Over the last few years the final destination of the periodical trips which many oboists used to undertake in search of a good oboe or cor anglais, very often, ever more often, is no longer Paris, France, but a small town in the north of Italy: Castelnuovo Scrivia. In this town, situated within the province of Alessandria, not very far from Milan (about three quarters of an hour from Milan central station to the station in Voghera, on the route Milan-Genoa, and then ten minutes by taxi or bus) is to be found the factory of musical instruments of the Patricola brothers. Thus reads the brass plaque on the front door of the old and quiet house facing the silent Via Magenta, be it lit up by the warm summer sun or immersed in the winter mists characteristic of the Po valley.

The Patricola brothers are truly brothers, three of them: Francesco, Pietro and Biagio. And they are so united that it is easy to mix up their names and even mistake one for the other, so much so that on more than one occasion I made them laugh by comparing them to a sort of "Holy Trinity", patroness of oboists.

You arrive at the station in Voghera where, having previously warned them of your arrival, one or all come to pick you up, and you find it difficult to realise whether it is Francesco, or Pietro, or Biagio. And confusion is bound to increase since, for the last few years, within the best tradition of Italian art and craft, a nephew by the name of Angelo has begun working with them, and it seems he is getting better all the time.

What has always struck me about the Patricola brothers, apart from their proverbial kindness and sociability, is certainly their great enthusiasm for their work. Even though they are great professionals they have not lost the typical enthusiasm of the amateur (in the best sense of the word) towards his work. Time passes but they never tire of telling, explaining, illustrating their work, their experiments, their ideas. They never tire of talking of their priceless wood (ebony), of its characteristics, of its whims. They talk as if it were alive, as a sort of Till Eulenspiegel (and perhaps it is so!), lovingly and passionately and, if it gets late, they do not hesitate to ask you to stay and eat with them, drinking a few glasses of the excellent Barbera wine which they themselves produce, perhaps with the same love and competence they devote to their production of oboes, oboes "d'amore" and cor anglais.

The manufacture of musical instruments began in Castelnuovo Scrivia around 1920 at the initiative of a certain Gilardi originating from the city of Novara. A co-operative is established subsequently in which take part, in addition to Gilardi, also some workmen from the small village of Quarna and from Castelnuovo Scrivia, the latter including Gagliardi, Beltrame, Zanotti, Angeleri, Majoli, Bassi and Curone (future mayor of Castelnuovo). The co-operative, with about twenty workmen, specialise in the manufacture of woodwind instruments: clarinets, oboes, cor anglais and bassoons. In 1925 the co-operative was wound up and two separate factories came into existence. Owners of the bigger one, the F.I.M. (Italian Manufacture of Musical Instruments) are Gagliardi and a certain Stella. The factory is situated in the Via Einaudi. The manager is Eugenio Petazzi. The workmen leaving the F.I.M. gave birth to a small factory, having its premises in the Jesuits' college, and produced musical instruments almost exclusively for export. From 1930 to 1953, firstly the economic crisis and then the Second World War rendered the situation of the F. I. M. extremely precarious and their owners returned to Quarna with most of their machinery. F.I.M. nevertheless survives due to the initiative of Emilio Bassi and Luigina Torti, who carried on the activity until 1953. The workmen leaving the factory in 1953 gave origin to several artisan shops which specialized more and more not only in the manufacture for others of parts of instruments and accessories, but also in the manufacture of finished instruments. Among these were: Giovanni Bondone, Giovanni Taverna, Giancarlo Trovarnala, Giuseppe Civelli, the brothers Rattegni and our brothers Patricola.

Today, in their laboratory in Via Magenta, the ebony from Mozambique (of the Grenadilla quality), after having been cut from the plant three years earlier and having been cut down into cubical or parallel piped pieces by workmen from Hamburg who specialize in the cutting of wood, is stacked, seasoned and then worked until they turn it into oboes, "oboi d'amore" and cor anglais. This wood is very hard and has a small percentage of humidity (25 To when green and only 13 % /15% when seasoned): it is the only wood that does not float and it is so full of internal tensions that it manages to shift by itself when stacked for seasoning. The primary ability of the artisans consists in knowing the piece of wood as if it were a member of the family and treating it as if it were a spoilt child. In working it, therefore, it is necessary to give due consideration to its continuous and slow adjustments in order to avoid breakages which would render it unusable. Apropos of this, in the laboratory of the brothers Patricola it is possible to see, piled up according to a precise scheme, numerous stocks of wood at different stages of seasoning, each one of which in addition corresponds to a different phase of processing so as to adapt the work to the slow changes of the intrinsic characteristics of the material. After a couple of years' seasoning, the edges are removed from the pieces to be used, and after another two or three years they are bored out after having measured the humidity with the hygrometer still present in the wood because, once the instrument is finished, the wood must no longer "move"! To achieve the final result, an instrument that can be played, some twelve years are therefore needed! Manufacture is carried out with precision instruments operated by hand and made by the same brothers Patricola. The most delicate moment is that of the boring out, because the Mozambique ebony is rich with rubber, which renders the operation extremely difficult. The average time taken for each instrument sounds almost incredible: 180 hours of effective work spread throughout a period of 12 years! To have at least an approximate idea of the patience and devotion of these extraordinary craftsmen suffices to think that the working of wood is resumed, for each single instrument, every six months, that is to say during two of the changes of season when the best conditions of humidity and temperature can be obtained. Furthermore, the inner and outer work must proceed pari passu, with precision levels which are almost absolute because a slight imperfection, even though infinitesimal, can compromise the soundness of the instrument and the work of years!

These are the things that the brothers have told me, but it is not all! Smiling a little enigmatically, they have told me that there are good and proper secrets applied to the manufacture which they cannot divulge, because there are many who would find it useful to know for their own purposes. Laughingly they recounted that someone from Germany had the courage of writing to them officially requesting them to put down full details of their working methods! Perhaps it was because, second only to the Italians, their best customers are the Germans! Hanging on a wall of their laboratory are dozens of photographs of their best customers: many are Italian, as the oboists in the orchestras at Milan and Rome, Venice and Naples. Augusto Loppi, Paolo Fighera, Sergio Possidoni, Giacomo Calderoni, Francesco Ranzani, Bruno Baldan, etc. Many are also German, starting from Hans Jorg Schellenberger of the Berliner Philharmoniker. There are also some English oboists (Andrew Knights, John Williams), some Japanese as Mijamoto Fumiaki of the Tokyo Philharmonic, some Americans as Philip W. Ayling of Los Angeles and Janet and Dan Harrington of Washington, and many others, Swiss, Austrian, Finns, etc. With obvious satisfaction they tell me they have begun selling instruments also in France!

At this point, I offer them my congratulations, my best wishes, then say "arrivederci" and "grazie", pick up my new cor anglais which bears number 915 and which seems to me to be very good, extremely good, and go out into the darkness of the night. Into the cold of winter. Snow everywhere! A long trip is ahead of me, but all on motorway, quite an easy drive. I get into the car whistling, delighted with my new purchase, greeted by the barking of the dogs that the brothers Patricola keep in their courtyard. I start the engine and leave. It was worthwhile making this trip. Certainly so.

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