Chapter 4 - ‘Awake my Cetra, Harp and Lute’: John Frederick Hintz and the Cult of Exotic Instruments

Summary

MUSICAL history is largely concerned with composers and their compositions. Leaf through any general music dictionary and it soon becomes clear that most of the space is taken up with biographies of composers, histories of musical genres, accounts of music in particular places, and so on. But the music business also depends on many ancillary trades: copyists, publishers, printers, instrument makers, repairers, keyboard tuners, and latterly promoters, managers, agents, journalists, and critics. This chapter uses a case-study of an instrument maker working in mid-eighteenth-century London to place the gamba in the context of the cult of exotic instruments at the time, and to investigate the role the cult played in musical and cultural changes in England in the second half of the eighteenth century.

John Frederick Hintz appears in some dictionaries of violin makers, even though he does not seem to have made violins, and that most of the information (repeated parrot-fashion from dictionary to dictionary) is incorrect. The following is typical:

HINDS, FREDERICK. / Worked in London, 1740-1776. Made admirably modelled viol-da-gambas, some since converted into ‘cellos. Rash and petulant critics have occasionally called-down his varnish, but their censure is entirely wrong. Also produced a few violins that meet the eye very agreeably indeed, and super-added to this is an invitingly mellow, though not large, tone. Guitars and zithers bear his name. / F. Hinds, Maker / Ryder’s Court, Leicester Fields /17 London 76.

Hintz (the form ‘Hinds’ does not appear in any contemporary source) set up shop as an instrument maker in 1752, not 1740, and he died in 1772, so he cannot have made an instrument in 1776. Viols and English guitars survive by him, and he claimed to make a number of other exotic types. Violins were part of his stockin- trade at his death, though he never claimed to make them.

Most attention has been devoted to Hintz’s viols. Seven are known at present: (1) a seven-string bass dated 1760 (London, Victoria and Albert Museum); four medium-size instruments (with a body-length of about 57 cm), often described as tenors: (2) 1762 (Copenhagen); (3) 1762 (private collection, USA) (Plate 4); (4) 1763 (Ann Arbor), now a violoncello; (5) ?1764 (Edinburgh); and two small alto-size instruments (with a body-length of about 44 cm): (6) undated (private collection, USA) (Plate 5) and (7) undated (unknown private collection).