Theo Marks Transcript
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians, with Leah Roseman. In Episode Seven, Season One, I spoke with violin maker, Theo Marks from his workshop, and it was really interesting to hear about his childhood steeped in string instruments and string playing and his inspirations for becoming a violin maker, how that affected his life as a cellist, and really his perspectives on the craft. This is also available as a video as are all my conversations in this series. And please follow this podcast so you can be advised of all the new episodes coming out with a range of interesting musicians.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, welcome to my conversation with Theo Marks. He's joining us from the Netherlands in his luthier studio where he makes violins, violas and cellos. Hi, Theo.
Theo Marks:
Hello, Leah.
Leah Roseman:
So show us, I know it's a little hard with Zoom and the way things are set up, but can you kind of pan over and show us sort of what's hanging on the wall a little bit?
Theo Marks:
Yeah. So this is a workshop I've been in for almost 10 years now and which I'll be leaving in a month, so I've grown quite attached to this. It's a small, rather small space. Here's the view of Weesp out the window. This is a city just about 15 minutes... Just put the base bar in. It's close to Amsterdam, about a 15 minute train ride.
Theo Marks:
And it's just a wall of tools. It's the benches that I've taken with me from when I was studying in Parma, I brought all this wood and reassembled it here. This is my main working surface. It's a kind of a peninsula of a bench that sticks out into the room and I can walk around all three sides of it. That's something I've developed over the years to have this surface in the workshop and it's come in. It's the only place I work now. My other surfaces are just for clamps and storage, sharpening.
Leah Roseman:
Wow.
Theo Marks:
But it's all space. I work here alone entirely on making new instruments. The bane of many violin makers is repair work and bow rehairs, they can just pile up around you. And I'm able to focus on just one or two projects at a time, which makes a small space like this workable.
Leah Roseman:
Now, many of my listeners will know about your family. You come from a really amazing close-knit family of musicians and two of your brothers play in my orchestra. Jethro Marks is the Principal Violist of the National Arts Center Orchestra, and David Marks is the Associate Principal Violist. They're both amazing musicians. And I've met your younger brother, Vincent, who has played the viola with us as well. And I understand you're a cellist.
Theo Marks:
I am. So there's five of us, five brothers and yeah, violins and violas and cellos have been in my life for as long as I can remember. My father played in the Vancouver Symphony when I was born and growing up he had a... As we grew up, he stopped playing with the Symphony and became a full-time private teacher of violin. And I had three older brothers who were already playing by the time I could walk. So it was just a constant part, a daily part, of our life. I knew nothing other than that these compelling wooden boxes were just around and, yeah, we were a bit eccentric in the area where we grew up in Virginia in that there was no string program in the schools. So then we had a string quartet. We would play at weddings and so it quickly became really a part of my identity that I was seen as a sort of unusual musician, or our family, for sure, but it became something we were really known for, growing up, as the Marks String Quartet and that was from the age of 10.
Leah Roseman:
And does your mom play at all?
Theo Marks:
She plays piano but she was really the... She was a driving force behind, keeping it all organized and getting us to practice.
Leah Roseman:
How did she do that?
Theo Marks:
She's a music lover.
Leah Roseman:
How did she get you to practice?
Theo Marks:
I wonder now how she did it because I'm starting to do it with my kids.
Leah Roseman:
Right.
Theo Marks:
And it never felt... It never got ugly. It was just clear that was something we were expected to do if we also expected to have other things in the day.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I think often practicing is lonely, especially for children, but the fact that you could play together must have helped. So you had... You wanted to be able to play well, does that make sense like that?
Theo Marks:
Yeah. I never experienced it as being lonely, maybe because I was never... I mean, I had so much companionship with my brothers. It was maybe I very quickly felt a calm and respite and an enjoyment of the... I think it helps that our father was a real... He really enjoyed the physical, the technical aspect of playing and we would sometimes wake up for school and he would already have been up for a few hours watching Heifetz and Piatigorsky, VHS, and just practicing his bow arm and thinking about his thumb. And he would impart that excitement to us over the breakfast table, that he discovered something about his wrist. And I remember also being young, being 10, 11 years old and being alone and just playing a beginning, a Suzuki book, but already being aware of what it means to practice, to be critical of what you hear and try to be analytical about how to improve.
