Word: stradivari
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...Antonio Stradivari, one of the greatest craftsmen the world has known, would shudder if he were to read what follows. It concerns a cello he made three centuries ago, in 1701, that today some musicians consider the best in the world. It is named after one of its various owners, Adrien-François Servais, and for the past 20 years has been kept in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington. Occasionally a musician of renown is allowed to play the Servais: in 1992 Dutchman Anner Bylsma made a beautiful recording of Bach...
...Servais exemplifies this intangible value we call individuality. Stradivari's cello found its way into the possession of the Russian court. There Servais, a young Belgian musician, contrived to play it before Czar Nicholas I. The Princess Yusupova, the story goes, had fallen for Servais in a big way and lent him the Stradivarius. The Czar praised the performance, and the Belgian modestly replied that it was surely due to the loan of the great cello. Whereupon the enamored princess exclaimed: "Oh, it wasn't a loan, it was a gift!" The Czar's court was said to be distinctly...
...cello fell off a sled. The horrified traveler immediately retraced his route. And there in the snow he found the instrument - intact, though only just. During the night, wolves had gnawed at the leather straps keeping shut its case, but they had not managed to open it. Roll over Stradivari...
...being molded to the peculiar shape of each instrument. Today, Pantelic numbers among his clients Yo-Yo Ma and Anner Bylsma, he of Servais fame. Pantelic is modest, saying his work "is just plastic and stinking chemicals." But one aspect of what he does would have applied equally to Stradivari: "I have no one between me and the customer...It's like coming to the tailor: your cello is getting its own suit...