Peter White Fine Violins Reproductions of 16th to 17th century fine Italian violins

Albuquerque Journal - November 16,2007
Strings of the Heart – Violin Maker pursues his passions in creating fine instruments, keeping N.M.’s musical heritage alive

By Todd Eric Lovato
Journal Staff Writer

Love, it’s said, is like a violin. Sometimes the music stops, but the song remains. It’s an expression to which Peter White can relate.

For the past three decades, White has performed a balancing act between a life of academia and a passion for violin-making. Since carving his first violin in 1979 (and selling it for $35), White has thrived in the craft, selling his instruments to professional and world-renowned musicians for as much as $10,000 each.

Meanwhile, in 31 years with the University of New Mexico, White has moved up the administrative ladder to become a vice provost for undergraduate education and the dean of University College, where his focus has been on providing support for new students.

For the past decade, White talent as a luthier – someone who makes or repairs stringed instruments – has played second fiddle to his career. But now he says he’s looking for a change.

“The most absolute pleasure I get is from sitting in a workshop, trying to make an instrument the exact same way they did it in the 17th century,” says White, sitting inside his cozy home workshop in the Sandia foothills. “I want to share this important art form.”

A heritage to save
White recently stepped down from his post as dean to start a university program called the “New Mexico Musical Heritage Project.” He says he wants to design a program where students, scholars, artists, musicians, historians and scientists can work together to preserve and research New Mexico’s musical heritage.

White says the state is in dire need of such a program. New Mexico’s musical and cultural roots are fading fast. “Folk music in New Mexico was played in dances and in our communities for 300 years,” says White. “And now what? There’s hardly any musician left. Most of the people who are carrying these folk music traditions are really old now. They’ve been relegated to curiosity. It shouldn’t be that way because we’re sitting on a gold mine.”

Colonial Hispanics and American Indians made up some of the first violin-makers in what is now the U.S. Although it’s little known in history circles, New Mexico is the birthplace of North America’s first instrument-making workshops and music schools, says White.

“It started in New Mexico,” he says. “Most experts say the first violin-makers started around 1680 in Boston, but Franciscan priests from Italy had traveled to North America with the Conquistadors in around 1610.”

Some of those Franciscan priest migrated to the Americas from areas with Knowledge of violin-making, says White. Some may have even brought their fiddles.

“As part of converting the Native Americans, the priests build churches and craft schools,” says White. “They taught them to make a variety of musical instruments and play them. This was all going on in the mission churches along the Rio Grande.”

Those early 1600s violins would predate even the work of the late 1600s and 1700s of the famous Guarneri and Stradivari Italian violin-making families, whose instruments fetch sums of millions at today’s auctions.

White credits those findings to scholar Tomas Lozano, the author of “Cantemos al Alba: Origins of Songs, Sounds and Liturgical Drama of Hispanic New Mexico.” But White says there’s more research that need to be done. “I’m going to use the program to enroll the help of people like Lozano and the wonderful staff at UNM,” White says.

White also plans to work with Don Robertson of Robertson and Sons Violins, who owns a vast collection of rare and valuable violins. “UNM would be the only research university in America using the resources of the community and faculty to unravel some of these mysteries of the violin.”

White is far from being alone in his passion for fiddles. No instrument is shrouded with more mystery, debate and, perhaps, hype than the violin.

Last year, “The Hammer,” built by the famous Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari in 1707, was auctioned for $3.54 million, shattering the previous record for the highest amount paid at an auction for an instrument.

Many musicians and violin-makers swear to the unique and impeccable tonal qualities of the classic Italian violins, and they have been at the heart of endless scientific debate.

Some scientists argue that a Stradivarius owes any unique tone it possesses to its unique chemical treatment. Others say the climate change played a part. Some camps say the antique violins, although historically important, are no more superior in tone than instruments valued a millions of dollars less.

For many traditional violin makers, scientific theories that attempt to simplify or break down the tone of an Amati or Stradivarius border on blasphemy. But for White, who likes to keep one foot in the aesthetic and the other in academia, these are questions worth pursuing. A violin, he says, is a confluence of geometry, acoustical physics and chemistry as well as an instrument of high art, cultural discovery and esoteric debate.

“There’s no instrument that sums up American history like the violin,” says White. “For me, it’s just a real passion and I want to share it with students who normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to study this.”

Roots in folk music
The graduation of Russian immigrants, White recalls hearing his grandfather and father playing folk songs of the old country as a child. But it wouldn’t be until the sounds of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and the folk revival of the 1960’s that White discovered a passion for music.

He began to learn the fiddle, and by the early 1970s he was repairing them while earning his doctorate in American religious history and English at Pennsylvania State University.

After that, White made his way to UNM the following year, where he began teaching English. By 1980, under the guidance of mentors Sid Fleming and John Honeycutt, White made his first violin. In 1980, White traveled overseas to Poland as a member of the prestigious Fulbright fellowship program. In Poland, White studied violin-making under esteemed Polish luthier Jan Pawlikowski.

Duet of the luthiers
Upon returning to New Mexico, White opened Old World Violins, a home-based shop, where he works with lifelong instrument-making partner Ken Keppeler.

Keppeler and his wife Jeanie McLerie, make up Bayou Seco, the world-renowned folk duo based in Silver City.

As a way to eke out some extra income, White and Keppeler started making violins as well as violas, cellow and mandolins. “That’s one thing that really changed about my violin-making today,” says White. “I don’t sell them anymore. I don’t do it for the money. When I first came to UNM, I wasn’t earning much, and my wife and I had three sons to raise so I started working real hard at it.”

White and Keppeler have fond memories of the days of Old World Violins. “Peter taught me how to really play,” says Keppeler.

“We would work jobs all day, then work late at night in the shop to make money. We didn’t agree on everything, but when it came to violin-making, we could always come together. It’s great to have a relationship like that.”

Word began to spread about the high quality and superior tone of the duo’s instruments and soon they were selling violins and mandolins to musicians like Norman Blake and Peter Ostroushko. “The value of my violins and mandolins went up as soon as Peter Ostroushko bought a violin and mandolin,” says White.

White’s violins are also played by a number of professional classical musicians around the country.

White’s current project is a replica of Guarneri del Gesu violin that dates to the early 1700s. The design for the instrument originated in Cremona, Italy, the Mecca of the violin-making world. Hand-shaped, -glued, -chiseled and –varnished, each fiddle takes time to complete. In more than 30 years of his craft, White guesses, he has made about 200 violins.

But the days of churning out violins in his spare time is over, says White. “Right now, I’m doing it purely for the art form, for the love of it,” says White, who also plays fiddle in the old-time sting band The Virginia Creepers.

“Music is all about who we are and where we come from,” says White. “It’s are meeting function and historical culture. It’s about what we can do with our hands and what sounds we can make and for what purpose – dancing, glorification of God, community, personal pleasure, romance, ritual, love. That’s why it’s so important that I share this.”