| Opus 46 - Baroque Violin |
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The instrument seen here is based on a late baroque model, like those made in Mozart's time. The ribs, scroll and back are made of a single piece of European curly maple; the two-piece soundboard is made of European spruce. The flecked reddish-orange varnish has been applied in varying hues. The neck and tailpiece are inlaid with boxwood; and the nut and saddle are made of ivory, the fingerboard of ebony-covered maple, the pegs of ebony, and the endpin of polyester. 
Denis Cormier 
Video ExcerptDenis Cormier Montreal, Quebec 1991 Born into a family of fiddlers, Denis Cormier was exposed to the violin from an early age. Focusing on classical-violin making, he apprenticed under Frédéric Boyer in Paris for two years and also trained under the Dutch master Willem Bouman in The Hague. After returning to Montreal, he opened a workshop in 1980. What he builds, says Cormier, is a sound. This sound is, in fact, a special one: his modern and baroque violins are played by professional musicians in Canada, the United States, Europe and Japan. Denis Cormier has made a number of instruments for the Orchestre symphonique de Montreal, the Orchestre métropolitain, the Studio de musique ancienne, and the group I Musici.
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discussed under Opus 33, the baroque violin (prior to the 1800s)
differed from the modern violin. It had a smaller bass bar and soundpost,
and its neck, which was not inserted in the topblock, was only slightly
tilted. The bevelled fingerboard and the tailpiece were decorated
with marquetry. Today, the G string and sometimes the D string of the baroque
violin are made of gut wound with wire; but the other strings are all gut.
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