belongs to a violin that has been well played. Just as pears need to be worn to achieve their supreme lustre so a violin needs the proximity of human hands and music coursing through its veins before it speaks with its most potent voice.
Let us recap, as my favourite detective of fiction, Hercules Poirot, might say, summing up all we have ever learnt about quality in a violin. A violin made by Stradivari and treasured with scrupulous care throughout its long life, the least possible concession to the hands of the restorer, and that mainly to conform to the requirements of modern pitch and string length – the work of course to have been carried out by the greatest known expert in that field long ago so that the instrument has fully renewed its poise. It will have a heavenly tone, with as much power as the most exacting concerto player might demand. Now which period of Strad’s life are we to favour? The Golden Period is the accepted one – but perhaps better still beyond that, just after 1720, when Strad’s final thoughts on violin design and all else have at long last been made, when the deliberations of 60 years of unceasing work have culminated in the peak of his genius. Soon the physical powers of the master are to begin to wane, but at that pulsating moment he is still at the heights, the climax of his life’s work.
Does such a violin exist? Well, an opportunity to see something not far short of all this is at hand. Moreover, subject to certain financial formalities it could even be yours, not for one night, but all your life. A Strad made in 1721 of incomparable beauty and the most remarkable condition has arrived in London in pursuance of a mission. It is to be sold at Sotheby’s on June 3.
Many Strads have names, few are blessed by that of a lady, and none has one as lovely as this – the Lady Anne Blunt. My Lady will shortly be on view, it is something of an event in the violin world, and having just been vouchsafed a pre-view perhaps her story and description will be of interest.
To please the cause of something about to be offered up for sale exposes one to the dire accusation of commercial motives. May I plead justification, as they say in the libel cases. To write about the Lady Anne Blunt is a privilege, and a rare one. My Lady Anne is not one of those far famed violins basking in the limelight of publicity. Like a true aristocrat she is modest – only once before in her entire lifetime has she been on public view, and then only briefly. It was in 1954, when she shared the musical honours with one other instrument, the Hellier Strad, at an exhibition in Paris at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs devoted to “great works of art that have intrigued the world.”
The bibliography of the Lady Anne Blunt is slight and becomingly reticent. Fortunately we have her testimony from two sources, both famous in the annals of the violin. There is a letter also a document relating to the Lady Anne Blunt both written by J.B. Vuillaume, a great figure from the last century, and there is a booklet written by Henry Werro from the famous house of the that name, in 1943.
Only 200 copies of the Henry Werro “Lady Blunt” booklet were printed, and it is a scarce and valuable documentary today. I was fortunate to be lent a copy, and may I acknowledge my indebtedness to Henry Werro for much of the data that now follow.
The Lady Anne Blunt was made by Stradivari in 1721, when he was seventy seven years of age. Little is known of its early history, but it seems reasonably certain it was still in its maker’s possession, like the Messie, at the time of his death. The evidence of this is the inscription P.S. in the peg box, the initials of Paolo Stradivari who branded a total of six violins similarly to identify his inheritance from his father, Antonio Stradivari.
The first recorded appearance of the violin was in Spain where it was discovered in 1860 by J.B. Vuillaume. It was taken to Vuillaume’s workshop in Paris where he fitted a new bass bar, carefully preserving the original, also lengthening the neck, very largely the work he had also performed on the Messie, even to designing a carved wooden tailpiece of original patter.
In a letter written by Vuillaume in 1864 he says:
…I am always on the lookout for fine instruments, they come and they go, that is business, but when I possess fine examples I like to keep them as long as possible because I love them. I have the Messie …but what I possess the most remarkable is a Stradivarius which is in new condition almost like the Messie, it is a discovery. This violin was brought to me from Spain in an unheard of condition with the neck, fingerboard, bass bar of Stradivari, it had never opened, the reason being that it had reposed, forgotten, in an attic for over 100 years.
The violin was next seen by Leopold Jansa, the celebrated violinist and composer, the teacher of Lady Neruda Hallé, while another pupil of Jansa was Lady Anne Blunt, daughter of the Earl of Lovelace and a granddaughter of Lord Byron. Lady Anne had been seeking a fine instrument, and on Jansa’s recommendation she bought the 1721 Strad from Vuillaume. The translation of this certificate reads as follows:
I, the undersigned, declare that I have sold to Lady Anne Isobella Nöel a violin by Antonio Stradivari, made in Cremona in the year 1721, for the sum of £260 sterling. I guarantee the perfect authenticity of this instrument which came into my possession with its original fingerboard and without having been opened, everything about it is intact and I have not touched it except as is required by present day needs. I have had to change the bar and lengthen the neck to modern dimensions, but I have preserved the original neck. This fine instrument is therefore absolutely complete, and in a exceptionally rare state of preservation.
