Provenance research relating to the Longuet, 1692.
When researching a violin in our stock by the Edinburgh maker, Matthew Hardie, we became aware of the similarities of the violin to the description of a copy made of Pierre Alday’s Stradivari which seemed to conclusively fit our instrument. At the same time, our attention turned to the remarkable similarities between this violin and the so-called ‘Longuet’ at the Musée de la Musique in Paris. Further investigation with ultraviolet light showed that the Hardie violin was antiqued to a slightly earlier state than we see on the original, for some of the missing areas of varnish showed up under these light conditions. Paul Alday was France’s most celebrated violinist, but his debut at the Concert Spirituele came weeks before Viotti took the stage. For years afterwards it was Alday who made the public performances of Viotti’s works and they escaped together to London during the French Revolution. Here, Alday made the mistake of writing variations to ‘God Save the King’ that met with a poor reception. He quit London for Oxford where he led the Holywell Music Room band, then to Edinburgh and afterwards to Dublin. Fuller detail is available from my research blog, http://www.violinsandviolinists.com.
Connoissership at Oxford University.
For the academic world there are deep problems that arise from historic artefacts that are untethered from a record of provenance, and the violin is
