Thank you very much -- it means a lot to me, considering your obvious deep immersement in this style and this repertoire as apparent from your clip. For what it's worth, I've been unhappy for a while with my Embergher version of Speranze Perdute -- it's too slow and the timing is wobbly as it was my first ever attempt to record my own playing of an Italian tune without an accompanist. I've just today redone it on my 1890s Umberto Ceccherini mandolin -- it's arguably a more Neapolitan tone than either of my previous two attempts, but although this is a very de-Meglio-esque bowlback, it doesn't sound much like the tone of yours (
link). I've also recorded a large batch of other Italian tunes yesterday and today, which I'm about to put in my thread in the Celtic/European folk forum
here.
Turning to the topic of this thread (and Ceccherini has some relevance to it, I think), there is a lot of interesting information on the economical and sociological factors of the Neapolitan lutherie trade in the Paul Sparks book "The Classical Mandolin". Basically, my own reading of the situation is that the distribution of "surviving" bowlbacks now is the outcome of a fairly complex situation, governed by factors of economics and class. Within Italy, and specifically within Naples, mandolins in the 1890s to 1910s were played by two very different social groups: "working class" (whether urban or rural) musicians playing folk tunes and dances, tarantellas, waltzes, Neapolitan songs, ballo liscio etc, and, quite separately, a big boom in middle class mandolin playing with classical aspirations. At the top of this boom (and largely driving it with their burgeoning reputation) were the classical soloists, Raffaele Calace, Francia, Ranieri etc, but most middle class players were actually well-to-do women, "higher daughters" and the like. My impression is that the working class players by and large played instruments coming out of Catania as this was the main source of sturdy honest affordable instruments in Italy, the equivalent of Markneukirchen in Germany and Mirecourt in France (the cheap-and-cheerful Neapolitan shops, I think, mostly served the tourist trade). This is why mandolin players in that tradition in Naples now don't have old De Meglio mandolins: their ancestors didn't play them either, they played Sicilian mandolins.
As far as the middle class mandolin boom is concerned, demand grew explosively throughout the 1890s, initially only within Italy, but then worldwide. Naples itself was an impoverished city following the unification of Italy, so demand for high-grade (and therefore relatively expensive) mandolins within the city would have been limited. Some makers had such stellar reputations that their products were distributed world-wide and are now found in small numbers everywhere -- they're the ones that are still famous now: Vinaccia, Calace, Embergher. Others found that they could tap into specific markets which were much more lucrative than Naples, and by far the most obvious one was the UK.
Britain was a rich country devoted to free trade (thus no import barriers) and without significant domestic mandolin luthiers. France, Germany and the US all developed a sophisticated mandolin building industry in the 1890s, but the UK did not and instead simply bought them from the source. One maker in particular had a unique selling point in the UK market, and this was Umberto Ceccherini. The top classical concert mandolinist of the 1890s was Leopoldo Francia, and he played and endorsed Ceccherini mandolins. Francia permanently relocated to London in 1895, followed by an avalanche of now lesser-known (but still very popular then) Italian players and teachers -- Sparks goes into some detail on this. Francia spent much of his time teaching aristocratic ladies, and with the help of the other Italian teachers, amateur mandolin playing spread far and wide into upper and middle class households. No doubt what we see now on Ebay UK are the thousands upon thousands of Italian mandolins bought by these rich (certainly in Neapolitan terms) British women.
Upon brief consideration of those market forces, it is not particularly surprising that good bowlbacks outside the "Big Three" top tier are now found mostly in the UK: a Neapolitan worker or peasant could not have competed with the buying power of the UK music wholesale trade. There is little doubt at this stage that every single Umberto Ceccherini mandolin after the mid-1890s or so went to London: every label I have ever seen, or that was ever discussed here on the Cafe has the words "
Sole distributor: Alban Voigt, London" printed on the label. I would guess that this was the direct outcome of Francia's endorsement of this maker, and Francia may well have earned a commission from Alban Voigt. As far as De Meglio is concerned, there is no such direct evidence on the labels, but I note that as far as the visual aspect is concerned, the de Meglio design is very similar indeed to the Ceccherini design (although this is only skin-deep -- the Ceccherini construction is quite different, as is the tone) and I can well imagine that De Meglio also mostly sold to the UK wholesale trade, leading to all those thousands of De Meglios in the UK now, and a lack of them in Italy.
So there is my theory: one third facts (via Sparks) plus two-thirds guesswork.
Martin
Re: De Meglio Company and the House of Savoy
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Originally Posted by Martin Jonas
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