Her view is that it has to do with the apprentice system that was widespread in the old days: to become a maker of stringed instruments, you began at age 7 or so, apprenticed to a master. By the time you were in your twenties and acutually responsible for building instruments, you had 15 years of experience (during a time in your life when you tend to learn quickly). No instruments have been built according to that scheme for a great many years, and in her opinion, the difference is apparent.
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Your friend is right, dead right.
I saw some old bloke on telly recently who makes musical instruments the old way with basic tools etc. He can't keep upwith the demand nor can he find an apprentice, and he spoke the same words as your friend.Traditional apprenticeships are extremely rare nowdays. for example ask any crafts or tradesman for his indenture papers, good masters have them.
You miss my point. If the celebrated antique violin gives more useful and responsive feedback then (I assume) it will sound better. (Or if it doesn’t then what’s the point?). If it sounds better then it’s testable, not with instruments, sure, but with a panel of blinded listeners. I don’t care if it sounds better tonally or musically or whatever, if it is in any way better, then blinded listeners should be able to report that. If they can’t, then in what way is a celebrated antique violin better?
I recall hearing that there was something special about the varnish used on the Stradivari violins…but the NOVA show said that samples of the old and modern varnishes were compared via mass spectroscopy, and no differences were found. Anyway, detailed modelling of the violin (as a resnant chamber) have been done, and I was amazed by how complex a thing the violin is-the bridge, shape of the back. etc., all contribute to the sound of the instrument. I would think that a modern violin should incorporate all of this knowledge, and actually be better than a 300 year old Strad.
Do I need to quote the words of Mandy Rice-Davies to you verbatim?
Let’s try it backwards: “I saw some bloke on telly who made things the old way with basic tools etc. He can’t keep up with the demand nor can he find an apprentice, but he said that the difference between an instrument produced by the hand made/long apprenticeship system and an instrument produced by modern methods is not apparent”.
As a guitarist myself, I can attest to trying the same thing myself: In blindfold tests one cannot tell which instrument has been played recently and which hasn’t. I strongly suspect that the anecdotes you quoted there are all to do with the player rather than the instrument, as they “get used” to the extremely subtle differences in playability. Thus, if you pick up a guitar you haven’t played for a while, it “feels” a little “dead”, and we mistake our gradual consideration of its nuances as a difference in the instrument itself.
Quarter-sawn, a few mm thick, standard voilin dimensions (guitar plates were analysed aswell), loaded and unloaded.
Frequency sweeps, white noise, sinusoidal tones, sawtooth waves as from a string, all over the course of various experiments over several years, at leastas regularly as an instrument would be played.
Impedance and [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_pressure]sound pressure[//url] curves and the frequency, amplitude and Q value of all resonances.
They are effectively the only acoustic properties of a plate - a change in any parameter which did not affect these characteristics could not affect the radiated sound.
Like I said, those properties are the properties of a plate. Suggest a parameter, and I’ll tell you how those properties are affected.
Absolutely.
Your questions are all perfectly valid, Gary, and I’m happy to answer them as best I can. All I can do is assure you that we were extremely rigorous in our investigations, and most of the experiments have been replicated elsewhere - I’ll try and dig out citations on specifics if you like. However, one thing I certainly found in the course of my research was that musical acoustics is perhaps the last region of science where myth and quackery still have a strong hold: musicians really really don’t like being told what’s what by scientists!
If by ‘timbre’ you mean the relative frequencies in its sound output, they can - they certainly have been in blindfold tests, but one needs a very keen ear. This is done to try and avoid what you quite rightly say about playability and feedback: if the musician knows they’re playing a Strad, they might well perform differently, which itself might sound more “appealing” to the testee.
Oh, and Gary, you’re quite right about brand new instruments changing slightly, but that’s nothing to do with them being played: it’s to do with the organic structure gradually drying out, thus changing the mass, stiffness and damping properties and thus the impedance and sound pressure curves.
No, I’m a guitarist, but I do not doubt that they are exquisite instruments. I merely argue that violins of comparable quality are made now (or, at least, such that they will be as good when the wood has dried out or aged as well).
I wouldn’t know… I think he has seen it all. Nobody even would have come to the idea what sort of violin I tortured when I played in our Jazz band at the univ. That was for me a lot more difficult the it was for the violin. He only needed other strings to undergo nice and well behaving my cruel experiments
To throw a bit of oil on the fire of the discussion about “testing” and “having an audience judge” etc…
I suppose it is normal for not-musicians to see this as a simple matter of putting two violins in the hands of players and an audience as judge. It is not all that simple to get a reliable result
It is not only about the instrument.
It depends also on the strings and also very much on the bow. If you put on other strings and/or use an other bow, use an other pitch, you get a different result.
Hence you would need to play the violin with all existing strings and all existing bows playing the same piece by the same violinist under the same circumstances and while he is in exactly the same mood (= plays every note exactly the same) to have an idea how the instrument behaves under all these circumstances.
