Secrets Of Stradivarius' Unique Violin Sound Revealed, Professor Says

[Adsos Letter]

Source: ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2009)

— For centuries, violin makers have tried and failed to reproduce the pristine sound of Stradivarius and Guarneri violins, but after 33 years of work put into the project, a Texas A&M University professor is confident the veil of mystery has now been lifted.
Joseph Nagyvary, a professor emeritus of biochemistry, first theorized in 1976 that chemicals used on the instruments – not merely the wood and the construction – are responsible for the distinctive sound of these violins. His controversial theory has now received definitive experimental support through collaboration with Renald Guillemette, director of the electron microprobe laboratory in the Department of Geology and Geophysics, and Clifford Spiegelman, professor of statistics, both Texas A&M faculty members. Their work has been published in the current issue of the scientific journal Public Library of Science (PloSONE).

“All of my research over the years was based on the assumption that the wood of the great masters underwent an aggressive chemical treatment and this had a direct role in creating the great sound of the Stradivarius and the Guarneri,” Nagyvary explains.

Nagyvary obtained minute wood samples from restorers working on Stradivarius and Guarneri instruments (“no easy trick and it took a lot of begging to get them,” he adds). The results of the preliminary analysis of these samples, published in “Nature” in 2006, suggested that the wood was brutally treated by some unidentified chemicals. For the present study, the researchers burned the wood slivers to ash, the only way to obtain accurate readings for the chemical elements.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090122141228.htm

[EFerrari]

1. I have to wonder how many of those chemicals were simply present

in the water. My friend used to make dulcimers and that involved bending wood in water in his bathtub.

[Jamastiene]

2. Fascinating!

I have a blue Charvel. It is the only one like it. I have played one from the same exact year, same exact model and everything. Actually, I played two if you count the red one. So, I have played 3 identical guitars, two blue and one red. Only my "Baby Blue" (I name my guitars) sounds like it does. I still think it's haunted. I still think instruments have soul, but the chemicals used could add to or take away from that soul, for sure.

I love stuff like this!

[Adsos Letter]

3. I also enjoy these types of stories...

it's a nice break from the regular litany of bad news, political wrangling, human suffering, etc.

It's like stepping away to take a breath of fresh air. :hi:

[Jamastiene]

4. The best stories, to me, are always the ones that

make you think without so much highly charged emotion involved, although, I DO get emotional about my blue Charvel. I just don't get emotional to the point of arguing with anybody about it. :hi:

[Adsos Letter]

5. Ah, you have hit the nail directly on it's head, Jamastiene...

I most enjoy stories that allow me a glimpse of the mysteries of life.

Off to bed now, good night. :hi:

[K Gardner]

6. Fascinating. Reminds me of the movie "The Red Violin". n/t

[4lbs]

7. So, once the correct chemical treatment formula is found, everyone can get a Strad for only $200

instead of millions.

[SoCalDem]

8. Johnson Wax will sell a new spray on "Strad-Scented Lemon Pledge"

just don't accidentally dust your headboard with it or the noise will keep you awake all night:)

[Wednesdays]

9. Made in China and sold at Wal-Mart

:scared:

[Igel]

10. Some researcher in the early '80s--Nagyvary?--

had noticed the presence of mineral salts in the woods used. Fairly quickly, he or some other researcher pointed out that the wood for the great masters' instruments usually came from abroad and was usually brought by sea. They'd put the logs in the water, lash them together, and tow them; before towing and after they reached their destination they'd sit in the salt water until somebody got around to pulling them out--it was simply convenient to leave them there, free storage space. They'd sit there for months some times.

Some makers promptly started soaking their wood in mixtures of inorganic salts. I was thinking of making my own fiddle, had already bought the spruce for the belly. I promptly plopped it into a plastic trashcan filled a weak solution of borax, epsom salts, table salt, and a few other fairly safe chemicals and let it soak for a few months. Never did make the fiddle.

In any event, fairly quickly nobody noticed this line of research. They had set up tests in which a performer would be given an old, classic fiddle and a modern instrument, and told in which order to play them (the order being assigned randomly). The performer would be behind a screen. On the other side of the screen would be professionals of some kind--researchers, musicians (violinists, conductors, musicologists, pedagogues) or music critics. The results were random: The modern instrument was judged superior to the Strad/Guarneri about as often as the Strad or Guarneri was judged superior to the modern instrument. In some studies one or the other came out ahead overall; taken together, the studies cancel each other out, and the times when one or the other was judged to be better in a statistically significant sense just turned out to be random noise.

In other words, that unique, special, and inimitable sound is not unique, is no more special than good modern instruments, and is quite "imitable". Among the scores of makers in Cremona and nearby towns when Stradivari lived, some were just better makers than others by current standards of what good bowed-string sound is.

[mainer]

11. I'd heard it was the urine-polluted local water that did it

The wood was soaked in river water that was horribly polluted with human waste products. Interesting that these chemicals (borax, etc.) may actually have been specifically sought out by the luthiers.