(b Absam, nr Hall in Tirol, ?1617; d Absam, late Oct or early Nov 1683). Austrian violin maker. He received a good education as a chorister (serving in either a church choir – perhaps in Hall – or the Innsbruck court chapel); surviving letters from later years suggest he was a well-educated man. He is traditionally said to have learnt his craft in Cremona, but he was probably apprenticed to a German violin maker resident in Italy. He based his style on an earlier German model, developing it to perfection. Hart wrote: ‘I am satisfied that Stainer was assisted by neither the Brothers Amati nor Nicholas Amati, and I am strengthened in this opinion by the steadfastly German character of a model which no pupil of Amati could have persisted in using’. His oldest known violin is dated Absam, 1638.
Until 1655 Stainer made visits to monasteries, church choirs and court chapels in order to sell instruments and carry out repairs; his travels took him to Salzburg, Munich, Venice, Brixen, Bozen and elsewhere. In 1656 he acquired a house in Absam. Ferdinand Karl, the reigning archduke of Tyrol, appointed him ‘archduke's servant’ (i.e. purveyor to the court) in 1658; this was not a salaried position, but involved promotion to the rank of a court employee. Meanwhile, he had become so well known that he was receiving commissions by post; about 1658 he carried out a commission for the Spanish court. A denunciation for suspected heresy in 1669, though hotly denied by Stainer, brought him into conflict with the Church. At that time, he had commissions for instruments from Italy, Nuremberg, the monasteries at Rottenbuch and Lambach and from the Bishop of Olomouc. From about 1675 he suffered from bouts of temporary insanity, probably acute manic depression, but in succeeding years he created some of his finest instruments, surpassing even the best products of his middle period. His last violin is dated 1682 (now in the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck).
Besides violins, Stainer also made viole da braccio, bass viols, cellos and double basses; for viols, he used as his model an English instrument by the virtuoso William Young, who was employed at the Innsbruck court from 1651 to 1662. His bass instruments were mostly made to order, according to the size of the church or concert room. Distinctive features of his violins are the relatively broad lower back and the modified contour of the corners at the waist. At first he worked with a highly arched model, but after about 1665 he also made rather less arched instruments. The wood and varnish are of the best quality, and the accuracy of his craftsmanship ranks close to Stradivari's. The silvery tone (voce argentina) of the Stainer violin was regarded as ideal for more than 150 years; literary sources confirm the high esteem in which his instruments were held, even in comparison with those of the Cremona masters. Hawkins, for example, wrote: ‘The violins of Cremona are exceeded only by those of Stainer … whose instruments are remarkable for a full and piercing tone’. The Encyclopédie méthodique states that ‘the violins with the greatest reputation are those of Jacob Steiner’. And Stainer heads a list of distinguished violin makers compiled by Francesco Galeazzi. For a long time his model influenced violin making not only in German areas, but also in Italy (where only Brescia and Cremona stuck to their own tradition) as well as several other countries. Distinguished copiers included Gabrielli, Gobetti, the Caracassi brothers, Stadlmann, Widhalm and William Forster (ii). There are countless instruments that contain a forged label with Stainer's name, and even standard works, such as those by Lütgendorff, Vannes and Hamma include illustrations of labels that have proved to be forgeries. Towards the end of the 18th century there was a change in what was considered to be the ideal tone, and the smooth, clarinet-like timbre, characteristic of the instruments of the Cremona school, began to be preferred. Further, the greater volume obtainable from a Cremona instrument could meet the demands now made of the violin in concert-hall performance. During the 19th century the Cremona violin completely superseded the Absam; in the 20th, Stainer's instruments have regained popularity for historically informed performances.
Markus [Marcus] Stainer (b Hallein, Salzburg, c1633; d Laufen, Bavaria, 27 Nov 1693), a musician and violin maker often described as Jacob's brother, was not in fact related to him. In 1655 he applied for citizenship at Laufen, granted in 1656. His few known instruments do not show a lot of talent. Instruments with the label ‘Marcus Stainer, Bürger und Geigenmacher in Kufstein’ are fakes; there is no record of a violin maker of this name in Kufstein.
HawkinsH
LütgendorffGL
VannesE
G. Hart: The Violin: its Famous Makers and their Imitators (London, 1875, 2/1884/R)
P.O. Apian-Bennewitz: Die Geige, der Geigenbau und die Bogenverfertigung (Weimar, 1892)
P. de Wit: Geigenzettel alter Meister vom 16. bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1902, 2/1910/R)
F. Hamma: Meister deutscher Geigenbaukunst (Stuttgart, 1948, 2/1961; Eng. trans., 1961, as German Violin Makers)
I.A. Cozio di Salabue: Carteggio, ed. R. Bacchetta and G. Iviglia (Milan, 1950)
W. Senn: Jakob Stainer, der Geigenmacher zu Absam: die Lebensgeschichte nach urkundlichen Quellen (Innsbruck, 1951)
W. Henley: Universal Dictionary of Violin and Bow Makers (Brighton, 1959–60)
Jakob Stainer und seine Zeit: Innsbruck 1983
W. Senn and K. Roy: Jakob Stainer, Leben und Werk des Tiroler Meisters 1617–1683 (Frankfurt, 1986)
WALTER SENN/KARL ROY