Marten Cornelissen

Short-term apprenticeship in the Czech Republic

He entered a competition in Belgium with one of his violins, where he stood out. At the urging of one of the judges, Marten went on to study with a violin maker in the Czech Republic. He proved so talented that, shortly thereafter, he placed second at the Concours International de Quatuor à Cordes in Liège. At the invitation of a friend, Marten traveled to the United States, where he began working as a violin maker. There he met his wife and settled with her in Northampton, Massachusetts. They saved up to buy materials for his instruments. He soon caught the attention of classical musicians, who saw his instruments as a worthy substitute for the old Italian or French ones that had become unaffordable. Even renowned musicians who played on old master instruments greatly appreciated his work. He built some 600 instruments, including guitars, violins, violas, and cellos.

Marten Cornelissen passed away in 2021. His personality and work made him a particularly beloved craftsman, especially in the United States.

How Marten Cornelissen Got Into Violin Making

In the family where Marten was born, the radio, the church, his mother’s beautiful voice, and a few classical records shaped his musical ear.

Gerrit Marten Cornelissen, born in 1936 and named after his grandfather, was the oldest of four children. His father was a machine fitter, and his mother took care of the family. When his father was sent to a labor camp in Germany during the war, his mother was left behind with three young children. That brought the family closer together.

After high school, Marten had to fulfill his military service. By a lucky coincidence, he ended up in the Air Force Military Police. This was a perfect fit for his interest in airplanes, which had been sparked by the experiences—both fascinating and frightening—of his earliest childhood, when, during World War II, large numbers of German planes flew over Apeldoorn on their way to England to carry out their destructive missions. As a boy, he built scale models of those planes. Armed with that skill, he went on to make guitars as well. He didn’t learn to build and play the violin until later.

Immediately after high school, Marten started working at Van Gelder Papier in Apeldoorn. There, he trained to become a technician. Around the age of 20, he came across a broken violin. Instead of taking it to a luthier, Marten decided to repair it himself. That marked the beginning of what he himself called his “true calling”: becoming a luthier. In his spare time, he built about ten violins, first using his own violin as a model, and later drawing on books about violin making, from which he also learned the techniques for crafting them.

In 1963, Marten competed unsuccessfully in an international competition for violin makers, which he described in a 2019 interview as an “experience that was as motivating as it was humiliating.” “It inspired me greatly, but I also realized very clearly that I still had a lot to learn.”

Vladimir Pilař

Apprenticeship at Pilař

Josef Vedral from The Hague advised him to take lessons from Karel and Vladimír Pilař in the Czech Republic. Karel Pilař was one of Josef’s former students and a leading representative of the “Krkonoše School” of violin makers. He was known for his restoration work and for the modifications he made to improve the sound of violins. Many leading players sought him out for this reason. Karel Pilař had trained his son Vladimír himself.

Vladimír successfully competed in international violin-making competitions and was a much-sought-after jury member. Vladimír built violins in the style of the old Italian masters, but was also well-versed in the new insights that modern science had produced. He applied these to his work as much as possible. Combined with his in-depth knowledge of the ancient Eastern European violin-making tradition, he crafted master instruments with a full and powerful sound.

Martens' apprenticeship with the Pilař father and son lasted no more than six weeks. During that time, under the guidance of Karel and Vladimír, he built a violin and absorbed as much knowledge as possible from the two luthiers. In the process, a warm friendship developed between Vladimír and Marten.

Work and Influence

Marten Cornelissen was a prolific luthier; at the height of his career, he built one violin a week unfinished, that is, finished to the point where it was ready to be varnished.

For his first violins, he replicated a 1709 Stradivari, the dimensions of which he had found in a book. He continued to follow his great role model later on as well, but as he acquired more of Stradivari’s instruments, he also added other models to his body of work.

Marten based at least 80 cellos on Stradivari’s “Countess of Stanlein.” It was his so-called “medium B model” cello from 1707. He also enjoyed building the Montagnana model cello, which was likewise based on Stradivari’s B model but was 1 cm shorter.

Marten firmly believed that the modern violin had a future. He detested the practice of applying a varnish that made an instrument look older—a technique that many luthiers had regularly used over the centuries and that was not uncommon even at that time. “That’s like a newborn baby with wrinkles of old age.”

Marten had learned from Vladimír Pilař how sound is produced in an instrument, but later developed his own approach to it. The weight and natural tone of each individual component were evaluated and adjusted, and corrected where necessary. Marten used a clear reddish-brown varnish that beautifully highlighted the wood’s grain.

Wood from Germany

Marten initially used American wood for his instruments. By the mid-1970s, he felt that this was no longer sufficient, so he began sourcing wood in Europe. After his visit to Apeldoorn, Marten traveled on to Ohlstadt, Germany, to select wood from the Schuh company, which would become his regular supplier. At Schuh, Marten purchased wood from the Balkans, which he found more suitable than the American wood.

In addition to violins, violas, and cellos, Marten Cornelissen also made bows for a short time. These featured a clean, geometric design, an almost triangular ferrule, and a shaft with a strikingly wide lower section. He stamped the bows with “CORNELISSEN.” His brother Henk Cornelissen, a bow maker in Aardenburg, used the same stamp. As Marten’s reputation grew and he sometimes had to wait months to fulfill orders, he devoted all his time to his instruments; he no longer allowed himself the time to make bows. Martens made the bows from pernambuco wood that he obtained from his brother, who used high-quality wood.

Marten left behind just under 600 instruments, many of which are still in use by prominent musicians in the Netherlands and the United States.

The instruments in the Music Instrument Fund's collection provide a good cross-section of its work.

Sources

The Strad; January 2021.

Geneanet, accessed in 2022.

Special thanks to Peter Kerseboom and Kees Schild.