Matthias Klotz I

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Son of Urban Klotz, a tailor. First maker of this extended and highly important family of violin makers. From 1672-1678 he is recorded as a journeyman worker in the workshop of the Bavarian- born lute maker Pietro Railich in Padua. Railich is known for several surviving lutes but not thought to have been a violin maker, and it is not certain how Klotz arrived at his own style of work. By 1686 he was ...Read More established as a lauternmacher' in Gries, a part of Mittenwald. He later moved to Oberen Markt and to Herrengasse in the town. Three sons from two marriages became violin makers: Georg (I), Sebastian (I) and Johan Carl, and secured the long association of Mittenwald with the German violin craft. He also taught several others who were engaged in his workshop at various times: Andreas and Johannes Jais, Martin Dieffenbrunner (Tieffenbrunner), Johannes Daenzl (Tentzel), Nikolaus Woernle, Michael Schaendl and Martin Baader. A statue of Matthias was erected in front of the church of St Peter and Paul in 1890, and there is a small loth century tablet and fresco in the town. His earliest authenticated work is a viola dated 1712 but his instruments are relatively rare. Given such a well-populated workshop, it is thought that the majority of Klotz' work went unlabelled, and at least some effort was put into other forms of instruments. The earliest known violin is quite Italianate, but later instruments show the Stainer influence in what was to become a more characteristic and typically German style, with fairly high arching, deep and narrow edge fluting, and very curved soundholes. A violin of 1714 is kept in the Mittenwald Violin Making School. Two other examples are dated 1725 and 1727 and there is a bass viol of 1715. Read Less

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