[pt. 1] After exploring the cultural and philosophical roots of Cremonese violin making, our conversation with Professor Anna Laura Maramotti Politi moves to the heart of several crucial questions for understanding the contemporary significance of this tradition.

What does excellence in art really mean? Does it still make sense to measure the greatness of violin making through rankings and comparisons, or is it more important to recognize its value as a historical, human, and cultural heritage? From these questions, the discussion broadens to encompass the meaning of UNESCO recognition, the relationship between memory and the transmission of knowledge, and the responsibility of safeguarding a tradition that continues to renew itself without abandoning its roots.

The interview also addresses the international role of Cremona, a city that for centuries has attracted students, musicians, and violin makers from all over the world. This global dimension represents both a great opportunity and a challenge: how can the cultural identity of violin making be preserved without allowing it to be reduced to a mere commercial brand?

What emerges is a reflection that transcends the boundaries of the workshop and explores the relationship between past and present, between conservation and innovation, between the value of a tradition and its capacity to continue generating culture.

For a long time, Cremona has been described almost exclusively through the myth of Stradivari’s absolute perfection. Do you believe that today it is more important to promote the Cremonese tradition as a historical and human heritage rather than fuel rankings about the “best violin making in the world”?

But who defines what is “the best” in the realm of art? Taste is subjective: aesthetic judgment refers primarily to the person who expresses it, not to the object being judged.

In practical terms, there is a reason why composers and performers choose different instruments. Aesthetic judgment is linked to a unique and unrepeatable experience—one that is often impossible to communicate fully—because it belongs to the sphere of the individual and involves what we may call “aesthetic feeling.” Such feeling does not require demonstration; its nature is self-evident. It is an experience proper to each individual and belongs entirely to subjectivity.

Useful parameters can certainly be identified, parameters that correspond to the identity of each instrument. It is the task of master violin makers and scholars of violin making to determine which of these should be regarded as meaningful. What matters is that experts justify their choices when defining artistic poetics, manual skill, technical knowledge, and adherence to the historical and cultural realities of a given era. They must rely on concrete and verifiable data; above all, they must highlight the distinctive qualities of each instrument in relation to music.

Cremonese violin making has been recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In your view, what is the true core of this heritage: the finished instrument or the knowledge transmitted from generation to generation?

One does not exclude the other; on the contrary, they complement one another. As I mentioned earlier, violin making bears witness to the knowledge of Western culture, yet at the same time it lives in the hands, minds, and hearts of master violin makers.

Allow me to clarify.

Violin making is also alive in those who compose music and in those who perform it. A relationship is established between violin making and music that cannot be reduced to a simple sum of its parts; rather, it becomes a genuine synergy.

Violin making is essential to the experience of music. A musical composition receives its “voice” through the instrument. If the timbre of an instrument is essential to music, then musical experience is equally essential to aesthetic appreciation. This applies also to the aesthetic appreciation of timbre itself, which reveals its qualities through music. Within this reciprocal relationship, the uniqueness of both the instrument and the musical composition becomes apparent. A singer’s voice reveals its identity only when the singer sings; the same is true of a musical instrument.

Let us now turn to the second part of your question. What exactly constitutes the knowledge transmitted from generation to generation? It is an “active memory” that bears witness to the past while simultaneously influencing the present. Culture depends upon this active memory. The recollection of the past is only one aspect of memory. Memory is a presence that challenges, stimulates research, and teaches.

Above all, memory is intrinsic. It is constitutive of every being; every entity preserves its identity because its uniqueness remains present and constant within it.

One may speak of the transience of things, but in order even to refer to an entity, a condition must first be met: it must be identifiable. Cremonese violin making is itself historically situated within this dialectic between permanence and becoming, between self-memory and change. Change may become loss—oblivion. Memory, on the contrary, is a source of potentiality. This is what establishes the necessity of conservation-oriented restoration.

To come to the point: in the case of violin making, the great Cremonese tradition goes far beyond the celebration of a glorious “know-how” concentrated in a particular historical moment of our city. Our violin-making tradition serves as a point of reference for the development of contemporary violin making.

Empty words? I do not think so. Contemporary violin making itself stands as proof of continuity. It draws lessons from the past while also generating new knowledge, particularly through rigorous scholarship and research. It is within this union of past and present that the profound meaning of UNESCO’s recognition of violin making as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity must be sought.

Today violin making has a strong international dimension: students and musicians come to Cremona from all over the world. Does this phenomenon strengthen the Cremonese tradition, or does it risk transforming it into a global brand that is more commercial than cultural?

In truth, the international dimension of violin making has always been one of its defining characteristics. In the past, whenever one encountered a foreigner in Cremona, it was almost certain that he or she was either a violin maker, a student of violin making, or a musician.

Let us now address your specific and highly relevant question.

If Cremona remains merely the “capital of the violin,” it may suffer the fate of any capital that relies exclusively on a single distinguishing feature: phenomena tend to exhaust themselves when they are isolated. If, however, Cremona becomes the international capital of both violin making and music, it will have the opportunity to develop enormous potential.

Cremona should have an international museum of musical instruments and music. It should further develop cultural sectors that already exist and simply require intelligent leadership supported by genuine expertise.

Finally, let me address a vexata quaestio: the concept of the brand.

One should remember that brands are used to mark livestock and commercial products. Fashion labels may be commercially useful, and certifications may possess administrative and legal significance, but neither says anything about the intrinsic value of an artifact.

I would not want contemporary violin making to fall victim to the pathology of the seventeenth-century Dutch “Tulip Mania.” To avoid entering such a dead-end tunnel, it would suffice to ask a paradoxical question: how would Leonardo, Raphael, or Michelangelo have been expected to certify their belonging to the Renaissance?

Let us return instead to the violin-making tradition itself: what is it that unites Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesù?