Giuseppe Tarasconi

Milan was not the most obvious city to start out in; the Bisiach firm completely dominated the market for high-quality stringed instruments, and there was hardly any room for violin makers who wanted to remain independent. Yet Tarasconi managed to succeed, initially by performing mainly repairs, but later also by building new instruments.

Giuseppe Tarasconi mainly built violins and a few violas, but as far as is known, he did not build any cellos or double basses.

Life and Career

Giuseppe Tarasconi was born in 1851 in the city of Parma, the capital of the duchy of the same name. At a young age, he began studying at the renowned Ospedale Carmine, an institution that was the predecessor of the conservatory. Originally established to provide music education to orphans, by Tarasconi’s time it had become a prestigious institution tasked with training a new generation of musicians for the court’s Orchestra Ducale.

The selection process at the Carmine was rigorous, and the standards were high—not only during admission but also in the years that followed. Twice a year, the students had to take progress exams. The students’ progress was closely monitored: each teacher at Carmine was responsible for only three students. Giuseppe Tarasconi gained stage experience through the many mandatory public performances during his time at Carmine.

Giuseppe Tarasconi did not live on campus like the students who came from outside the city, but he was still required to participate in the school’s system. Part of that system was that all students were required to perform for a paying audience every month. This helped fund the institute. Another form of compensation for the services and education provided by the institute was the requirement that upperclassmen teach younger students for at least three hours a day. The school produced highly skilled musicians who were in great demand. The great conductor Arturo Toscanini was one of the school’s alumni. Immediately after completing his studies at the Carmine, Giuseppe Tarasconi began his career as a double bassist.

Giuseppe Tarasconi’s active musical career lasted until about 1882, after which he wanted to make instruments himself. Some speculate that he was already building violins in Parma around that time, but there is no convincing evidence to support this. Violins made by him are known to exist in Parma, but they date from much later.

To train as a violin maker, he went to Gaetano Rossi in Milan, a luthier known for his cellos and double basses. Gaetano shared a workshop with his father, Nicola. According to Blot, they did not build exceptionally fine instruments, but their instruments were in high demand; Nicola focused primarily on double basses, while Gaetano worked on violins and cellos. According to experts, Gaetano’s cellos, in particular, were highly prized by musicians. During his training, Giuseppe Tarasconi lived with his teacher and the teacher’s father.

Around 1883, he completed his training as a violin maker. It was customary to go on to work for other violin makers afterward in order to gain broader experience, but by then Rossi had become seriously ill and died. Giuseppe decided against continuing his training with other makers and remained in Milan to carry on Rossi’s business—not under his own name, but still under Rossi’s. Three years later, in 1886, Giuseppe Tarasconi married Giuseppa Rossi, the daughter of his late mentor. Through his marriage, he was able to transfer Gaetano Rossi’s business into his own name. In 1886, he started his own business at Via S. Maria Falcorina 15. Shortly thereafter, his son Mirco was born.

Especially in the beginning, entrepreneurship in violin making was not easy. Milan wasn’t exactly known as a city that produced great violin makers; in 1901, the London expert Hill referred to Milanese makers as “cheapjacks,” producers of cheap and inferior instruments.

On top of that, Giuseppe Tarasconi wasn’t exactly lucky with the times. By the mid-nineteenth century, little remained of Italian violin making. The French had proven to be excellent copyists of the Italian masters, had built up an efficient organization, and had thus outcompeted the Italian workshops. French violin makers dominated the European market and thus dictated taste. They came to northern Italy and often worked in the local workshops.

In Milan, Tarasconi had to compete against the firm run by Leandro Bisiach and his sons. They completely dominated the market for high-quality instruments. They were experts and dealers in stringed instruments with a large workshop where, in addition to a few family members, many other makers worked for them. Leandro Bisiach no longer made instruments himself, but he sent his sons to Mirecourt, France, to learn the French method of instrument making.

The Bisiachs had a keen business sense. They supplied conservatories in northern Italy, exported to other parts of Europe, and won awards for instruments that were usually built not by themselves but by their employees. Bisiach had plenty of money and connections, but he wasn’t always entirely truthful. It is a fact that Bisiach bought up large quantities of old-looking instruments, which he had refurbished in his workshops to look like “genuine masterpieces,” after which he resold them under a false label. Because of these forgeries, he was distrusted by virtually everyone for some time. His employees were undoubtedly aware of these practices, but they were not in a position to object. Aside from the Bisiachs, there were three other notable makers in Milan: Riccardo and Romeo Antoniazzi and Celeste Farotti; there was hardly any room in Milan for other makers.

