L'Italo-Americano

www.italoamericano.org 8 THURSDAY, MAY 14, 2026 L'Italo-Americano T h e r e a r e b a r e l y m o r e t h a n f o u r hundred people living in Quarna S o t t o , a s m a l l mountain village above Lake Orta, and yet for more than a century musicians, orches- tras, and instrument dealers from around the world have known its name. Not because of a famous conservatory, or a m a j o r o p e r a h o u s e , b u t b e c a u s e g e n e r a t i o n s o f craftsmen here learned how to make wind instruments with extraordinary precision. Saxophones, clarinets, flutes, b r a s s i n s t r u m e n t s : f o r decades, they came out of workshops scattered along narrow streets in one of the most unlikely manufacturing districts in Italy. T h e s t o r y b e g a n i n t h e nineteenth century, when several young men from the village left for Milan to learn the trade of instrument mak- i n g . A m o n g t h e m w e r e Francesco Rampone and Egidio Forni, who worked in Lombard workshops at a time when military bands and civic orchestras were expanding across Europe. T h e y e v e n t u a l l y b r o u g h t those skills back home to Q u a r n a , w h e r e t h e m a n y streams running down the mountains around the village powered small workshops and machinery, while fami- lies gradually specialized in different phases of produc- tion. One household might work on keys, another on wood, another on finishing, and another still on assem- b l y . O v e r t i m e , Q u a r n a became a sort of open-air workshop. Timing was essential, if we t h i n k t h a t A d o l p h e S a x patented the saxophone in Belgium in the 1840s, and within only a few years, ver- sions of the instrument were already being produced in the village. By the late nine- teenth and early twentieth centuries, the concentration of instrument makers in the area had become so unusual that the neighboring villages of Quarna Sotto and Quarna S o p r a w e r e s o m e t i m e s described almost as a single industrial district dedi- c a t e d e n t i r e l y t o w i n d i n s t r u m e n t s . Historical sources mention dozens of s m a l l p r o d u c e r s , f a m i l y workshops, suppliers, and repairers active between the two villages. The work was physically demanding and highly spe- c i a l i z e d : b r a s s h a d t o b e shaped and polished manu- ally, pads adjusted by hand, keys assembled with extreme precision. In many cases, children entered the trade very young, learning directly from relatives inside family- run workshops. During the twentieth century, Quarna- made instruments reached musicians and music schools a c r o s s E u r o p e a n d L a t i n America, particularly during t h e d e c a d e s w h e n I t a l i a n e m i g r a n t c o m m u n i t i e s abroad maintained strong ties with Italian musical tra- ditions. The company most closely linked with the instrument making craft is Rampone and Cazzani, which still operates in Quarna Sotto today. The firm traces its ori- gins back to the nineteenth c e n t u r y a n d c o n t i n u e s t o manufacture handmade sax- ophones and wind instru- ments, many of them aimed at professional musicians; the difference between them and large industrial produc- e r s i s t h e e m p h a s i s s t i l l placed on manual work and small-scale craftsmanship, and the atmosphere you can breathe if you visit, which feels closer to a traditional artisan laboratory than to a modern factory. One detail that still distinguishes Ram- pone and Cazzani is the con- tinued use of partially hand- hammered brass in some of its saxophones, a slower and more labor-intensive process that many modern manufac- turers abandoned long ago in favor of industrial stan- dardization. The company a l s o b e c a m e p a r t i c u l a r l y respected among jazz musi- cians for the warmer and less uniform sound associat- ed with handmade instru- m e n t s . U n l i k e m a s s - p r o - duced saxophones designed f o r a b s o l u t e c o n s i s t e n c y , handcrafted models often retain small variations that players sometimes describe as differences in "personali- ty." For much of the twentieth c e n t u r y , Q u a r n a t r u l y revolved around instrument making, which became the economic backbone of the v i l l a g e ; e n t i r e f a m i l i e s worked in the sector, and many residents combined agriculture with specialized artisanal production. Some workshops grew larger, oth- e r s r e m a i n e d t i n y f a m i l y businesses, but the concen- tration was extraordinary for such a small place. During the postwar decades, instru- m e n t s m a d e i n Q u a r n a b e g a n b e i n g s o l d w e l l beyond Italy: bands, conser- v a t o r i e s , a n d m u s i c i a n s abroad bought instruments produced there, even if many players had little idea where the village itself was located. Today, the scale of pro- duction is smaller than it once was, as it happened to many Italian artisan indus- t r i e s , b e c a u s e Q u a r n a ' s workshops suffered from the competition of industrial p r o d u c t i o n a n d c h e a p e r international manufacturing. The number of companies declined significantly com- pared to the twentieth centu- ry, when the area supported n u m e r o u s p r o d u c e r s a n d suppliers, but the tradition didn't disappear: alongside R a m p o n e a n d C a z z a n i , smaller specialized work- shops and repair laborato- ries continue to operate in the area. Quarna Sotto also worked consciously to preserve its m u s i c a l i d e n t i t y , s o i t opened a museum dedicated t o w i n d i n s t r u m e n t s a n d l o c a l c r a f t s m a n s h i p , t h e M u s e o E t n o g r a f i c o e dello Strumento Musica- l e a F i a t o , w h i c h d o c u - ments both the industrial history of the area and the everyday lives of the families i n v o l v e d i n p r o d u c t i o n . Here, visitors can see old tools, historical instruments, w o r k s h o p m a t e r i a l s , a n d also plenty of archival pho- tographs useful to recon- struct the history of this spe- cial trade. B u t t h e v i l l a g e d o e s n ' t want to remain at the center of a purely nostalgic story. Since the 1980s, it has been hosting musical initiatives and festivals under the ban- ner of Quarna, a Village for Music, bringing jazz ensembles, chamber musi- cians, brass bands, contem- p o r a r y p e r f o r m e r s , a n d young experimental artists into the mountains above Lake Orta. The festival com- bines internationally active musicians with local per- formers and students, mirro- ring the village's long con- n e c t i o n b e t w e e n instrument-making and live music. When you think about it, Quarna's story feels almost disproportionate to the size of the place itself, and it real- ly feels incredible to think about how a mountain vil- lage with only a few hundred i n h a b i t a n t s m a n a g e d t o build instruments that trav- eled across continents and entered the world of music far beyond northern Italy a n d E u r o p e . E v e n t o d a y , despite the decline of many small artisan industries, the sound of Quarna hasn't dis- appeared at all: we still hear it around the world in festi- vals, repair laboratories, and in the hands of musicians who continue searching for instruments made through centuries-old skills. CHIARA D'ALESSIO Quarna, the small Piedmont village that built saxophones for the world A saxophone maker at work. The tradition of wind instrument-making in Quarna began in the 19th century, thanks to Francesco Rampone and Egidio Forni (Image: Adobe Illustrator AI) LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE

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