Instrument-maker Jason Viseltear's Reflections on Craig Trompeter's Baroque Cello

For Haymarket’s March 2025 performance of Stradella’s Ester, Craig Trompeter performed with a new cello built by instrument-maker Jason Viseltear out of New York. Viseltear has offered some thoughts about this cello and the process of making a historically-inspired instrument.

I’m grateful to introduce you to what it is we do, we instrument makers who, believe it or not, are still busy in our studios with wood chips and varnish, strings and tools.  

Making an instrument is in general a fairly engaging affair from the technical side, and from the artistic side as well.  Making an instrument for someone in particular adds another level of interest, where a maker can really put on one’s making cap and think about what will work for that particular performer, rather than producing a copy of what has existed before. Not that there's anything wrong with that, not at all, but a  commissioned piece for early-music performance provides a rare opportunity to make an instrument in a way seldom afforded the contemporary maker, one that allows a type of conversation with the origins of one’s craft by way of a deconstruction of the extant instruments that continue to inform it in the here and now.  That the thing produced is to work and work well for someone else—say, the artist onstage before you—presents a criterion for its success that might be considered the ethics of a craft object that it supports, contains, or protects. And like all good projects, this starts in conversation…

Made in 1692 in Milan by Carlo Giuseppe Testore, the original is in the collection of the Paris Opera Orchestra. I had a chance to study this instrument many years ago and found it a fitting model for those players like Craig who—long of limb or with a longer reach—would handle the size of it comfortably. It’s not a huge cello, certainly not as large as the 17th- and early 18th-century cellos that started out even larger, many if not most to be reduced in size a hundred years after their creation.  

(As string technology advanced, the lower voice would be supported by a shorter string length, which in turn allowed the construction of smaller cellos, or the reduction in size of existing ones, a development which I’m sure behooved the virtuosity of the cellists of that period.)  Still, the Testore model with a full-size string length allowed the gut strings—one of the aspects that make a Baroque instrument correct for period performance—to be tuned up, so to speak, and act like a higher-tension low note, which gives the instrument power and presence.  

That the largeness of this cello is accounted for almost exclusively in its lower bout (the curve in the instrument’s side) does not make it unmanageable to most cellists, but that it is proportionally suited to Craig was a feature not lost on us when considering which model to decide upon. Our “design brief” in hand, the making of it could be embarked upon. Its baroque configuration determines the method of its construction, which means not only the sizing of discrete parts common to all violin-family instruments, but also the order of construction, which is different for the period construction than the modern. The bass bar, for instance, is not as long in a Baroque instrument compared to a modern one. And in some cases the materials differ; for instance the fingerboard on the Baroque instrument is ebony veneer over a spruce core, rather than the denser and heavier solid piece of ebony used for modern performance.  The Baroque construction has the neck attached to the rib structure before the top plate is finished and attached, a recess being cut into the neck which is butted to the ribs, rather than mortised though the top and top block as would eventually become the mode.

Learn more about Haymarket’s 2025 performance of Stradella’s Ester.

About the author

Since 1995, Jason Viseltear has been making violins, violas, and cellos in his Manhattan studio.  Grounded in the methods of classical masters and employing the tools of Renaissance design, his work animates a dialogue between extant masterpieces and today’s state of the art; an approach informed as much by current technical and material researches as it is inspired by the performing desires of contemporary musicians.  

Dedicated solely to making new instruments and to providing the ongoing support fine players demand, Viseltear’s award-winning work is in the hands of concert musicians and professionals, as well as in esteemed conservatory and private collections including those of Juilliard, Harvard, Colburn, and Yale. He is a member of the American Federation of Violin and Bow Makers and since 2001 has worked alongside leading makers and scholars at the VSA Oberlin Workshops, a dedicated space for violin-focused inquiry.

About The Haymarket Review: This new digital publication including thoughts about  the work produced by Haymarket is designed to deepen our connection to audiences, nurture and feed audience curiosity about historical performance, offer critical opinions and thoughtful reflections on our performances, and provide a forum for Haymarket and its audience to connect through sharing insights, opinions, learning, and expertise.