Nevertheless, Giuseppe Tarasconi managed to make a living in Milan, though initially mainly as a dealer in antique instruments that he restored himself; later, however, a limited number of new instruments from that early period have also surfaced. Notable are the violins from 1887 and 1890, which he labeled with “Parma” as the place where he built them, even though he lived in Milan. This mystery has not yet been solved. A relatively large number of his instruments are known to have been built between 1890 and 1900, but in Milan and Saronno.

His business was thriving, as he placed advertisements in the *Bollettino Artistico Internazionale* and other Milanese newspapers starting in 1886 and thereafter. In these ads, he stated that he not only sold stringed instruments but also repaired them. In strikingly large print, he also mentioned that he had access to specially treated wood for which he held a monopoly throughout Lombardy. He used this wood to build his own instruments and repair others. The same advertisements also revealed that he sold strings as well as pianofortes by Krauss from Stuttgart.

Giuseppe Tarasconi initially had only a shop in Milan, but later also opened a workshop in Saronno, a small town 30 kilometers from the city. The first violin bearing this mark dates from 1890, four years after he had established himself in Milan. The last known violin from Saronno dates from 1899. At least eight of his violins from that location are known to exist.

Over time, a collaboration did develop between Giuseppe Tarasconi and the Bisiach company. This was due in no small part to the fact that his son Mirco—whom Giuseppe himself had trained as a violin maker—began working at Bisiach. After two years, Mirco left Bisiach and moved to Brussels. He then returned to Milan, where he joined Orsani. Labels indicate that Mirco continued to work with his father in Saronno until 1920, before presumably moving to Paris permanently shortly after his father’s death.

After 1901, no more violins by Giuseppe Tarasconi are known to exist. He presumably earned his living through trade. Although the rise of industry had given Milan a tremendous economic boost during World War I, there was little interest in music, not even after the war when Milan entered a very unstable period. The number of instruments Giuseppe built between 1900 and the year of his death is very limited. Giuseppe Tarasconi died in 1920.

Work and Influence

Blot sees the fact that Giuseppe Tarasconi became independent at an early age—and therefore did not gain extensive experience working for other builders—as the reason his work had a very personal style. Experts do not see a classical ideal in his work.

No double basses or cellos by Giuseppe Tarasconi are known; only violins and a single viola. He built instruments vaguely in the style of Guarneri del Gesù—instruments that, according to experts, rank among the better examples of his oeuvre—but the majority of his known violins appear to be inspired by Stradivari. Experts view him as a maker who did not strive for great perfection, but who did have a very recognizable style characterized by broad edge inlays, shallow rims, and long, narrow f-holes.

The back of most of his violins consists of two matching pieces and features broad flamed grain. For the tops, he used wood with medium to somewhat broad grain. His varnish is very attractive, a bright orange-brown, and applied quite thickly over a gold base coat.

Over the years, Giuseppe Tarasconi’s instruments have received mixed reviews. In 1928, one of his violins was auctioned for 25 pounds; nearly twenty years later, one of his violins fetched the highest price of that year at the Parisian auction house Hôtel Drouot, which specializes in fine art and musical instruments. Appreciation for his work shifted toward the end of the last century, but today his instruments are once again highly valued.

The instrument in the collection of the Musical Instrument Fund is one of the last violins he built in Saronno.

Sources

Kass P. J., 2007, The Bisiach Family, Londen

Azzolina U., Italian Violin Making in the 1800s and 1900s, Milaan

Codazzi, R., 2002, La Liuteria Lombarda del ‘900, Brescia

Blot, E., 1994, Emilia and Romagna: A Century of Italian Violin Making, 1860–1960, Cremona

Hamma, W., 1993, Masters of Italian Violin Making, Wilhelmshaven,

Vannes, R., 1985, Dictionnaire Universel del Luthiers, Brussels

Brinser M., 1978, Dictionary of 20th Century Italian Violin Makers

Henley W., 1969, Universal Dictionary of Violin & Bow Makers. Brighton

The Cozio archive, Tarisio, bezocht in 2022

Bollettino Artistico Internationale, 1886.