I’m 51, so that would be a “no”.
After browsing over this thread and, then reading the recent article in the NYTimes referred to in another thread and the other NYTimes Magazine article this week on the long-term relationships between master players and their violins, cellos and violas, all I have to say is this: Scientists will never quantify the quality of art.
It’s called the General Theory of Art Relativity: it’s in the eye of the beholder.
If a classical master has a life-long affair with an old instrument and claims to feel the history within it, he is right.
If another master feels complete responsiveness and tone from a modern instrument, she’s right.
What specific freakin’ wave function determines whether a specific instrument is objectively “better” - and which frees up a player’s mind in some placebo-mindset sorta way?
I have played world-class instruments, both new and vintage. Both work on your mind, and both allow your mind to give into their playability. A new one builds its case as you play it, and you think “wow, this new builder really speaks with the wood” and you listen hard for that reason. With a vintage instrument, you figure that it has earned the trust of so many players before you, there *must *be something for you to find, so you pay more attention for that reason.
Each can work if you want them to. Isn’t that, in some ways, the definition of art?
And if a roomful of people consistently think a very good modern instrument sound better than a celebrated Strad, then they are right. And all the hooey we are sold about how a performance is going to sound great because the soloist is using a celebrated Strad borrowed from a museum or collector is, for most of the audience, bollocks.
Ah, the thread that told me that Deb had too damn much money to be hanging out on the net. Kinda miss the old troll.
So you believe quality can be quantified - got it.
I believe everything can be quantized.
Wait, isn’t this the infinity thread?
Cryptic comment aside, which if any part of what I just said do you regard as wrong, and why?
Do you play an instrument? I can’t recall.
But if a bunch of listeners declare something sounds “better” or not, that is one subjective question that is completely different from the subjective question of whether an artist finds a particular instrument inspiring.
I (and many other listeners) think Clapton sounds better on a Les Paul like he used back in the day, but he has preferred a Strat since 1970 or so. Who’s right?
My point is that there IS no right: you can’t quantify the quality one perceives in art…
But you miss the point, as others have done throughout the (long, long) history of this thread. No one is denying anyone’s right to like the sound of a Strad. No one is denying someone’s precious right to believe that what they hear or feel when they listen to or play a Strad is more positive for them than when they play other instruments.
Your quantity/quality point point is off the mark because there is a major difference between:
1/ attempting to quantify subjective quality (which I agree is pointless and impossible and neither me nor anyone else in this thread is trying to do it); and
2/ quantifying the number of people who self report greater subjective quality, which can easily be done.
The claim for many years however was that Strad’s are “better”. I’m the first to agree that there is no objective way to measure “better” as far as a person’s individual experience is concerned. However, insofar as I can glean what the “better” claim made about Strads meant, it seems to have meant that because of some physical quality of Strads a greater quantity of people subjectively reported that they liked the way Strads felt to play and/or their sound (as players or listeners) than other instruments.
And the latest demonstrations seem to show that if the person playing or listening doesn’t know they are playing or listening to a Strad, mostly they don’t actually report their experience as better at all. In other words, if I am understanding the claim made for Strads correctly, the claim is false.
According you your ideas, the sound of Princhester typing posts on a keyboard is the equivalent of the best master violinist on a Strad. Even asking whether someone plays an instrument puts some measure of quality to the art.
I still feel like part of a bar discussion about which team from which era could win the championship - there is no real answer, but the discussion can be interesting. That’s all this is and, just like the sports team discussion, there can be no right answer.
If a performer feels that a particular instrument - new or old - brings out their best playing, so be it. Telling them they are wrong or that most folks listening can’t hear the difference makes no sense to me.
Well, yes, but this is objectively true. The sound of me playing a Microsoft Wireless Keyboard 3000 v2.0 has been known to make a grown man weep tears of joy. Record executives with lucrative recording contracts prepared for my signature have to be physically restrained from knocking my office door down. If I ever played on an early '80’s vintage IBM keyboard it would produce an experience in listener’s ears so profound it would probably cause a rift in the space/time continuum.
You got that right. And the PC/XT keyboard, not the AT one. It had a more satisfying layout, one my fingers still know and are disappointed when they don’t find it, but it lacked the satisfying, even joint-damaging, clunk at the end of your downstroke. Near perfection in a keyboard. ETA: Absolute perfection was the first-generation Selectric, but the only music it played was of keys being pressed faster than God intended.
Or were we still talking about violins? I thought we got all that out of our systems eight years ago.
I have one of those. It sits on a stand in the corner. It still has the tag on it. It’s never been played. I prefer people don’t even point at it. Or even look at it for too long.
I have one under all sorts of crap to my left. It might be missing a keycap or two, but those are reaching Stradivarius prices and my computer expects a USB keyboard.
People can do whatever they want. If master violinist Hoopty von Screechenbow feels that only with a priceless strad can he make music the envy of Orpheus, more power to him. If he tells me that I should enjoy a rendition of a piece more than another because he played the first one on a strad and the second on something new, he can stuff it.
What you are saying makes sense; I don’t see the need for tone, but whatever…
Part of the value of an instrument is what it does for the player, part is what is helps the player do for an audience - and the two are separate and subjective. You like what you like.
The interesting thing that this most recent study shows is that even players mostly don’t like the sound of Strads as much as very good modern instruments.
I wonder what they would have said they preferred if they had known what they were playing. Actually, having read a lot about comparable things, I don’t wonder very much at all.
And so far, with what little empirical testing has been done, there isn’t a correlation between expensive old instruments and higher appreciation on the part of listeners. Which is what people said in the past, that old, expensive instruments create sounds that are more palatable. I’m reminded of the stories of orchestras not hiring women for woodwind and brass positions because everyone knew women weren’t capable of the breath support necessary for the sustained notes required. But when people held blind auditions, where players were separated from judges by a screen, women showed no difficulty in outperforming their male counterparts.
Okay - we’ll have it your way: these artists are clueless idiots, blinded by the Emperor’s new clothes. Thanks so much for setting them straight.
You accuse them of arguing for one extreme and dismiss them by arguing for the other extreme. Whatever. I think that anyone who argues that “Strads” (or similar) are definitively “better” is wrong. I also think that anyone who says that many of the remaining Strads don’t deserve their reputation for excellence - and prove it with science! - is also wrong.