Old Tappan, New Jersey, USA, June 16, 1985
I apprenticed in the Rembert Wurlitzer shop in
the early nineteen seventies, and it was there that I came to know Maestro
Sacconi. Earlier I had been a guitar maker for a large
New England firm and a novice violin repairman in a Boston instrument shop. I received
the impression from the latter experience that no universally agreed-upon
technology for repair and restoration existed, although there was an abundance
of dim and arcane speculation in the field. Such ambiguity was not acceptable
to a practical-minded Yankee like myself, and so it was most fortunate that a
violin I had repaired found its way into the hands of Dario D'Attili, then the
general manager of the prestigious Rembert Wurlitzer firm in New York. I was
astonished and elated to be offered an apprenticeship in the shop of the great
Sacconi, who was revered utterly by the more experienced repairmen I knew.
I observed firsthand in the Wurlitzer shop the
brilliance of Sacconi's methods, for I worked among craftsmen who, without
exception, were able to accomplish restorations and repairs of extraordinary beauty
and accuracy. Sacconi was a man who had recognized the truth in simplicities,
for he had contemplated and understood not only the fabulous artistry of the
classical makers, but also the irrevocable principles which underlay the form
and structure of the finest instruments. Sacconi then schemed against the
resistance of the materials, the corrosiveness of time and the limits of Nature
herself to recall these instruments to their former life.
All the more remarkable was the fact that he
had done this knowingly and methodically, so he was able to set down his
discoveries and to share them with the world. It was the true genius of Sacconi
that he was able to make the sublime and seemingly unknowable methods of the
classical makers explicit and comprehensible to other craftsmen and artists.
When I joined Rembert Wurlitzer, Hans J. Nebel
directed the shop, and it was he who passed on to me the lessons of Sacconi. The
Maestro himself worked there only a few hours each week, yet his spirit and
guidance were with us every moment by our very use of his methods, much as I
sense his presence still as I work in my own shop all these years later. In
fact, there is something of Sacconi's thought and spirit in every instrument
ever worked on by the Master and his students, and it will continue to be so if
we abide by his lessons. Truths discovered and disseminated endure forever.
Old Tappan, New
Jersey, USA, June 16, 1985
Taken from the book: «From Violinmaking to Music: The Life and Works of Simone Fernando Sacconi», presented on December 17, 1985 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. (Cremona, ACLAP, first edition 1985, second edition 1986, page 168 - Italian / English).
© 2023 - In memory of Simone Fernando Sacconi in the 50th Anniversary of his death