Something New
Christophe Landon re-thinks instrumental forms with Dennis Rooney
When Christophe Landon ushers you into his workshop, which is one large room with a northern exposure in his flat in Manhattan's West Eighties, it looks utterly traditional. A leather apron, made from an entire skin, hangs on a bandsaw, the only power tool in the shop. On two workbenches are the usual woodworker's tools — chisels, planes, rasps, etc. — and portions of several instruments in various states of repair. My visit is on a sunny day in early September, and the room is flooded with light. Sitting at the north-facing bench, one can look out on the Hudson River between the trees of Riverside Park. It seems a wonderful place to work. Landon agrees. “It took me a year and a half to find it. I must have seen about 130 other places before I saw this one”.
The flat is not only his workplace but his residence as well, where he lives with his wife and child. Many New Yorkers live and work in the same space out of necessity, but Landon actually likes — and needs — it this way. “I have my family life here. After dinner, I may watch some television, but even late in the evening I can go to my workshop to look over what I've been doing, open up some repairs I've been working on, look at everything. When you're trying to make new forms you must think about everything a lot. It seems easy — when you look at it after you have got used to it, it seems to have been there forever — but it's not, because you're looking for a different shape within the tradition of the violin. ” Creating new shapes and using new materials have brought recognition to the 31-year old Landon, both before and after his arrival in New York in 1984. Perhaps his best known new instrument is the blue violin that he made last year for Benjamin Hudson, a New York based performer active in both early music and the avant-garde. In celebration of the bi-centenary of the French Revolution, Landon chose to make a red-white-and-blue instrument. The first two colours are dots on the violin's luctite pegsl the head is shaped like that of a cockerel. Hudson introduced it first at a Guggenheim Museum recital, playing a sonata by Charles Wuorinen. “People have started asking me for copies of it”, Landon says. “After the Guggenheim recital, we made further adjustments. It took about two months to set up. Now, it's unbelievable, so powerful and so warm, it's got everything.” Landon readily agrees that the design might raise a traditionalist's eyebrows, not to say hackles. “Some people might think that it's a little kinky, but that's the way I'm making my violins. If I'm not innovative, who's going to be? If you are a painter, it's not easy to create something after Picasso, but at least there's an evolution in painting, different schools within and among which one can progress. However, in violin making, the tradition is that you make Strad or Guarnerius copies, or you restore, but there is no tradition of evolution in the aesthetics of violin design.”
Innovation and tradition have been equally apparent in Landons career as a luthier from the beginning. His training was in the grand French tradition. “I learned how to make violins in Mirecourt, the only place in France to do so. I was born in Fontainebleau. At 10 or 11, I began to make instruments like panpipes or guitars out of plywood. When I was 15, I had a music teacher who had a violin from the workshops of Apparit and Hiller, made by Jean Eulary. My teacher arranged for me to spend a holiday there. That was in 1974, and I made my first violin during that visit. Going to Mirecourt was like some beautiful dream; it was not my world and I started to make violins. I did it during every subsequent holiday for the next three years.” After receiving a {0}baccalauréat{1} in mathematics, he begon a three-year apprenticeship in Mirecourt. “Its a funny town. It used to be very beautiful in the 17th century, at the time of the Dukes of Lorraine, but its been rebuilt and now is not particularly attractive. Until about 30 years ago, there were somewhat more than 1,000 people there connected with violin making. Besides violin, they also made violin cases and bows. By the time I went there, only about three workshops were left. Even so, a young luthier in Mirecourt still had a certain status.” The tradition has its dark side, “In Mirecourt, all the violin makers sons become civil servants or something other than luthiers. Thats the first thing that their parents tell them to do, because in Mirecourt all violin makers have been exploited for two centuries. The supposed Mirecourt ‘tradition is that a maker turns out three violins per week. Acually, a maker might turn out two boxes (not the scrolls) per week, working twelve hours a day. Eulary told me that when he worked for Dieudonné he would make 1½ violins per week and also make another one on weekends, for which he was paid cash, just to make ends meet. Nevertheless, there was something great about that system. When you learn that way, you have fantastic hands afterwards. It can only help you.”
Even before his apprenticeship in Mirecourt, Landon made a momentous decision. “When I made my first violin, I decided to make new instruments that would be different. When I saw the tradition in Mirecourt, I was determined not to spend my life merely repeating what other makers had been doing for four centuries. That seemed nonsensical to an 18-year-old. I started designing and making different-shaped instruments. I began my experiments with a quartet that I still have.” Upon completion of his apprenticeship, Landon went to Amsterdam to work as a repairer in the shop of Max and Benard Möller. There, he continued his design experiments. Some were outright failures. “It's not a big risk, only a month of work. Besides, it's good to do something bad on occasion; you learn from it. Some violins that I made were too extreme, too broad or stained too dark. I've experimented with many different violas, particularly with different ribs. There is a point at which it becomes absolutely too high or too low. You can do a lot, but not too much. At some point you have to stop.”
One of his assymmetrical violas brought him important recognition. “I won the Cassel competition in 1983. A friend called and told me that I had won a gold medal for the sound of my viola. I thought he was kidding. I had expected them to kick me out of the competition altogether, because the instrument looked so weird.”
An obvious obstacle to new instrument shapes is dimensional. “It takes people 20 years to learn to handle a violin, so you cannot throw them off by changing all the dimensions.” The other chief one is the pull of tradition. “To do something new, you have to be willing to do it but then what you do must be accepted. The form of the violin seems unchangeable in our civilization, whereas in painting, there's been something different every ten years! Stradivari himself always made changes and his precursors, Maggini and Gaspar da Salò, literally invented the violin. I'm inspired by what they did, but what they did was much better because they started from scratch. After 300 years, everyone takes the form of the instrument for granted.”
Landon finds that violists are more willing to experiment with new approaches to form and dimensions. He particularly likes to experiment with the cello because, he says, “there's more room for improvement”. He picks up a brillant orange cello because of his. “Erich Kory who creates this writes a lot of his own music, using multiple effects and digital networks, but he also plays in an orchestra. When he bought this, some of his friends and colleagues told him he was crazy, that he would lose all his work, etc. Actually, when he was playing with the Orchestra of Saint Luke's one time, Leonard Bernstein, who was conducting looked over and said: "That's a great cello". Bernstein is a man of the 20th century, so of course he would appreciate such an instrument.”
For Landon, new instruments are not only vehicles for evolving forms but also a means of finding a new sound suited to the conditions of contemporary music making. “Many beautiful Strads simply aren't powerful enough for today's musical world; that is why their owners spend their lives adjusting them. A few lucky people have perfect del GesÃ?¹s, with 6mm bakcs and tops that are 3mm all over. Most old instruments, however, have been destroyed. Their tops and backs are too thin; they are big disasters.” The extremes of the North American not only promotes the deterioration of old instruments, but also encourages the depredations of over-zealous repairers, especially in New York. “The climate is so bad here”, he says. “In summer, the humidity makes everything come unglued, and in winter, everything cracks”. His own filosophy of repair is “to be as sensitive as possible and to do as little as possible”, which he developed in both Mirecourt and Amsterdam. “If you glue a crack and it's not perfect, someone can come after you, unglue it and re-do it. The tops of a lot of Strads have paper-thin original wood. If that's glued with casein glue — I only use warm glue because it's water soluble — one can only pray that nothing will happen, because no further repair is possible.” Repairing instruments, says Landon, is invaluable to the maker. “You see the mistakes made on old instruments and so you learn not to repeat them. They also did lots of things right. The old Cremonese instruments not only sound fantastic but also are things of beauty. The hardest thing to reproduce is the sound. Although maybe it's better not to try, better to try to get a new sound. The biggest complaint of my violinist friends is that they cannot be heard in a big concerto. I like concertos, but most of the time when I hear them the soloist merely struggles against the orchestra.”
Landon finds attending concerts can be distracting, but he feels a responsibility to be involved in musical activity. “Some makers live in the country, get commisions and have no involvement whatsoever. But when one lives in a place like New York, it would be such a waste to be that way. I always try to hear people who play my instruments, just as luthiers did in the time of Stradivari. When you listen to one of your instruments in concert, it's scary; in a way, you feel responsible for every note. Seeing my blue violin being played in the Guggenheim or Merkin Hall is really more of a thrill for me than making it. If I were making asymmetrical instruments and nobody played them, even if they were better than what I do now, it would be like making shoes and having them just hanging on the wall. Even if people criticise the sound, ask for less of this and more of that, I think it's great. That's what my work is about, not only to make the musician happy but also to help him discover more about his instrument's capabilities.”
Besides his asymmetrical instruments, Landon produces copies — “Strad copies, Maggini copies, Guarnerius copies”. He also makes violas and cellos “by appointment”, as well as bows. He does not perform ordinary repairs (“I don't have time”, he says) but does restore “beautiful Italian instruments that are either mine or in which I'm very interested”. He hands me a Maggini viola. “When I restored this I made a copy of it”. The he picks up a Strad copy when I admire its colour. “People really love that. Actually, it's easier for me to sell something like that. I like to make copies or else something very modern. I don't think that there is a compromise between the two. I don't accept all those studies about vibration, which are like studying church architecture and then attempting to relate that to how people believed in God. Strads sound good because they are old, very well made and because they are violins. When you take a Strad pattern, what are you going to do? It is never going to sound better than a Strad, only as good — maybe! Playing today is so different: people use steel strings, push much harder, practise much more. You really must do something different, but if you want to change something, you must change the form. I just try to make a good violin.” When not in his workshop or with his family, Landon loves to fish. “I go salmon fishing in Québec and I also fish in the Adirondacks. Fishing in America is just wonderful. When I go fishing, I'm entirely devoted to it. Otherwise, when I don't have my workshop, I simply don't know what to do.”