Many believed that Niccolò Paganini had sold his soul to the devil to gain the demonic power of his violin. However, the truth was that its beautiful sound came straight from its divine ‘soul’. That was how craftsmen named that tiny little element of a violin which could raise it to an instrument of haven.

Vlado Tilev’s childhood dream was to be able to touch that ‘soul’ of music instruments. It looked like he was destined to be a concert musician due to his family background. However, the guy would always repair something on his cello and when he came into the luthier atelier of his neighbor at the age of 12 he felt the vocation of his lifetime.

“It is this inner feeling,” Vlado Tilev recalls on the hours spent at the atelier. “Everyone of us feels attracted to one or another sphere of life during the childhood years, we all have our dreams. I think that even at that early age I was sure that I would get involved into this, but more like a hobby alongside the major occupation of a musician. Later on however I devoted all of my time to lutherie.”

In the course of more than 20 years Vlado Tilev has restored and created string music instruments. And since his own criteria prompted that a good luthier should also be a skillful player, he graduated from the Essen Music Academy in Germany with cello, simultaneously paying visits to local luthier ateliers. Today he practices his craft on an international level, saying that he has solved some of the secrets of the famous Stradivari, Amati and Guarneri families from the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

“Instruments are mortal, unlike human soul, no matter the metaphor on their own soul,” the luthier says. “They simply age, just like anything in this world. Instruments change, deform and even degrade till the moment when the timber will have lost all of its qualities. Thus the samples now worth millions won’t be able to make a sound in 500 years. On the other hand, no one can tell whether today’s instruments will sound beautifully in 250 – 300 years…”

At the same time the owner of the instrument is essential too, the luthier states.

“A beautiful instrument fallen in the hands of an unskillful musician would mean dullness of the sound in time, a lack of freedom and brightness, lack of this beautiful timbre… So it is essential for the musician to be good at sound extraction, to let the instrument grow and develop its capacity, to vibrate right.”

Vlado Tilev makes sure his instruments go into the right hands – last year his foundation in support of young musicians granted a master’s violin and a cello to two girls from Sofia’s school of music.

“A new audition is forthcoming in November at the Lyubomir Pipkov National School of Music, since I intend to give yet another violin,” Vlado Tilev says. “I will leave last year’s instrument to Marina Marinova for another 12 months, in order to be able to graduate from the 12^th degree with it. I will also leave the cello to Nauma Neimann, if she wants it. The foundation’s next idea is to give for free 5 little violins to the music school for the youngest, as kids often find it hard to discover a proper instrument.”

A few decades ago a little boy worshipped the art of a craftsman at the luthier’s atelier. Today, in this material and high-tech world no one is curious to take a peek at the place, where a man heals the injured soul of a violin…

English version: Zhivko Stanchev