So you’ve got a beat-up Stradivarius buried under some boxes in the crawl space over the garage. With some work, the violin is probably worth a small fortune. But where do you go to have it returned to its former glory? Whom can you trust?
If you live in the Chicago area, you may very likely go see Michael Becker in Park Ridge.
“My dad was a violin-maker,” said Frank York, founder and longtime artistic director of the Park Ridge Fine Arts Society Orchestra and a professional violinist. “He could pick up a piece of wood and rap on it with his knuckles and tell you whether it would make a good violin. There are only two people I really respected in this business: my father and Mike Becker.”
“I trust him to take care of my valuable David Tecchler 1733 violin that was made in Rome,” said Edgar Muenzer of Park Ridge. The founder and conductor of the Park Ridge Civic Orchestra, Muenzer has played in the first violin section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for more than 40 years and is second violinist in the orchestra’s string quartet. Muenzer said honesty is an important virtue in this business “because the industry lends itself to shady dealings.”
For 18 years, Becker’s violin shop in Park Ridge has made, repaired and restored classical violins for clients from aspiring music students to established musicians playing with some of the finest orchestras in the world. And in a time when technology has brought about innovation in so many other fields, this craft still honors standards that were set centuries ago.
“We’re talking about guys that worked in the 15th and 16th Centuries,” Becker said of the great violin-makers of the past. “These people were not rocket scientists, yet they made an instrument that still cannot be surpassed today.”
Becker exhibits pride but no pretense in what he does. He sees himself foremost as a workman and stresses service to his clients.
“I started in the shop and built my business from the shop outward, where most others are starting at the front end,” Becker said. “It doesn’t mean that we don’t sell instruments, but my background is that of a workman, someone who’s been trained to work with my hands and work at a high level. We carry that through with our relationship with the clients.”
Passing the outside of his shop, which is located in an ordinary frame house on a residential street, it’s hard to imagine that it contains a $1 million-plus inventory of classical instruments–and that is not counting the occasional instrument that itself is worth a cool million. Inside, Becker and his six employees are busy restoring what many people consider to be works of art.
A major part of the business is the repair, restoration and resale of classical instruments, Becker said. The instruments he buys usually come from people he calls “pickers,” who scour garage or estate sales and similar places for old violins that may have some value or historical significance.
Becker does maintenance and adjustments for clients and runs a violin rental program with local schools. His shop also serves as a training ground for future masters. These include graduates from a violin-making school in Mittenwald, Germany, where he received his formal training.
“Mike has employed a lot of people from the school,” said Alex Tzankow, a German journeyman preparing for his master’s exam in Germany by working at Becker’s shop. “I talked to a lot of people who worked here and heard only good things about the shop.”
This is not a business for someone who wants a quick return on an investment. Restoring classical violins is a long process that often involves waiting around for wood that has been reshaped to settle into its new form, for vanish to dry and for the instrument to “develop a memory”–in other words, adjust to the new shape before it can play properly. Becker said his shop will do about 40 to 50 major restorations a year, and a restoration can take anywhere from 20 to 500 hours.
Much of Becker’s time these days is spent in the sales and marketing end of the business, but he personally works on the finest of the instruments that come through the shop, “not because I don’t trust anybody else, but if I’m going to work, I’m going to work on something I enjoy, something I have respect for and something I feel I can learn from,” he said.
Making a violin is not a quick turnaround. To begin with, Becker said he has to wait nearly two decades before even starting to shape the wood because it needs time to dry and stabilize.
“If I buy a piece of wood from someone, I assume it’s cut the day I bought it,” Becker said. “Wood dealers are notorious for putting wood in the sun to make it look old. The piece may be 100 years old when I bought it, but I assume that it has just been cut, and I don’t touch it for at least 15 years. The wood I’m using now is wood that I bought in Europe in the 1970s.”
He uses maple from Bosnia and spruce from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Once he has made the violin, it needs time to mature.
“When I finish a violin, it tends to be dark and muddy sounding,” Becker said. “It lacks the upper (range) brilliance. The reason is that I use an oil varnish and it takes a substantial amount of time for the varnish to cure. As it ages, it changes and gets better.”
It may take as long as six months for that curing to take place, and the violin will continue to undergo minor changes for up to six years, Becker said.
Along with the distractions of trying to run a business, there is little time to produce more than a half-dozen new instruments a year, Becker said.
