The Allegorical Art Work On The "Leila Pomposa"

In what is arguably the most conservative craft on the planet, it is rare when a violin maker receives a commission from someone genuinely open to non-traditional concepts. In this regard working with Rudolf Haken, professor of viola at the University of Illinois, has been a profound pleasure. If anything, Rudolf has pushed me--the supposed innovative violin maker--in directions and to heights I never would have explored on my own. I am grateful and am already hoping for a chance to investigate some of these artistic arenas again.

Any endeavor of this nature requires satisfying the criteria of both the artist and the individual commissioning the work. The following were Rudolf’s wishes: He wanted the art work to be a celebration of family, especially featuring his wife, Leila (pronounced lee-lah). And implicit in this was the celebration of ethnicity, for Rudolf is of German descent and Leila is of East Indian descent.

I had goals, too: The practice of decorating stringed instruments is as old as the violin itself. The earliest examples were commissioned by members of the nobility and, almost invariably, it is their coats of arms that are proudly painted on the backs of these 400-year-old instruments. The paintings are done in oils--opaque pigments--and, although lovely, they necessarily blot out the often beautiful wood that they are painted over. I wanted to find a way to make the paintings transparent, hopefully achieving a kind of holographic effect where the paintings were the focal point, but where the wood showed perfectly through them. My other wish was that, in addition to celebrating family, we celebrated music, the kind of music that compels, evokes and transforms spiritually.

This is what the project evolved into: We began with the traditional East Indian greeting, Namaste, the word being actually painted on the viola in the southern Indian Kannada language and alphabet, the native language of Leila's father. Literally, Namaste means “I bow to the divine in you”, and the person doing the greeting puts his palms together in a gesture of prayer. Here we have Rudolf’s hands--the hands that make the music--in a gesture recognizing through music that we can transcend our petty squabbles and dislikes and remember that we are all equally a part of the “great plan.” That is, after all, music making at its highest “octave.”

Soap bubbles are floating out of Rudolf's hands in playful fashion and he is, metaphorically, giving birth to three, child-like spirits of music. This is, again, based on an East Indian concept. In western culture mothers are the ones who give birth. But in Hindu tradition it is Brahma, the great masculine principle, who is the manifestor of form. The three musical spirits, displayed in their other-worldly transparent bodies, each symbolize a different quality. Music usually captures us first through our emotions, so, to start with, we have the musical spirits of sadness and joy. One of them is depicted lightheartedly through Rudolf and Leila’s son, Nicolas, who is still “stuck” inside his bubble and isn’t happy about it. Their daughter, Sofia, has managed to escape and is happily floating on a bubble cloud.

But once music captures us, especially if it is presented in the spirit of “Namaste,” it has the power to transform--to cause us to reach to new heights. So finally we have son Oliver who, like the happy spirit, is bursting from his “little world,” but unlike her, is using his explosion as a genuine metamorphosis, stretching to the heavens.

With Oliver there are two symbols. First, his arms are in a pose based on a traditional East Indian dance. Second, in a nod to the German literary classic "Kleider Machen Leute" ("Clothes Make People"), Oliver is shirtless. In this satirical short story the principal character is a peasant. One day, he inadvertently puts on the garb of an aristocrat and finds his entire life improved--not because of anything he did to deserve it--but simply due to the unearned privilege that came with mistaken identity. By contrast, the third musical spirit in this painting is the one who represents real transformation; he must leave all trappings and crutches behind.

And literally crowning the whole instrument is Leila herself, the feminine principle without whose intuitive dream none of this could ever happen. Further, she is not looking back at her family--both literal and metaphoric--but is, rather, looking at the audience in a gesture of out-flowing. So, symbolically, the dream that has come from intuition and that is manifested through sound, then spreads like a healing balm beyond itself. Leila is carved in pearwood, the wood choice of the greatest eighteenth century German luthier, Jacob Stainer. He was fond of carving lion’s heads instead of scrolls and, when he did, he always used pearwood.

Finally, on the belly of the instrument is a small painting which is another celebration of Leila. It is actually a pun. Leila is a professional harpist. Most concert harps have foot pedals that the player uses to change keys. But there is a kind of harp that has hand-held hooks instead of pedals. In English this model is called a hook harp. In German it becomes Hakenharfe, Haken, of course, being Leila and Rudolf's surname. So if one says in German "Leila Haken's Harfe" it means the harp Belonging to Leila Haken. But if one removes only one letter of her name and makes the phrase into two German words: "lila Hakenharfe", then its meaning changes to lilac hook harp, or purple hook harp. And sure enough, here is a concert harp growing out of a bunch of purple lilac blossoms. And the whole painting is placed as closely as possible to what, on a human, would be the heart center.

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