Best letter to the editor ever...

from the son of a favorite violist of mine, Mischa Amory,

in response to Mr. Tomasinni's project to rank composers in the venerable NY Times.

February 15, 2011, 8:00 AM
Top 10 Composers: A Young Reader Responds

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

"My two-week project to select the 10 greatest composers, which involved a series of articles, blog posts and videos, concluded with an article in the Arts & Leisure section on Jan. 23. But I continue to receive lively, interesting reactions from readers. My favorite was a hand-written letter from Lucas Amory, who is 8 years old and lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Lucas is a serious piano student and the son of two noted violists, Misha Amory of the Brentano String Quartet and Hsin-Yun Huang.

Lucas attends the Special Music School at the Kaufmann Center (in his letter he says that he goes to the Lucy Moses School, which occupies the same building). He writes that he adores music and offers two lists: “THE TEN GREATEST COMPOSERS AND: THE ONES I LIKE BEST.” He clearly understands the difference between all-time greats and personal favorites — quite impressive for an 8-year-old.

To remind you, my list of greats, in order, was: Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Debussy, Stravinsky, Brahms, Verdi, Wagner and Bartok. Lucas has a passion for the Romantics so Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Schumann appear on both his lists. On his favorites list there is a photo-finish contest for the top spot between Schumann and Tchaikovsky, which Lucas illustrates with a drawing.

Here is Lucas’s wonderful, strong and articulate letter."

via {ny times}

I recently learned of David Fulton's 

Italian violin collection in Seattle. 

Yowzah!!! 

And I suddenly wanted to finally figure out 

the family trees once and for all. 

What a legible graph from Sheila's Corner

via {grace galleries}

"Cremonese & Brescian  
Violin Makers 


Looking at a map of Italy. It's interesting to notice that Cremona, Brescia, and Mantua all fall within a 30-mile circle. If you add in Venice which is just a little farther away, you have the entire home of the great Italian violin makers encompassed in a very small area, smaller than the state of Ohio. A tiny area to produce such a great result.

This a chart of the greatest and most famous Cremonese and Brescian violin makers. The red line across the chart is where famine and plague struck Cremona and Brescia in the 1630's. That plague wiped out the entire Brescian violin-making school with the death of Gio Paolo Maginni in 1632. The Cremonese school hung by a thread with only one master remaining, Nicolo Amati. Nicolo was the teacher of both Antonio Stradivari and of Andreas Guarneri. Just imagine if Nicolo had died ... no Strads and no Guarneri's!"

via {maestronet}