+ By Terese Schlachter + Photos by Emily Karcher Schmitt
To be a luthier is to be a preservationist, a guardian, a conservator of all things string. The word luthier, meaning a person who makes and repairs stringed musical instruments, is derived from the lute, an instrument dating back millenia and was perhaps brought to Europe during the Crusades. Antonio Stradivari, born in 1644, is regarded as the greatest violin maker in history. Six hundred and fifty of his handcrafted instruments are still around, some in museums, some in the able hands of lucky musicians. William Shakespeare was known to go on about how these stringed instruments could transport a listener to a seventeenth-century utopia.
It’s a lot to uphold for 37-year-old Rebecca Hannigan, who is Annapolis’ only violin, cello, and viola luthier. She is primarily a steward of the violin, which finds its roots in sixteenth-century Italy. She’s never actually made a violin; Hannigan would rather perpetuate than create.
“There’s a portion of this that is like art preservation more than being a repair person, because these things, if they’re built well and they’re taken care of, should outlast us,” says Hannigan. She’s sitting at her workbench in a handsome suite, snugged into an industrial-looking building, belying the sleek, sensual nature of the classical wood-carved pieces hanging uniformly within.
On the front counter sit two small ornamental wood pieces, carved by her grandfather, who taught a young Hannigan to wield a whittling knife.
Her mother’s violin sits nearby, on a stand, looking as if it’s been well cradled. When Hannigan was seven years old, she begged her parents for lessons. At 11, she announced her intentions to become a professional violinist. She attended Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, majoring in violin performance. But then an English class sent her into Williams Fine Violins and Luthier Studio, where she interviewed the staff for an essay assignment.
“I’m sitting in this interview [thinking that] this feels like home ’cuz there’s the wood shavings and the tools and the smell and the cutting wood, and immediately it felt like this is what I’m born to do,” recalls Hannigan. She landed a job in that shop for a spell before heading to Red Wing, Minnesota, for a year of violin repair school. Back in Nashville, she became a luthier at Williams. What followed for the next several years was a series of jobs and hops: gigging, quartet performances aboard cruise ships, babysitting, more gigging, teaching, selling pasta at a farmers’ market, working at two violin shops in Chicago, and then more cruise ship shows. Lute making does not lend itself to loot making—“Everyone has side hustles,” says Hannigan. At one point, she had a half-dozen of them.
Annapolis is home for Hannigan, and the time seemed right for a little hometown exploration. The question was whether the number of strings and fingers in the city could support a local luthier. Several schools in the region have music programs, including Anne Arundel Community College. There’s also Chesapeake Youth Symphony Orchestra, Annapolis Symphony Academy, and Annapolis Symphony Orchestra. Reasoning that every cello, violin, and viola player in the area needs regular maintenance, and some will need repair, she moved into her grandparents’ vacant home and opened a small shop on State Circle above the Annapolis Pottery. She called it Bows and Violins. At first, she repaired by appointment in her shop and taught violin at Garrett Park Music, where she met a guitar luthier named Taras Andre. “Luthiers like to talk about things like sandpaper and glue,” explains Hannigan. It wasn’t long before the two luthiers promised to love, honor, and cherish but never cross strings. “I don’t work on guitars, and he doesn’t work on violins,” Hannigan says of her husband. “Everyone’s a doctor, but you don’t want a dentist working on your feet.”
Violin repair is solitary, precise, and specific. “It’s architecture. Every little thing matters—every little millimeter. The height, the thickness, what’s hollowed out, every little cut,” she says, picking up a bridge, which is a wooden piece that hold the strings away from the body of the instrument and is positioned between the fingerboard and the fine tuners. Every bridge is different, its feet curving to fit the contour of the instrument, the slots at the top just deep enough to properly hold strings. Inside the violin is a small wooden bar, called a soundpost. The relationship of the soundpost to the bridge is, Harrigan explains, “everything” about how the violin plays. It’s all custom. An infinitesimal malalignment can cause a nasty hum or simply make a player uncomfortable.
Hannigan tends to instruments that suffer from neglect—those that have deteriorated due to dormancy. She rescues violins from car crashes, errant feet, and slippery hands. Recently, one day, a college candidate preparing for an audition that night showed up with an open seam and a crack in the top of her violin. Hannigan was able to quickly glue (using hide glue) the instrument and send the student on her way, preventing an embarrassing rattle from ruining her performance. “There are all sorts of emergencies,” says Hannigan. “Sometimes I gotta decide who’s the bigger emergency, who’s bleeding out, who has a concert tonight, who needs their instrument back sooner.” Her skills lie in being able to diagnose a problem and fix it in the most ethical way. That means preserving original wood and not using damaging glue or epoxy, because the seal should be reversible; instruments are designed to be opened.
Violin predicaments come and go, but bows create a steady demand. The stick of the bow is made of wood and stretched from tip to tip with horsehair. It takes about 150 pieces of a horse’s hair to make a bow—Hannigan says there’s no good synthetic alternative. With use, the horsehair ages out and needs replacing. To get the best sound, the hair must be pulled tight and straight, fitted with plugs at each end of the stick. Many luthiers get bored with rehairs, but they’re Hannigan’s bread and butter and her specialty.
Her passion has earned her a “Just take it to Miss Becca” reputation among students with ailing instruments. She finds that not only heartwarming but also good for business. She busted out of her quaint space downtown and landed in a bigger, multiroom shop on Defense Highway at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Her new first-floor location, with ample parking and the ability to provide curb service, saved her. She now has two employees, both named Katie. Front-room Katie handles the reception desk; back-room Katie is also a luthier.
All the intricacy, schooling, and demands, says Hannigan, are, in the end, to make music. “Music transcends the spoken word. It’s the air we breathe, the water we need to stay alive,” she says. Reflecting on old music and creating new music is cross-cultural and omnipresent. “It’s at the wedding, it’s at the funeral, the military march and the protest.” While protest music doesn’t normally conjure images of fine instruments tucked between clean-shaven chins and stiff collars and pearls, the music chamber has been used to deliver political messages. In 1989, Leonard Bernstein conducted a Christmas concert celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall. He performed the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, “Ode to Joy,” as “Ode to Freedom.” “Do You Hear the People Sing,” the recurring song in the musical adaptation of Les Misérables (based on the 1862 Victor Hugo novel) often features stringed instruments and has been used in modern anti-government protests in Hong Kong and Thailand.
The violin industry thrives on tradition, but there’s also what Hannigan thinks is a sea change afoot in the string music business. She’s one of a slowly growing group of female luthiers in the traditionally male arena. “My grandmother was a doctor who graduated from a military medical school when the ratio was something like 200 men to one woman,” she says. “She’s an inspiration.” In Minnesota, Hannigan studied under Elizabeth Nelson Butler, who was one of the first two women to graduate from the Violin Making School of America in Salt Lake City, Utah. “She gave me a lot of really good advice,” she says. The violin industry is becoming more accessible, thanks to a breakdown between competitors—more of a willingness to share secrets.
“These are things that are bigger than time,” says Hannigan of her industry’s long roots. “Violin making and restoration has made it through hundreds of years, through big wars, big plagues, countries being reshuffled, more wars, the pandemic, even concentration camps. Whatever happens, we know that music is going to outlast everything.”
