Pablo Casals is regarded as one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century, and at the heart of his artistic identity stood one instrument: a Goffriller cello built in Venice at the beginning of the eighteenth century. This magnificent instrument will be on display during the final rounds of the 2026 Cello Competition, from Monday 25 to Saturday 30 May. Drawing on the brochure prepared for the exhibition by Tarisio and Maison Bernard, we have gathered in this article a series of fascinating facts about Matteo Goffriller and the bond between Pablo Casals and his instrument.
Pablo Casals (1876 - 1973) and his Goffriller "Casals"
Casals acquired his Goffriller in 1908 and remained devoted to it for sixty-five years, playing it until his death in 1973. Built around 1710, this cello possesses the hallmarks of Goffriller’s mature work: a broad, powerful model; a rich, textured, deep-red varnish; and an extraordinary depth of tone, particularly across the lower register. Unlike the refined elegance associated with Stradivari, Goffriller’s cellos are known for a visceral, almost baritonal sonority - direct, earthy, and intensely human - qualities that proved ideal for Casals’s musical temperament.
Casals’s sound was never merely beautiful; it was rhetorical. He approached phrasing as speech, with inflection and breath. The Goffriller’s robust core and complex overtones amplified this approach. In his landmark recordings of the Bach Suites in the late 1930s, one hears not just technical command but a timbral authority - an instrument that speaks from the chest rather than the throat. The lower strings possess weight without muddiness; the upper register projects without strain. It became, in effect, an extension of his political and moral voice as well.
Exiled from Spain following the rise of Franco, Casals settled in Prades, France, where he continued to perform and teach. The Goffriller accompanied him through this period of artistic and personal resistance. When he emerged from relative silence to create the Prades Festival in 1950 - marking the bicentenary of Bach’s death - the Goffriller once again carried his Bach interpretations to an international audience. By then, both man and instrument had acquired near-mythic status.
The association between Casals and the Goffriller also shifted market perception. When Casals acquired his Goffriller in 1908, Venetian cellos were considered less valuable and less prestigious compared to those from Cremona. Cellists and connoisseurs began to understand that the Venetian school - particularly Goffriller and Montagnana - could rival and even surpass Cremonese instruments in projection and character. Casals could have chosen a Stradivari - but he didn’t.
Casals did not merely play the Goffriller; he revealed what such an instrument could become in the hands of an artist of conviction. Through that partnership, the cello emerged as a modern solo voice - profound, uncompromising, and unmistakably human.
Today, in a gesture that binds past to present, the instrument is entrusted to the winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition, honoring Casals’s enduring friendship with Queen Elisabeth and reaffirming his lifelong mission: that music - and the voice of his cello - should reach beyond the concert hall to speak directly to people everywhere.
Matteo Goffriller (c.1659–1742) and a short history of the cello
Matteo Goffriller was the first in a long line of great Venetian cello makers. His ideas and models directly influenced generations of makers, and the instruments he created have been favored by many of the most important cellists of the modern era. Goffriller cellos are renowned for the deep, powerful tonal character that the 'Casals' so perfectly embodies.
In 1685, Goffriller came to Venice from the Tyrolean town of Bressanone to join the workshop of Matthias Kaiser. Kaiser was primarily a builder of lutes and other plucked instruments, while Goffriller appears to have focused early on on bowed instruments, particularly cellos. In fact, of the surviving instruments attributed to Goffriller the ratio of cellos to violins is approximately 2:3; with Stradivari, in contrast, the ratio is closer to 1:10.
Goffriller created cellos in a wide range of sizes, from 70 to nearly 80 cm - the modern standard is around 75 cm. His methods of construction resulted in subtle asymmetries and the ability to create larger and smaller instruments by scaling up and down his model according to demand. Although we now refer to all cello-sized instruments made by makers like Goffriller, Stradivari, and Amati as cellos, the large instruments were referred to at the time as violones, bassos di viola or bassettos. Interestingly, the term violoncello (diminutive of violone) only emerged around 1665.
At the turn of the 18th century, the cello had a very different role in music than it does today. Composers largely used the cello as the structural and rhythmic continuo voice of an ensemble, and rarely gave it the melodic line. By the mid-18th century, however, classical composers started to demand new levels from the cello, especially in chamber and solo contexts. In the quartets of Franz Joseph Haydn, the cello became a true conversational partner, not just harmonic support. It started to introduce themes, answer motifs and shape structure, rather than sit underneath it. The incredible virtuosity demanded by the cello concertos of Boccherini, Vivaldi and Haydn, among others, posed a significant challenge. The ornate, virtuosic passages compelled cellists into athletic playing - scrambling up and down the fingerboard and executing precise string crossings - all while projecting over top of the orchestra accompanying it. This level of performance was practically impossible on an instrument with a body length of more than 76 cm.
As a result, musicians began to seek out smaller, more manageable instruments. Makers like Guadagnini, Storioni, Serafin and Landolfi responded by producing superbly maneuverable and highly capable cellos in the 71–73 cm range. This left the question of what to do with the many magnificent violones created during the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries.
It may sound harsh when viewed through the lens of modern conservation standards, but nearly all 17th century cellos have been reduced in size to make them more suitable for modern repertoire. Of the long-model Goffriller cellos that survive today, approximately 95% have been reduced from their original dimensions.
The ‘Casals’ was reduced to its current dimensions, probably in the early 19th century. The transformation was executed carefully and tastefully but, as a consequence, the cello’s outline was altered. The skilled craftsman who performed the operation trimmed the outline in both length and width but, fortunately, left the soundholes unchanged. The soundholes give an instrument its “face” and, many will argue, they are its primary resonance engine for tone creation.
Knowing in what specific year a Goffriller was made is challenging because so few retain an original label (the 1733 on the facsimile Bergonzi label is irrelevant to the actual date this cello was made). Iconographically, this cello sits within the mature work of Goffriller, somewhere between 1700 and 1720, which is the basis for the attribution to c. 1710. A dendrochronology analysis performed by Peter Ratcliff found strong correlations for the latest rings of the treble and bass sides as 1686 and 1691 respectively, aligning well with a manufacture date of c. 1710.
Casals was the first famous cellist to choose Goffriller as his primary instrument but over the past century, many great artists have played Goffrillers, including (omitting living players): János Starker, Jacqueline du Pré, Emanuel Feuermann, Felix Salmond, Leonard Rose and Alfredo Piatti. Starker summed up his feelings for Goffriller: “I belong to the group of performers who believe that Strads require adjustment to the basic qualities of the instrument, while Goffrillers allow the player's individuality to emerge.”
Source: The brochure Mattheo Goffriller, The 'Casals', edited by Tarisio and Maison Bernard
Read the second part of the brochure: The history of the Goffriller 'Casals'
