Thomastik violin

On 4, 12 and 19 May the Goetheanum presented three concerts played by the Basel violinist Volker Biesenbender on a Thomastik violin.

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With these concerts the Section for the Performing Arts at the Goetheanum supported the endeavours to re-enliven and continue the reform impulse introduced by the Vienna violin maker Franz Thomastik (1883–1951). In 1910 Thomastik took out a patent for a new violin model. Rudolf Steiner visited his workshop in 1922 and 1923 and gave him advice on how to develop his idea further. Thomastik’s workshop and most of his instruments were destroyed in a bomb attack in World War II. Only seven Thomastik violins are known to exist today. The instrument made available to Volker Biesenbender was bequeathed to the Goetheanum by Renate Schmidt in 2014.

Further development

Following a period of several decades during which the instruments and design of Thomastik’s pupil and co-worker Karl Weidler (1901–1987) received more attention, Thomastik’s original ideas and concepts are now again coming to the fore. After his death they were rarely taken up or researched. Presently the violin maker Arthur Bay (DE) and the violinist Adolf Zinsstag of the Himmelsbach Foundation in Basel (CH) are most active in this respect.

At the end of the second of these concerts, which featured works for solo violin by Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann, there was opportunity to compare the Thomastik violin directly with the violin played by the young Yehudi Menuhin. The instrument in question was made by Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi (1714–1787) during the «golden age of Italian instrument making». After listening to these instruments, it seemed clear that it was worthwhile to urgently and actively promote the research and further development of the Thomastik instruments.

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