Aristide Cavalli was one of the lesser-known violin makers who worked in Cremona after the death of Enrico Ceruti, and one of the most interesting figures of the early twentieth century.

Remembered above all for his marked entrepreneurial abilities, he was born in Oneglia in 1856 to Piedmontese parents, although his origins were unmistakably Cremonese.

His grandfather Giovanni Battista, in fact, ran a small bookshop located beneath a walled archway of the Bertazzola, beside the Baptistery and leaning against the Cathedral.

His father, Savino, had attended school, taken piano and organ lessons and, in 1845, after obtaining his diploma, thanks to his ability became organist of the Cathedral.

Because of his revolutionary and patriotic sympathies, at the age of twenty, helped by trusted friends, he had taken refuge in Alessandria, in the Kingdom of Sardinia, in order to avoid military service under Austria.

At the age of twenty-seven he had married a local girl, Matilde Pagnini, but a few years after the birth of their two sons, Aristide and Guglielmo, he died suddenly in 1860 at only forty-five years of age.

The young widow, together with her children, departed by stagecoach for Cremona and was welcomed into the house of her sister-in-law Costanza Cavalli, in Piazza Piccola (today Piazza Stradivari), on 30 April 1861.

From 1830 to 1859 the Cavalli bookshop became a meeting place for the Cremonese Carbonari, and in this cultural environment the young Aristide spent his childhood and, among new books, old editions and sixteenth-century volumes, forged his own character, developing remarkable artistic abilities and intellectual liveliness.

Meanwhile, encouraged by his aunt Costanza, he attended in Vescovato the workshop of Giuseppe Bresciani, an eclectic, eccentric and curious craftsman who, besides being a carpenter, also made beautiful violins in his spare time.

Intrigued, Aristide assimilated all the rudiments of the trade in a short time, to such an extent that Beltrami told his aunt that the boy possessed an innate sense of proportions and exact measurements, of wood thicknesses, of the mixtures necessary for preparing varnishes and of the sonority that had to be obtained from instruments.

He divided his time between the eccentric violin maker and the beautiful bookshop in Piazza Piccola, until in 1876, at the age of twenty, he felt the need to emancipate himself and, although possessing only modest capital, opened a small bookshop on Corso Campi.

The beginnings were difficult, but his professional competence and intellectual honesty soon earned him the sympathy of the city and the small bookshop, thanks to friends and acquaintances, quickly became a meeting place for a large and loyal clientele.

The bookshop also became a meeting place for intellectuals, musicians and singers. One of the most devoted customers was Giuseppe Verdi, but it was also possible to encounter celebrated writers and poets, including our own Giovanni Lonati.

In 1880 a shop became available opposite the Teatro Ricci and Cavalli transferred his business to the larger premises, also beginning the trade in sheet music and musical goods and, in 1890, starting publication of a musical periodical entitled “Il Monitore Musicale Claudio Monteverdi”, in which he published numerous compositions by young Cremonese authors, such as maestros Riva, Bellini and D’Alessandro.

The periodical, successfully distributed throughout Italy, proved an excellent advertising vehicle that enabled him to increase the commercialization of musical instruments.

Numerous requests arrived from wealthy clients and musicians asking for repairs to their bowed instruments.

Consequently, he expanded his activities further by opening, behind the shop, a small workshop equipped for instrument repair and hired qualified personnel, among them his old master Giuseppe Beltrami, expert in violins and church organs; the violin maker Pietro Grulli, for whom he wrote the funeral oration read at the latter’s funeral in 1898; and the brothers Romedio and Palmiro Munchen.

Meanwhile, Cavalli became acquainted with Giovanni Francesco Poli, son of the notary Michele Achille and Francesca Feraboli, a student at the Polytechnic of Turin, where he graduated in engineering in 1893.

Engineer Gian Francesco Poli, in turn, played the violin and mandolin, and was the soul and director of the original nucleus of musicians from which, a few years later, in 1897, the “Circolo Mandolinisti e Mandoliniste Cremonesi” would be born.

He composed songs and operettas, organized musical and theatrical performances in the old Teatro Alfieri on Via Villa Glori, and played many instruments reasonably well.

Although Poli was eleven years younger, a solid and profound friendship developed between the two men. They had many things in common: a passion for violins, music, singing, but above all enormous enthusiasm and a strong desire to work.

In 1895 Cavalli decided to enlarge his small workshop further and, together with his musician friend, opened a small factory in the former Teatro Alfieri on Via Villa Glori, where they began building guitars and mandolins.

The symbol of the new company was carefully chosen: “two horses across a terrestrial globe of which only the poles are sold.”

From the partnership between the two would emerge both “Cavalli & Poli” and the Officina di Liuteria Artistica Claudio Monteverdi, which effectively represented the only attempt to revive the famous Cremonese school while adapting it to changing market conditions.

As far as the first enterprise was concerned, the beginning was explosive, but after three years competition from Neapolitan and Catanese craftsmanship became unbearable, eventually leading to the capitulation of the company which, in order to avoid dismissing workers, was converted from the production of sound boxes to that of packing crates.

