Antonio Stradivari made very few violas. Eleven survive to this day.
One has just been gifted to the Library of Congress.
Maybe it will get taken out to play Happy Birthday to the President.
Here’s the official notification:
The Library of Congress has acquired the historic 1690 Tuscan-Medici viola by Antonio Stradivari as a gift to the nation from David and Amy Fulton and The Tuscan Corporation. The contralto viola was previously on loan to the Library by The Tuscan Corporation (of the Cameron Baird family) in a collaborative custodial arrangement since December 1977.
The viola joins the Library of Congress’ world-renowned instrument collection, which is anchored by the five Stradivari instruments donated by Gertrude Clarke Whittall in 1935. The viola, the second of the Library’s collection, has been renamed to commemorate its newest chapter: Antonio Stradivari, Cremona, 1690, viola, Fulton, ex Baird, Tuscan-Medici.
The Tuscan-Medici viola was commissioned from Stradivari in 1690 by Ferdinando de’ Medici, the grand prince of Tuscany and patron of music in Florence, to form a Stradivari quintet with instruments previously gifted to him. By the late 1700s, the viola left Italy and arrived in England. It remained there with various owners – including the collectors Alexander Glennie, F. de Rougemont, and Avery-Tyrell – until 1924, when it was sold to the American amateur musician and Macy’s department store heir Herbert N. Straus.
In 1957, Cameron Baird, violist, philanthropist and chairman of the Music Department at the State University of New York, Buffalo, purchased the instrument from the Straus estate. The esteemed violin workshop of W.E. Hill & Sons wrote to Baird that the contralto was “one of the finest of the ten existing examples of the maker [Stradivari], its preservation being as remarkable as the beauty of its appearance.” Upon Baird’s death in 1960, the instrument passed to his wife, Jane Baird, who placed it on loan with the Library of Congress in 1977.
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