Leah Roseman:
So, as musicians, we have usually an internal sound that we want to produce, and, as a maker, you must have these internal sounds that you want to produce physically in the instrument.
Theo Marks:
Yeah. Which are always developing, ideals for instruments. I've found that what I'm looking for now in a violin is not what I thought I was looking for 10 years ago. And I'm not only looking for one thing either. I'm always surprised by a finished instrument and that there are aspects that I had hoped for. And there are aspects that I had hoped for that are there and there are aspects that are not there. And then there are things that I had not even imagined, which are there. And so I learn also, per instrument, what the possibilities are with my process.
Leah Roseman:
At what point do you have to stop? You can only take off so much wood. I'm just imagining when it gets pretty finished, maybe before you varnished it, is there a point where you know, "Well, I can't actually do too much more to affect the sound?"
Theo Marks:
Well, I mean, of course set-up also affects the sound so much. So almost, even after you've varnished, there's still a road. You're constantly molding the sound in your mind up until, and even up until even after, you've set it up and you've heard its first notes, you're still in the process of trying to find what that instrument's voice is.
Leah Roseman:
And this is such an old art form. The violin as we know it has been around for almost 500 years. I'm imagining not that much has changed in its construction.
Theo Marks:
No, it's amazing. Yeah. It's something I definitely enjoy is the feeling that I'm practicing an ancient... Or at least something that has... There's something magical about the process that it has not needed to be changed, that it's sprung almost fully formed from Andrea Amati, that it's seen... Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
I'm curious about the wood because it's always, "Okay. We use maple for the back and the sides and spruce for the top." Correct?
Theo Marks:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
And why aren't people experimenting with that? Or are some makers experimenting with different...
Theo Marks:
There are, and they can make very successful instruments with... I mean, I've seen... And of course with the cellos and violas you can use willow or poplar but even I've seen elm and fruit trees and these can be very successful sounding instruments, but often not traditionally Italian sounding or at least... There's a certain sound which a lot of the repertoire was written for at least and that particular sound seems best served really with spruce top and the back and sides you have some more leeway on. But with guitars you can make cedar tops and pine tops but that's difficult with violin making, they seem to have a smaller range, in the top, of what you can use.
Leah Roseman:
Can you talk to us about your varnish process, how you make varnish and why it's important?
Theo Marks:
Yeah. I make varnish and I have always made my own varnish and I don't make large batches of it. I almost make per instrument, I cook up a new batch of varnish and it's not a very long, laborious or complicated process. There are only three ingredients, which is the colophony, the resin from a pine tree, linseed oil, and turpentine to dilute. The key is in the proportion between the oil and the resin. The harder... The more oil in it, the more durable it'll be in the end but it'll miss some of the hardness and brilliance. It'll be durable like leather is durable. And resin, the more resin you put in, the more brittle and brilliant the varnish will be but if you make it too brittle it'll crack and chip away.
Theo Marks:
And it's not that every layer has the same proportion, either. There's a ground layer of varnish that you use and then there's a few layers of not necessarily colored varnish, you don't need to add pigment to the colophony because by cooking it, the longer you cook colophony the darker and richer the color becomes. If you're patient and cook it without burning it you can get a deep ruby red color and it's completely transparent, something that pigments will never be.
Leah Roseman:
I have a Cuypers, actually, a Dutch instrument.
Theo Marks:
Oh, okay.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, and my husband has a much older violin and sometimes I'll hold our instruments and just think all the players who must have played this, it's had such history, it's quite incredible. When you were studying in Italy and when you were first starting out, learning the art, were there things that surprised you about the process?
Theo Marks:
Yeah. Well, I'd say I'm amazed at how little I knew of the process, as a musician. And I see that often with musicians now I'm... I think if you just go through once and see the process from finish to end, you'll learn so much about how your violin functions. I mean, I can imagine that I barely was aware that I had a sound post in my cello, as a teenager, and that the fingerboard might need - that the arching of my cello was affecting its tone at the f-holes. You can so easily focus just on the technical aspects of playing. And I find now as a cellist I'm really enriched as a musician being more aware of how that wood is vibrating and what I'm hearing and how what I can do to affect that and how much is coming from the instrument itself.