River boats, racing boats and pleasure craft were also manufactured, together with household and hotel iceboxes and ice-making machines.

On an area outside the city overlooking the railway station, a sawmill was established.

Cavalli was responsible for procuring the poplar trees to be cut in the countryside while Poli travelled in search of new customers.

Business prospered and, in 1908, it became necessary to enlarge the area, transforming the company from a private concern into a joint-stock company by introducing new shareholders.

Thus the third version of “Cavalli & Poli” came into being, with the addition of a department for the production of gilded rods which, entrusted to Gino Usuelli, developed into the most important national industry in the sector.

The Officina di Liuteria Artistica Claudio Monteverdi, however, was the enterprise that most faithfully reflected the complex temperament of Aristide Cavalli.

Its objective appears to have been to emulate the almost industrial production of the great workshops of Mirecourt and Mittenwald.

Cavalli and Poli possessed a certain number of labels, including “Giovanni Maria Ceruti”, something which in recent times has created confusion regarding whether this legendary violin maker was related to the better-known Ceruti family.

The factory produced violins, guitars and sound boxes, and within it Romedio Mucher took his first steps before later establishing himself independently by equipping a workshop in his home at Via XI Febbraio no. 20 and subsequently at Via Gorizia no. 2.

Various circumstances probably contributed to developing Cavalli’s passion for violin making.

From a young age, thanks to his activity as a bookseller, he certainly had access to the extensive literature on the subject and, through acquaintance with some of the violin makers still remaining in Cremona, was able to learn the first rudiments of violin construction.

He did not enjoy fantasizing about presumed Stradivarian secrets in the preparation of varnishes, but preferred instead to compare, discuss, work and experiment with solutions together with his employees, thereby training them into good violin makers.

Once he had secured a respectable economic position thanks to his other activities, he did not hesitate to invest the profits in attempting to industrialize the production of the handcrafted violin.

Various attempts at national level had already failed, but Cavalli possessed the advantage of combining considerable technical competence with knowledge of the market, great passion and entrepreneurial spirit.

To those who reproached him for having created an industry while killing art, he replied:

“We must convince ourselves that the traditional type of Cremonese violin maker—that is to say, an excellent craftsman who works calmly and carefully in his little workshop, secure in drawing from honest work the means of support for himself and his family—is definitively dead.

Two factors have eliminated him: the dealer in old violins, astute, talkative and at times not entirely scrupulous, and the domestic, inexpensive industry of Mittenwald, Markneukirchen and Mirecourt, powerfully organized from a commercial point of view.

The former has established a monopoly over high-end clientele: the successful violinist, the great concert performer who cannot appear before the public unless ‘armed’ with an authentic Stradivari, and the ordinary player who, rightly or wrongly, prefers an old violin to a new one.

The latter supplies the vast clientele of students who, uncertain of success, prefer to economize on their study instrument.

Consequently, the skilled violin maker is left with little more than surviving on occasional repairs or building a few instruments while waiting for customers who rarely appear.

Now, for us Cremonese, the dilemma is simple: remain dead or adapt ourselves to the conditions of the present market.”

(Vittorio Grandi, Aristide Cavalli, obituary in “Cremona”, February 1931)

Supported by these ideas, Cavalli devoted himself to an entirely original production system which, without renouncing the good quality of the instrument, exploited a typically industrial organization, using within certain limits modern manufacturing methods capable of guaranteeing violins that were considerably less expensive while nevertheless able to compete with German and French production of the period.

This was obviously, to a large extent, serial production in which each worker produced individual parts of the instrument which were subsequently assembled.

Nevertheless, one cannot speak of industrial production in the strict sense, since Cavalli’s objective was to obtain instruments capable of achieving the same performance as handcrafted ones, but with greater savings in time.

Work was not organized on assembly lines, nor mechanized: the specialized craftsman effectively carried out all the most important operations—from carving to assembly and varnishing—delegating only minor accessory operations to less qualified personnel.

When Cavalli died suddenly from a cerebral stroke on 16 January 1931, the activity was continued by his son Lelio, a graduate in physics who, during the war of 1915–18, had devoted himself within a special department of the family business to the construction of airplane wings.

Lelio was one of the most important figures in the creation of the International School of Violin Making in 1938.

From its first headquarters near Palazzo Trecchi on Via Villa Glori, the workshop was later transferred to Via Dante and finally to Via del Castello until 1945, when it was definitively closed.

Five violin models were produced in the workshops: the Ceruti, for which excellent acoustic results had been achieved; the Stradivari; the Guarneri del Gesù; the Tresenda; and the arched Beltrami model, in addition to guitars and mandolins.

Strict controls were carried out and violins that failed the tests were destroyed, while it was not uncommon for those placed on the market to obtain high valuations.

Lelio Cavalli was a lover of music, a good violinist and pianist, a scholar of acoustic physics, and a devotee of Claudio Monteverdi and classical violin making.

He was among the most passionate and competent organizers of the celebrations for the bicentenary of Stradivari’s death in 1937 and taught at the newly founded violin-making school from 1949 to 1952.