CREMONA, Italy — A violin, it turns out, needs to be played, just as a car needs to be driven and a human body shooed off the couch. In this city that produced the best violins ever made, that job belongs to Andrea Mosconi. He is 75, and for the past 30 years, six days a week, he has finger-fed 300-year-old violins, worth millions, a diet of Bach, Tchaikovsky and Bartok.

It is peaceful where he works, in a chapel-turned-museum here, so it jars when he compares his gentle job to the roar of Formula One racing. He is nothing but serious about what he does.

“It is not a matter of habit,” Mr. Mosconi said. “When Schumacher gets to 350 kilometers an hour, do you think he ever loses his concentration?” he added, speaking of the retired racing champion Michael Schumacher.

“In my case, too, I have to pay attention,” he said. “You have to give your best with these instruments. They make you sweat.”