The History of Ole Bull’s Violin

Ole Bull’s favorite violin had lived more lives than most people.

It was made by the old master Caspar di Salo. For about 150 years it sat safely in the museum at Innsbruck, placed there by a cardinal as a prime example of di Salo’s work. Then came 1809: French soldiers sacked the place. The violin was carried off by one of them and eventually sold to Herr Rhehazek, a Viennese official who poured nearly all his wealth into a serious violin collection.

When Ole Bull visited Vienna in 1839, he saw the instrument and decided he *had* to own it. Rhehazek refused to sell, but offered one promise: if it ever went on the market, Bull would get first refusal—at the steep price of four thousand ducats. Bull agreed.

Two years later Bull was dining in Leipzig with Liszt and Mendelssohn when a sealed letter arrived from Vienna: Rhehazek had died, and his son was honoring the deal. Liszt said Ole must be crazy to pay that much for a violin he’d never heard; Mendelssohn called it the kind of extravagance only a fiddler could manage. Bull bought it anyway—and went on to win some of his greatest triumphs with it.