A short documentary takes us inside the workshop of master luthier Xavier Vidal i Roca, and provides a glimpse of how a cello is made.
In the video, we see luthier Eduard Bosque Miñana creating the cello from scratch: from initial measurements, lines, and cuts to stain finishing, stringing, and tuning — all with painstaking detail and craftsmanship. No power tools are used (at least not on camera). We see Miñana working with chisels, palette knives, and other hand tools.
Music essayist Ramón Andrés provides commentary throughout the documentary:
"I think that a luthier is a craftsman in his greater degree of expression. The concept of an artist is fairly recent, a modern idea somehow, that comes from the 18th century when the artist, touched by a kind of genius, wanted to distance himself from the craftsmen because he felt they belonged to a lower level. Therefore, as I do not consider a craftsman to be less than an artist, I think that an Amati, Stradivari, Guarneri... were craftsmen in their highest degree of knowledge."
Andrés goes on:
"The cello, as a very important instrument, embodies the romantic way of saying/expressing the modern consciousness. It is a voice that resembles our expression of consciousness, intimacy, warmth/fullness. It is lyrical and tragic at once, and also epic and melancholic; like we human beings are."
Watch a cello be created from scratch in the video below.
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