B.C. Before Cremona

John Huber wurde 1940 auf einer kleinen Farm in der Nähe von Brookville in Pennsylvania geboren und ließ bereits in jungen Jahren ein lebhaftes Interesse an den Streichinstrumenten und ihren Konstruktionsprinzipien erkennen. Er promovierte an der Stockholmer Universität mit einer Doktorarbeit über den Übergang der Barockgeige zu ihrer heutigen Form. Seine beruflichen Aktivitäten befassten sich stets mit Streichinstrumenten. Er war als Instrumentenbauer, Händler, Museumskurator, Stiftungsmanager und Berater tätig.John Huber, born on a small farm near Brookville Pennsylvania in 1940, developed an interest in string instruments and their construction early in life. His professional activity has always involved stringed instruments. He was awarded a Ph.D. in Musicology from Stockholm University for a study of the violin. He has been employed as a maker, in sales activity, as a museum curator, as a foundation manager, and frequently as a consultant.

Based upon the physical resources of our bodies and our environment, music has been part of our history during the entire development of our civilization. From our earliest efforts to celebrate life, we have invented tools to facilitate the use of sound to make music. In sixteenth century Cremona, Andrea Amati developed the instrument models and construction standards which further refined by his family and colleagues, remain the standards of violin making. But do we know how the violin developed, or what happened before Cremona? Remnants from our most ancient centers of civilization often reveal interest in stringed musical instruments, but the use of the bow to sound them is first known among archers of the Asian steppe nomads. Spreading first to adjacent Asian cultures through trade, conquest, and religion, the idea also travelled on as East and West discovered and explored each other. The Silk Road, for example, brought a great exchange of both culture and commerce. Neither the ancient Greeks nor the Romans knew bowed instruments, but a thousand years before Amati worked in Cremona, Islamic conquests spread knowledge of bowing and developments in instrument construction across the known world. In B.C. before Cremona, John Huber presents that history, and illustrates instrument development with photographic examples.