Theo Marks:
Yeah. The process as I went through it in Italy, there wasn't one specific step that surprised me. It might have surprised me how many steps there were, that it's not that you're given a chunk of wood and you have to just carve for days and days on this piece of wood to make a violin. It's really dozens and dozens of smaller steps and so it's not overwhelming at all. Everyone finds their own recipe as to exactly in what order they do these steps. I think that may be part of the elegance in how the process of constructing a violin has stayed the same, that it's really quite strictured exactly what elements need to be made and how many there are and what you have to do, in what order you do have to do things in order to be able to do the next step.
Leah Roseman:
And I imagine when you're making an instrument there's time where it needs to wait before you go on, like we talked about how long does it take you from beginning to end, but then there would be times during that time where you're waiting for something.
Theo Marks:
Not much.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Theo Marks:
I mean, there's times when glue needs to dry but an animal glue will dry in an hour and a half and there's always the scroll that you can work on in the meantime. There doesn't need to be a dead moment. There's always something that you could work on.
Leah Roseman:
And do cellos take more time in correlation to the size?
Theo Marks:
Yeah, because the process is identical. The steps and the order in which I do them are the same. It's just a question of moving more wood.
Leah Roseman:
So how long would it take you to build a cello from beginning to end if you had nothing else to do?
Theo Marks:
If I had nothing else to do?
Leah Roseman:
Well. Just an average, yeah.
Theo Marks:
Well, I mean, these days with four children and a wife who's working full time as well, it still doesn't take as long as many musicians assume. At least, I mean, I'm building now almost my 100th instrument and so I've become faster, at least in many steps of the process I've become faster, and on some steps which I find now more important, I've become much slower. For example, the arching of an instrument and the thicknessing of the plates, I spend a much larger proportion of my time doing that. And a lot of the basic construction of building the ribs and linings and the scroll, these I can now... Yeah, I enjoy working fast and I think I...
Theo Marks:
It's a bit of my building ethos, is to build fast. I like the look of an instrument that's been built not with precision in mind but with a larger concept where you really... You can see the scroll not as an individual element but it really... It's not seen as all the different angles and things but as one sculpture and I find I can do that more easily if I can carve the scroll in two sittings. So that could take maybe eight hours, whereas my first scroll, I might have spent weeks upon it and it doesn't necessarily make it more attractive or artistically compelling.
Theo Marks:
So a cello will take me... Without varnish? That's kind of the question is how long does it take to make an instrument? And then, so, to build an instrument before varnishing will take me up to a month and a half, and then with the varnishing process and the set-up, and then playing it, and then working on the set-up again and polishing the varnish and all of that, I take longer and longer with that. I often now, after I've finished an instrument, I like to keep it in my shop for an extra six months sometimes if possible, just to find what it wants.
Leah Roseman:
Your wife Mintje is a wonderful violinist. In fact, she's going to be joining the National Arts Center Orchestra as our new Principal Second Violinist so you'll be moving to my area soon. And so, does she help you with your violins, like just playing them in a bit, giving you feedback?
Theo Marks:
Yeah, for sure. She always has. She's been great at... Yeah, she won't... She doesn't necessarily say... It's difficult when an instrument is brand new to know what to say. You feel like it's a... You have to let it breathe and hear it in a different situation and... But no, there are times. I mean, she's playing on a violin of mine now for the past three years and she has tried others and she's definitely been helpful, that I can play the cellos and she the violins.
Theo Marks:
And my brothers, of course, as well, they can try the violas.
Theo Marks:
And they're very honest. Yeah, I think they know that that's the best for me, is if they say exactly what they hear and feel.
Leah Roseman:
Is it hard to source old enough wood? Because the old masters had these very old trees, I imagine, in terms of the density.
Theo Marks:
They didn't.
Leah Roseman:
No? Okay.
Theo Marks:
That's a bit of a myth that they used very old wood. Their wood now is old of course.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Theo Marks:
But they can do dendrochronology on wood and they found that some of del Gesù's greatest instruments, he used wood that was cut one to two years before he used it. And that's all you really need if it's dried well for the top, two to three, five years.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I didn't mean when it was cut I meant the age of the tree in terms of the rings.
