WILLIAM HOFMANN: William (Willy) Hofmann, who has died aged 73, was the last of five generations of instrument makers whose craft sprang from the heartland of German music in Lower Saxo- ny, and whose personal history provides us with links not only to the Dublin of the 19th century but also to the world of Richard Wagner.
When Adolf Wilhelmj, the son of Wagner's favourite konzertmeister, August, came to Ireland in 1898 to teach at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin's Westland Row, he rapidly realised that the city was in need of a first-class maker and repairer of stringed instruments. On the advice of August, he succeeded in attracting Gustav Meinel, then working in London, who set up shop, first in Westland Row and then shortly after in nearby Lincoln Place.
It was this premises which was known to generations of musicians, and passers-by, as "Hofmann's", a legendary boutique fantasque over which, on Meinel's death in 1919, Georg Wilhelm Hofmann presided and, from 1963, his son Willy.
To the passer-by, the little shop with its roller-blinds and glimpses of fiddles awaiting repair was an exotic extension of the music of mittelEurop, a suggestion of what they might find if they ventured to Leipzig or Weimar or Dresden; to the student who had been sent there by the great teachers at the RIAM - Achille Simonetti, Jaroslav Vanacek, Nancie Lord, or Willy's own teacher, Feruccio Grossi - it was a Mecca where they began to appreciate the art of making and maintaining their instruments in top condition, and to understand the aesthetics of practical musicianship.
As a player of both viola and double-bass, Willy Hofmann worked for a time under the baton of Seán Ó Riada in the Abbey orchestra during its exile at the Queen's Theatre, as well as the Gaiety and Olympic theatres, where a small band of musicians would entertain before the shows and in the intervals and, in the Abbey, providing music often composed by the music director, in this case Ó Riada.
Willy Hofmann attended school at the Holy Faith Convent in Haddington Road and later CBS Dún Laoghaire, before beginning an apprenticeship with his father, which imbued in him a knowledge and a love of fine instruments which he, in turn, was to pass on to the thousands of customers who entered Hofmann's for anything as small as a block of rosin, or a set of strings, or as big as a rebuild of their fiddle or cello or even double-bass. (Willy would proudly display the original brass plates from the neck of the Duke of Leinster's Klotz-made double-bass from Mittelwald which his father had converted from a three-string to a four-string instrument.)
Although Willy won prizes in the craft section of the RDS Spring Shows (and was later a judge for the same competitions), he was not at heart an instrument maker, and early on he abandoned this in favour of that which made him a household name among string players not only in Ireland but internationally, when visiting players would "attend" his workshop for essential repairs. Yossi Zivoni once expressed amazement when Willy refused payment for a repair to the neck of his Guadagnini - with the explanation, "It's a privilege to have been able to examine it."
And "examine" was what Willy did with precision and insight, building up an encyclopaedic knowledge of the history, ownership, condition and whereabouts of violins worldwide, which was an important part of his close relationship with the London auction house of Phillips, for whom he dealt extensively.
Willy Hofmann vacated his Lincoln Place premises in 1972. (The move was marked by an RTÉ television documentary which, by coincidence, was directed by James Plunkett Kelly, who is also commemorated on this page.) He relocated his workshop in his house in Sydenham Road, Ballsbridge, and later still moved to Greystones where for some years he worked in partnership with the instrument maker, Conchobhar Ruiséal, before entering semi-retirement at his home in Kilpedder.
His passing will astonish many who grew up reliant on his seemingly immortal skills which, coupled with the driest of humours and endless anecdotes, make him unique in the annals of music-making in modern Ireland.
He is survived by his widow, Áine, whom he married in 1977, and with whom he travelled widely as a member of the International Association of Violin and Bow Makers. The couple hosted the association's 1999 conference with its president, Charles Beare (Ruiséal's teacher), with whom Willy enjoyed a lifelong friendship.
William Michael Hofmann: born September 5th, 1929; died May 20th, 2003