In February 1770, Thomas Jefferson’s childhood home at the plantation Shadwell, in Albemarle County, Va., burned to the ground. Years later, his great-granddaughter Sarah Randolph retold the story of his arrival at the estate after the fire, when he allegedly asked one of his family’s enslaved servants if any of his books had survived. The answer was no, “but ah! we saved your fiddle.”
Long before he became the third president of the United States, Jefferson was an avid amateur violinist with a music library to match, and he meticulously cataloged all the titles he owned. When violinist and longtime Aston Magna Music Festival artistic director Daniel Stepner browsed through it, he was unexpectedly impressed at what he found there — and it provided the inspiration for the first program in this year’s festival, scheduled for performance in Newton on July 10 and Great Barrington on July 12.
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