Liuteria Piemontese, Annibale Fagnola
Giovanni ACCORNERO

Annibale Fagnola. Part of a much wider project that will examine in depth the modern liuteria piemontese school, this first monograph is dedicated to Annibale Fagnola. Far from being a typical violin maker of his time, he was a dedicated craftsman but also skilled at managing the more commercial aspects of his profession. This combination made him the forerunner of an essentially modern conception of the work of a violin maker.

Fagnola was able to create his own unmistakable style, reconciling his undoubted skill and artistic sensitivity with his fondness for the great names of violin making, and at the same time introducing innovation into the Piedmontese tradition. His was an entirely personal interpretation of the works of the great eighteenth and nineteenth-century masters, Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, Giovanni Francesco Pressenda and Giuseppe Rocca.

His biography is the result of years of research, scientific verification, collection of direct testimony from his heirs, and analysis of the dense correspondence of those close to this great violin maker. The result enabled us to reconstruct his whole career and cast light on his artistic evolution.

In such a detailed monograph his pupils also deserve their place, and so the book also dedicates considerable space to Annibalotto Fagnola, Stefano Vittorio Fasciolo and Riccardo Genovese.