Theo Marks:
Oh, I see. No, that's not a problem. The forests where I get my spruce are, well, it's the same forest really where the Italians have been getting their wood for centuries in the Dolomites and it's quite well... It's harvested with a thought to maintaining trees of a certain age.
Leah Roseman:
I was also wondering before we end... I should tell our listeners that you don't have a cello to play for us in your workshop, which is too bad, but could you talk a little about the steam bending of the ribs because that's a very interesting thing in terms of the construction?
Theo Marks:
Yes, it's the one bent... Let's see, I can show a rib. A rib would be this. This is the side of the instrument and as you can see it's only about one millimeter thick.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Theo Marks:
And this would've been a straight piece and then you moisten it and you can bend it around a hot iron and it's done within 20 seconds. What's good about maple is it also maintains its... Once it's bent, it remains bent. Here's the cello. There you can see the bent pieces.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Theo Marks:
So there's six of them, three on each side. Three there, three here.
Leah Roseman:
And there's a little insert, I think it's called the purfling.
Theo Marks:
See that?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Theo Marks:
There it's three strips of wood, black, white, and black.
Leah Roseman:
Does it give an actual-
Theo Marks:
It runs around the entire.
Leah Roseman:
Sorry. Does it give it strength?
Theo Marks:
That's the idea.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Theo Marks:
On the back it's adornment, it's just for aesthetics. On the top, there can be an argument made that the spruce would be likely to split if it were to get a hard impact and that these three pieces of wood which are inlaid, maybe two thirds the depth of the wood, that they might stop a crack from continuing further than the purfling and I have seen older instruments where a crack has started on the edge and has not continued past the purfling. I think that if you see an instrument without purfling it looks so naked, it's like a face without eyebrows or something. I think it quickly caught on aesthetically.
Leah Roseman:
Can you tell us about, maybe, just the first violin you made? And...
Theo Marks:
Yeah, so I studied cello in Bloomington for one year and that's where I met Mintje. I followed her to Europe soon after, before finishing my degree, and I studied fine arts in Utrecht in the Netherlands while she studied violin there. And I remained for a few years and got a Masters in Fine Art and during that time I was not playing classical cello. I was playing cello with some Turkish folk musicians and improvising more than I had ever done before. Once I finished getting my Master's degree there I really missed, yeah... Just as I said, these instruments had been in my life since I could remember and I missed the whole atmosphere around them and I guess I had always enjoyed creating things with my hands as well. I studied printmaking.
Theo Marks:
Then my brother, Paolo, who is older than me, he also had studied cello in Bloomington, but he also studied violin making there. They had a string technology course. So I knew that he was building violins and I had spent some time in his workshop. I'm sure most musicians have had the experience of being in a violin maker's shop or in a dealer or just... There's a certain magic to that. I remember as a kid buying my first cello in Weavers in Maryland and that stuck with me for a long time. The atmosphere of all those instruments and the smell of the varnishing they did there.
Theo Marks:
So I left Europe for a summer and went to build my first violin with Paolo in his workshop and he led me through the process. That's the first time I went through the entire process and the violin I made was a very eccentric model. Paolo let me just design. He let me design the model from the start and it took me three times as long as it takes me now to build a violin and it had no sound to speak of but that process was enough to convince me that this was something I could imagine doing for the rest of my life. At least that's what I thought. And I believe that to this day.
Leah Roseman:
I saw the beautiful little documentary that was made with Paolo, interviewing him, and he shows all the processes. So I'm going to link that in the description on this video. So people can watch that and see him in his workshop.
Theo Marks:
Good idea.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So I know it's the evening there. It's been a long day for you so I just wanted to thank you so much for speaking to me today and I hope when you move to the Ottawa area maybe we can play a bit together and we can try -
Theo Marks:
I know we will.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Theo Marks:
Thanks for inviting me.
Leah Roseman:
Well, thank you.
Theo Marks:
And I look forward to, yeah, we'll be seeing each other beginning of next season.
Leah Roseman:
We will.
Leah Roseman:
Season One of this podcast had 20 episodes and Season Two continues with a really interesting mix of musicians talking about their lives and careers with perspectives on overcoming challenges, finding inspiration and connection through a life so enriched with music. Please follow this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, to be informed about each new episode.