Lady Anne Blunt kept her violin thirty one years, thus it seems wholly appropriate that she should give her name to her chosen instrument. It has long been a cardinal precept of mine that a person who plays on a violin for very many years imprints a personal influence on its tonal development. This viewpoint may not by a strictly logical one, but since when has a violin’s quality of sounds a rational explanation? Virtually the violin received its baptism of playing the Lady Anne, and to me the resulting evidence suggest she was a very good violinist. Of one thing we may be quite sure – she took good care of her violin.
In 1895 it went to Germany, in 1896 it was purchased by Hill’s, who sold it to Baron Knoop, owner of a famous collection. It was repurchased by Hill’s in 1900 and sold to J.E. Street of Caterham; following his death it became part of the Richard Bennett collection, subsequently being bought by Hill’s again.
Now in Henry Werro’s book comes and interesting account of how he first saw the Lady Anne Blunt. Together with Friedrich Hamma of Stuttgart, another leading expert, they visited London in 1935 at the express invitation of Alfred Hill, who produced his immense surprise before them, with a “quiet smile to himself” at their expressions of pleasure and wonder at looking at a Strad of this sort of quality and condition.
It was only some six years later that Henry Werro succeeded in buying the Lady Anne Blunt, by which time the war with its problems of safe transit prevented its removal to his house in Switzerland, but eventually it made the journey to Berne, where the Werro book was written. The violin remained in Henry Werro’s possession until 1959, passing then to its present owner who lives in California.
There are some strikingly fine photos of the instrument in the Werro book, for technical reasons it was not possible to reproduce these here, and the illustrations accompanying this article have been taken since the violin’s arrival in London.
Black and white pictures however cannot reproduce one of the glories of the Lady Anne Blunt, its varnish. How many owners of old instruments go into ecstasies over their wonderful “untouched” finish, but when you see the Lady Blunt you need no self-hypnotism to recognize the real thing, the authentic varnish of its maker. Without losing oneself in a sea of words it is next to impossible to convey a realistic literary description of the allure of ancient varnish. The predominating colour of the Lady Blunt is brown, and brown is not reckoned the most inspiring of hues, but the Lady Blunt interpretation of that ordinary term is a radiant reddish brown tint with more than a hint of a glowing golden shade where the undercoat shows through; the joy of the varnish is its compelling individuality, the way it draws you eye and sets your imagination to work.
It is quite incredible to recall Strad’s age when he made the Lady Bluny. Look as hard as you will, and there are no signs of any falling off in his powers. Something about Strad goes beyond mere perfection. Study a brilliantly made French craftsman’s copy of a master work and the sheer virtuosity is tremendously impressive at first glance, but its almost machine like exactitude fails to hold you for long. The more you look at the Lady Anne the more you see in it, for example those memorable f-holes with their infinitesimal difference between them, a Stradivari characteristic of this period; also the throw of the scroll that only a Strad would carve, and incidentally the original black line of the head is still mostly intact.
To play the Lady Blunt is quite an experience. In much of Strad’s earlier work you sense the affinity to Amati tone, the pure, sweet dry sound of Cremona’s first ideals. Strad never quite abandoned this kind of quality, and something of it persist in every instrument he ever made, but genius never stands still, and in the Lady Blunt he has moved towards a reserve of power at your disposal surpassing any call likely to be made. The tone still has no perceptible edge, but it has acquired a combination of strength plus its own incisive and fascinating colour, as recognizable when you have heard it once as a person’s familiar signature. The arrival of the Lady Anne Blunt is an exciting and stimulating event. It would have been a poor effort on my part merely to transpose Henry Werro’s revealing booklet about this violin, but I hope I have adequately put his point over the Lady Anne Blunt could come as a revelation even to people in his top expert class. To all of us a Strad, and Strad is part of our violin education. Yes, we have all seen the Messie, the Cremonese, maybe a handful of others, but Strad’s genius did not flower once or twice only. Every instrument he made is its own masterpiece, another facet of his incomparable art. I do not extoll the Lady Anne at the expense of any other violin, only to express that something in the conception of a great man who could never be wholly satisfied comes perhaps nearest to its exacting ideals in this particular example. Perhaps history will be made on June 3 when Lady Anne Blunt presents herself for her financial audition, but that is not my thesis. See My Lady for yourself if you can.
