JAVS Summer 1998

24

farmer, and the fourth I have lost track of. Our school has rapidly gained a reputation so that all of the students who have graduated have been, or are being, hired by violin shops around the world. In the beginning, naturally, it wasn't that automatic. Of our graduates, twenty-two have gone independent, as I once did, established their own shops and are doing quite well, makers like Ray Melancon, Michael Scoggins, Samsi Montovich, John Waddle, and others. The rest work for other employers. Today we have enough applicants to the school until the year 2001. We carry fourteen to twenty students a year, right now, twenty. Dalton: I imagine that the nationalities you have represented in your students are over whelmingly North American. And I would be curious about the gender ratio. Prier: Well, out of the twenty students en rolled today, there are seven nations repre sented. Students come from practically all over the globe, from France, Germany, Swe den, Canada, Korea, and China. There are two ladies and the rest gentlemen. This ratio has been fairly consistent over the years. Our approach to violin-making has stayed very much the same, as well as the hourly commit ment in building. We have enjoyed an in crease in visiting artists and string players coming to the school and showing their instruments. The class is always interested in how the owners came about acquiring them, why they chose a particular instrument, the cost, etc. We have also built up a large collec tion of colored slides of instruments. Our teaching method is to put up two screens and compare instruments with each other. On Fridays we devote an hour and a half, both in the morning and the afternoon, to projecting these images to show how instruments were built 250 years ago and onward.

Prier: They come in on Monday morning at eight o'clock. They generally work on their instrument until ten. At that time they go to the classrooms upstairs, where they take artis tic and mechanical drawing classes. This class lasts from ten to twelve, and again from one to three. Mechanical drawing is very impor tant because of the mechanical aspects of the violin. The artistic drawings help in drawing proportions of the various parts of the instru ment, where the upper and lower bouts fit, as well as the F holes, and how these parts work in relationship with each other. All of these drawings have to be learned and studied care fully for their artistic value. At 4:30 we fin ish up after the students have given some thought about what they will be doing the next morning. Tuesday starts again at eight o'clock. The drawing classes have been finished for the first- and second-year students Mon day. Now the third- and fourth-year students are taught by Blaine De Mille in artwork, shadow, and crayon drawings. Incidentally, Blaine was the one who painted the mural on the outside of the school thirteen years ago. We appreciate his services as a teacher in the school very much. He brings live models and props to the art and drawing classes. All this helps the student have a concept of what that student wants to build and then enables him or her to draw that concept, perhaps the in strument with which the student will eventually graduate. Wednesday mornings from ten to noon, I give my first lecture. This is a class on woods, tools, and dimensions that is given to the first-year students. Eventually, we try to teach the concepts of how to choose models, such as those of Stradivari, Guarneri, Maggini, Bergonzi, Rocca, Vuillaume, and Montag nana, so that the students may be versed in the different aspects of these models. Later they can then be confident in their correct productions when they proceed to make their own instruments. They are required to keep a class notebook with all the details recorded, so that we can later evaluate them. One stu dent has taken it all down on a computer. By graduation he will have his final notebook at the press of a key.

The Curriculum

Dalton: Since you have touched upon some of the activities within the school, would you mind sketching a typical week for students at the violin-making school?