Builder unveils violin's tonal mysteries

SANDPOINT — Somewhere in Mark Weber's mind, the violin has been playing its siren song for decades. After retiring as a medical professional, he finally succumbed and built one. Or two. Well, several, actually. And he's still at it.

The strains of the stringed instrument first insinuated themselves when he heard the old-time sound of Galax fiddlers in Virginia as a youngster. Later, while at medical school in the Midwest, Weber rented a violin for $10 a month and took lessons off and on.

By the time he reached Sandpoint and his position as radiologist for Bonner General Health — a job he held from 1997-2011 — the prospect of building was inching ever closer.

Today, Weber's shop overlooking Chuck Slough has tone woods stacked at the ready and finished violins hanging from the walls.

“I built this as a wood shop,” he said. “But I always had the violin in the back of my head.”

As retirement approached, the orchestra's smallest stringed instrument pushed its way into the foreground. In January 2012, Weber and his wife, QZ, packed up and moved to Salt Lake City, where he enrolled in the Violin Making School of America — a school of luthiery that only accepts 21 thoroughly vetted students at a time for its 3- to 4-year curriculum.

“It was an immersion into the violin-making world,” said Weber, who built five violins and one cello at the school and has doubled that number since graduating. “I had just left my radiology job three days before and I felt the joy and excitement of a new beginning.”

Not to mention, he added, no longer having to take emergency calls at 3 a.m. when his expertise was needed in diagnostic imaging at BGH.

On Day One, Weber was surrounded by students from across the U.S., as well as from Russia, India, Mexico, China, and Japan. It was a mix of mostly 20-somethings looking to start a profession and 50-somethings about to embark on a second career. Notched into a slightly higher demographic, he found himself in the position of being the elder statesman of the group.

“I was actually the oldest student in the school,” he said. “Older than the owner-director.”

Weber might also have been one of the hardest-working students at Violin Making School of America, spending long days learning and building before going home to the apartment he and QZ shared to build some more in the makeshift shop set aside in one corner of the kitchen.

Days at school covered everything from selecting woods to the building styles of great violinmakers from the past. Some nights, the doors were locked and an internationally renowned violin repairman — whose shop was conveniently located right next door to the school — would share examples of the priceless instruments in his possession.

“We'd be sitting at this table and we'd pass around these incredibly beautiful instruments that were filled with history and lore,” said Weber.

The washout rate at the school was high, according to the newly minted luthier, as some students decided the art of building was not their cup of tea. Part of that might have been the apprentice mindset behind the curriculum.

“You start by learning how to sharpen a saw blade,” Weber said with a wry smile before quoting a line from the movie, The Karate Kid. “Wax on, wax off.”

The first several weeks were dedicated to his maiden voyage as a builder — an instrument closely monitored by instructors during every stage of construction. Weber described that violin as sounding “tight, not open.”

With every subsequent build, however, he began to come into his own, as did the students around him.

“The farther I got along in the process, the more I began to exercise my own judgment,” Weber said.

In a kind of musical baccalaureate sermon, the students were treated to a pre-graduation “tone class,” where all of their instruments were played by a professional violinist and rated using criteria that would not be out of place for a world-class wine tasting. Was the violin full- or hollow-sounding? Did it have an open quality or was it nasal in tone?

“Almost invariably, the last couple of instruments sounded better than the first ones,” Weber said. “I liked the way my instruments sounded — the cello, in particular.

“And they were well-received,” the builder continued, sharing the tone class rating sheet that gave his creations high marks in every category.

Back at home, local fiddlers also have tried out his instruments and pronounced them to be exceptional. One player took a few of his violins for test-drives and, after lifting bow from strings, smiled and said, “It plays like butter.”

Myriad discussions with fellow students and instructors took place during Weber's coursework, as the builders explored traditional methods and flirted with more novel approaches to the art. He had more than a leg up when the school introduced how CAT scans were being used to peer inside prized violins to see how the masters did their work.

“They've been analyzing classic, old instruments in depth and they've come up with a wealth of data,” the builder said, adding that, while sometimes radical modifications have been attempted, the iconic dimensions of the instrument have remained intact. “The violin has been built in the same way for 400 years. People keep coming back to this classic shape that creates its sound.

“Basically, we're copyists — we're copying those old instruments.”

Still, contemporary builders have begun turning out instruments that some say could eventually rival the historic greats. In blind playing tests by noted musicians, a few of those new violins have — heresy! — been rated as high or higher than ones bearing famous names such as Stradivari, Amati, Guarneri and Bergonzi.

“Some people say this is the New Golden Age of violinmaking,” Weber said.

Now completing his second cello and already selecting tone woods for his next violins, one would expect that Weber might have a handle on the mysteries of instrument making. Technically, that's true, he said. Artistically, on the other hand, things just keep getting more mystical with every new instrument he creates.

“As far as the overall sound, there are even more mysteries,” Weber said. “The wood, the vibrations, the tools that are being used — it all starts to become weird and magical.”

In this, his new career, the violinmaker hopes to take the education he received and parlay it into a way to send more music out into the world.

“I want to build instruments to be put into the hands of players,” he said, adding that he believes there's plenty of time to get that done.

“Stradivari reportedly died at 94 while he was at the work bench,” Weber said. “If my hands hold up, I feel like this is something I can do for the rest of my life.”

For more information, visit online at: www.facebook.com/MarkWeberViolins or call 208-290-1071.