But spending all of his time making instruments would also take away from interaction with clients. “If I did that, I would lose the exposure I have to my clients, and that is very valuable,” Becker said. “Otherwise, you get a mindset of your own. That’s not necessarily bad, but if you don’t know what people want and what they want to hear, you can get stale very quickly.”
The violins range from low-end instruments worth $500 to $1,000 to high-end pieces worth more than $100,000. Most are $20,000 to $50,000.
Becker received a bachelor’s degree in music from DePaul University and studied classical violin and viola.
He played in community orchestras but said he was always more interested in working with his hands and making models than performing.
“It was something I was always interested in, and when I was halfway through college, I decided it was something I wanted to look into more seriously,” he said.
He went to Germany in 1974 to study the craft of making fine violins. Three years later, he returned to the United States and went to work for a major shop in Chicago. In 1979, he went into business for himself.
He chose Park Ridge because “it was close to home.” Becker grew up in Niles, and he and his wife, Jean, bought a house in Park Ridge before he opened his shop there. Daughter Theresia, 16, and son Michael, 21, both play violin.
Outside, the shop looks like any other single-family home. Inside, what was once the living room has been converted to a reception area, and the parlor serves as a place where customers can try out their instruments. Beyond that is the dining room, where two rows of restored cellos stand at attention surrounded by a display of their smaller cousins, the violins. But the enclosed rear porch is where the actual work is done. A long workbench is covered with disassembled instruments, and the tools of the trade line the back wall, offering the craftsmen ample natural light and view of the outside. Above their heads, hanging like sausages in a butcher shop, is a line of violins waiting to be returned to service.
In the U.S., there may be thousands who call themselves violin-makers. That’s because there are no formal licensing procedures.
“The system is vague in America,” said Dan Weisshaar, whose parents operate a well-known violin shop in California but who is working under Becker to gain another perspective on the trade. “In Europe, you have a journeymen’s exam and a master’s exam. Here, anyone who wants can hang up a sign that says master violin-maker.”
This lack of a formal system for accrediting or licensing violin-makers can leave musicians and investors vulnerable. But in 1980, the American Federation of Violin and Bow Makers was formed; Becker is a member and former president.
According to current president James McKean, a violin-maker in New York and longtime friend of Becker’s, the federation was created to set standards and a code of ethics. To be accepted, McKean said, members must meet rigorous requirements. The federation has about 100 members in the United States and Canada. McKean said Becker’s shop ranks among the larger and most respected in the organization.
“It’s hard for me to be objective,” McKean said when speaking about Becker. “I’ve worked closely with him and have a high regard for him. He’s one of my closest friends in the business, and he’s someone I have an enormous amount of respect for professionally, both as a maker and in the way he conducts his business.”
Becker prides himself on being honest and accessible.
“There are all kinds of different people in this business,” Becker said. “Some people are very much into the elitist atmosphere that comes with the violin business, and there are other people who are more shop oriented and are just basically workmen. I kind of think I’m a little bit of both. I don’t think I’m elitist. I don’t wear a suit and tie, and (I) have very good, informal relationships with my clients. I try to do what I can to help people out.”
A JOB MACHINES CAN’T DO
The violin, according to Park Ridge violin-maker Michael Becker, is really a very simple object.
“You have basically a loudspeaker and stereo system with no electricity involved,” he said. “The top transmits the vibrations from the strings, which are generated by the bow to the bridge. The top acts as a diaphragm that vibrates the air and causes the instrument to make sound. There are all kinds of subtleties involved, but it’s a pretty simple thing.”
So what makes some violins worth more than $1 million while others sell for a fraction of that amount? Becker said the value involves who made it, when it was made and where it was made.
The sound, on the other hand, is very subjective.
“What one person may like, another may not,” Becker said. “The sound may be very suitable for chamber music but not suitable for a soloist playing in front of an orchestra. It might be suitable for someone playing in a section of an orchestra, but not for someone to lead the orchestra.”
People in the industry say that value aside, there are qualities that distinguish a good violin from a bad one. Typically these involve the materials used and the craftsmanship of the violin-maker.
James McKean, a violin-maker in New York and president of the American Federation of Violin and Bow Makers, said the skills of a good violin-maker cannot be duplicated artificially.
“Attempts to apply scientific principals to violin-making have been unsuccessful,” McKean said. “It takes empirical knowledge and instinct.”
Of course, a player’s ability also is important to bring out the best in an instrument, said noted violinist Frank York of Park Ridge.
“If you give Jascha Heifetz a cigar box, he’ll make it sound great,” York said. “You give a cigar box player a Stradivarius, he’ll make it sound lousy.”
