End of an era

The death of renowned violin expert Charles Beare raises questions about how we can know what we know about instruments in the age of data

It’s a cliché to describe someone’s death as an end of an era, but in the case of violin expert Charles Beare, who died, aged 87, on 26 April, it is accurate. His death is a huge personal loss for his family and friends, and for the many musicians, luthiers and colleagues to whom he gave his time and knowledge. But it also marks the end of an epistemological age – that of the supreme expert.

Beare was regarded as unofficial Emperor of the violin world. What he said about instruments usually went, and in an informal way, he presided over a certain code of honour, inasmuch as the there can be one in a million-pound business. Born into a family of violin dealers – the fourth generation, no less – he studied violin craft in Mittenwald and expertise at Wurlitzer’s (where he apparently had access to 110 Strads and 57 Guarneris, he told David Schoenbaum for his book, The Violin).

He was also blessed, reputedly, with a photographic memory, creating a perfect storm of unimpeachable knowledge – seeing great instruments by the benchful, understanding their construction and remembering their most intimate details. (He himself was scathing about musicians going into the business without enough experience of the making process, in this New Yorker article.) He also seemed to have a natural curiosity and intellect, and, from my few meetings with him when I was at The Strad, the calm, patrician manners of an old-school gentleman, which must have served him well with string superstars and millionaire investors alike.

For those of us who struggle to remember names and basic words now, a photographic memory is enviable. In the days when a black-and-white photograph print or detailed notes such as the Hill’s made were the only evidence to go on, the authority granted by such a memory was supreme. Back then, a photograph or written records were powerful in proving the provenance of an instrument – Charles Beare himself bought Arthur Hill’s diaries. Now, we can photograph any f-hole or purfling we see on our phone and send it across the world in seconds, and many sales records and auction reports have been shared online. Violin knowledge has become democratised, to a large extent, and dealers consult, discuss and negotiate with each other about ‘the truth’.

This epistemological shift – how we know what we know and who defines that – is true of knowledge in general. In my early days at The Strad, in the 2000s, we referred to Grove Encyclopedia for musical facts and Henley Universal Encyclopedia for lutherie dates and names. These huge, expensive tomes sat on the shelves and their information was deemed ‘the truth’, even though their contents had often been superceded by the very experts who were writing for the magazine.

And then came the era of Wikipedia, which sources knowledge from any self-proclaimed expert with the time and will to add seemingly objective information to topics both niche and broad, to be constantly overwritten by others with ‘better’ information, tending, ideally, towards the perfect truth. At first it seemed a truly miraculous resource but the model inevitably became tainted (there is even a Wikipedia page on why Wikipedia is unreliable). People will always disagree on basic facts and their interpretation, opposing ideas can both be true, and malign or promotional agendas creep in. The violin business often works on this crowd-source model in attributing stringed instruments, with dealers tussling over instruments. The main difference with other forms of knowledge is that in the violin world, contrary opinions can cost millions and there are always winners and losers.

And now, we seem to be heading into the era of AI, where knowledge is turning into the collection and processing of data points from every available source. A computer churns it all up and spits it out in answer to any question you ask. As violin expertise becomes more data driven – dendrochronolgy, CT scans, varnish analysis, sound profiles – it’s feasible to think that eventually all this data will coalesce on some giant server and tell us anything we want to know about any instrument, maybe even including a market value. As I know from my experiments with ChatGPT text, though, it does generic information very well, but generally gets facts slightly wrong, and usually misunderstands any real meaning. This might improve as it learns, but it also means that genuine and specific expertise and research will still matter, as long as we believe it. Fortunately there are still violin experts with the integrity and conscientiousness to improve their knowledge, but in today’s digitised world and globalised market, it’s hard to think of there ever being another Charles Beare.

Aside from his expertise, maybe less known is the enormous impact Beare made on the violin making craft in the UK and abroad. Many people I spoke to for a book on Newark Violin Making School talked of his generosity and support. He sat on the school’s advisory panel from the outset and contributed to the cost of its building when it moved in 1976. He also put his time into supporting students, adjudicating at its lutherie competition, bringing in fine instruments for the students to study and employing many of its graduates. Many alumni from the school’s heyday went on to become leading makers around the world. Aside from the many thousands of certificates that bear his name and a certain blue-chip authenticity, perhaps this is his greatest legacy.