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Madelyn Della Valle, curator of Windsor Community Museum, displays a 1762 Joseph Gratiani violin Wednesday. The violin was donated by Windsor photographer Pat Sturn.
Photograph by: Nick Brancaccio, The Windsor Star, The Windsor Star
247-year-old violin 'meant to be played'
BY MARTY GERVAIS, THE WINDSOR STAR
October 31, 2009
A nearly 250-year-old violin may once again breathe new life.
And if all goes well with its restoration, the Italian-made instrument may be featured in a solo performance at a Windsor Symphony Orchestra production as early as December.
The violin I'm speaking about belongs to Pat Sturn, a longtime Windsor artist and photographer who turned 99 earlier this month.
Her greatest wish is to let the violin sing again, to give it life.
It was this instrument -- handcrafted by the well-known Joseph Gratiani in Genoa in 1762 -- that she played as a child in Romania.
It was this instrument that her father got in a trade from a gypsy musician who needed food for his family. He brought it home one afternoon from the mill and placed it gently in Pat's lap.
At first she was disappointed because she had always wanted a piano, but once she learned to play it, she grew to love its sound and feel in her hands.
For me, the story begins five years ago when this wise and fiercely independent woman invited me to her house because she had wanted to show me something. As always, we sat in her tiny kitchen and I listened to the account about a violin she had played in Romania.
But in 1930, when she emigrated to Canada, Pat took only a suitcase and left the violin behind with her family.
During the Second World War, and following it, the violin went missing.
Pat gave up hope of ever seeing it again. Then six years ago after her sister's death, Swiss estate lawyers contacted her about the will.
Pat told them she wanted nothing, and that all she cared about was this childhood violin and begged the lawyers to track it down for her.
As it turned out, the violin was at the home of a niece in Germany who, when contacted, graciously dispatched it to her aunt in Windsor.
When Pat speaks of this violin with that trace of a Romanian accent, she always refers to it in the feminine gender.
"When my niece sent her to me," she said, "I wouldn't open the case for two or three days, I was so afraid. In my mind's eye she was perfect. But when I finally saw it, it was so terrible.... Her neck was broken and so was one of the strings. It was so sad. I wanted to clean her up but finally I said, 'No, I will let her rest, and some day I might clean her up. But not now.'
"You know, she's a lot like me -- old and with everything going wrong. She has travelled very hard."
Though I knew about the violin, Pat had never shown it to me until this spring when she let me have a peek at it. She had called me to her house and asked what she might do with it. Her deepest wish was to see it restored and played again.
And that's what I've set out to do.
With her permission, I deposited the violin with the Windsor Community Museum and then on my own sought the help of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra.
Once Peter Wiebe, assistant conductor with the WSO, examined the violin, and deemed it restorable, the orchestra agreed to oversee that repair work, and promised to use it in a performance in December.
But to restore it, the orchestra needs $500. It's looking for donations.
Wiebe, the one prepared to handle its refurbishment with specialists in Detroit, maintained that nothing made today could ever outweigh this violin's "wonderful richness of sound and projection."
WSO music director John Morris Russell -- ecstatic at the opportunity that has befallen the WSO -- said, "This violin is meant to be used, to be played, to be loved."
If that work does proceed, it'll be a belated 99th birthday gift to a wonderful woman who made Windsor her home.
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