Next you can begin to do the same with your modern violin, using the same strings and bows. A used string is not a new one, especially when you use gut strings and especially two gut strings are not the same, so there you have already to take into account a factor that can lead to unreliable comparitive results.
The audience:
Just like no two violins,no two bows, no two set of strings and no two players are the same, no two persons in the audience will be the same.
To have a completely independent audience you need people who know nothing at all about music or violins, have no preference for high or low tone, for sharp or soft, they need to be like a blank page. First of all: Where on earth can you find such persons? Next: How can can they form an opinion as if they know what they talk about when they say:
I liked that one over the other one because… Because of what?
Quite so, Alde - all kinds of factors can affect this ‘quality’ judgement (which in any case is utterly subjective) and so in general the testee would listen to several phrases and pieces played by a one who has been told to play them as similarly (but ‘realistically’) as possible on the two instruments. Done like this, musicians and violin makers can usually tell which sound sample comes from which instrument.
However, if they don’t know which instrument is the Stradivarius and which is the modern copy, their ‘preference’ is often a lot more random. This suggests that a trained ear can tell the difference between instruments, but that Stradivarii are not necessarily judged as having better quality (whatever that is!).
That is quite possible. Like I said, I have zero experience with modern violins.
I’ve heard frequently the theory that part of the performance quality of these old violins lies in the aging of the wood.
However, this does not explain why they were able to gain fame at the time they were build and in comparison with other violinbuilders of the same period.
It also doesn’t explain that even at a rather early stage they were copied, not as plagiate, but as a sign of honour to the makers of the original. (That is why copies have labels indicating they are “a copy of…”)
My take on it is that it must be a combination of factors.
First of all the crafmanship of the builders and the occasion to pass that on to other generations, in that we see the establishment of family groups and workplaces related to them.
Next the ability of these families to use their reputation for getting the rich and powerful to prefer their marchandise. My 3/4 Del Gesu seems to be a rare exception (I’m not sure if there are other survivors registred. Mine is not catalogued). It tells to the historian in me an interesting story. Someone didn’t want anything else for his child then what was even at the time considered to be among the best of reputation, and a reputable violinbuilder accepted the order to build and instrument at non-adult measure. In my opinion that was not such a commonly undertaken business and Guarneri probably didn’t do it because he was all of a sudden in short of money - or orders - either.
I think these factors must also be taken into account when comparing the known names against the lesser known violins of the same and even later periods. If I only look at the theories and suggestions made on the Amati-puzzle: One could use them as frame for a detective novel.
An other factor is the changes many - if not most - of these “known” violins underwent and especially during the 19the century to adapt them to the taste of the violinists and the public. (In that “Jozefke” is also an exception. Probably nobody found it worth the attention and effort, which my Historian Soul can only find a fortunate escape of messing with his history).
If it was possible to restore all of them to their original and newly build state I think you would hear a whole other set of instruments. Maybe modern ones of top quality handcraft wouldn’t be so far off in comparison.
There is no doubt that Antonio Stradivari was an incredibly gifted craftsman and acoustician, even if his methods were “trial and error”. Just as today two different violin makers could produce instruments of varying quality given identical wooden plates (which is impossible in practise since every tree is structurally unique), so it was then.
And your musings on the history of the different familes, how “reputation” might have built up differently and the later modifications to the instruments are all highly relevant complications!
It would be more logical to expect that no mistakes were made at such a level. I am certain that I can recognize my violins out of all others. It is a bit similar with recognizing a voice. It doesn not only count for violins only either. Play at two pianos and you hear and feel the difference, even when they come from the same builder.
I don’t know, I am inclined to think that I would recognize the Strad anyway, if he is the lesser or the better one. Yet even if he is at some point on the losing end it doesn’t mean he is not far better at other moments and that the modern violin can no follow him there. (Yes, I am a bit prejudiced :)…)
SentientMeat, your factual statements may well be correct, but I don’t see them contradicting the gist of what was discussed here.
The main issue is not whether the wood or the varnish changes from frequent playing, but whether certain violins are identifiably better, and under which circumstances they have to be kept.
The pure sound from an open string may well be exactly the same between a cheap and an expensive violin, but that is not what people want a violin for. The test is playability (from the perspective of the violinist) and sound quality (from the perspective of the listener). If the instrument is difficult to play, it will also detract from the quality for the listener, as a difficult passage will not come out well. You mentioned that in passing and seemed to acknowledge that your research didn’t discount this aspect.
A violin player will look for both aspects when judging an instrument, which will influence his opinion. Any research which only judges single tone quality will be deficient, as it doesn’t measure the quality of the instrument, which is what we’re talking about. I don’t care whether an instrument can produce the most beautiful sound of the universe if I won’t be able to play a musical passage on it.
Same goes for an instrument decaying from not playing. Tone quality might be the same, but what about playability? For what it’s worth, I’ve at one time played an instrument which hadn’t been used for several years, and it was extremely hard to get a proper tone out of it, but after a couple of weeks it seemed to go better. It may have been subjective, but then, how do you plan to measure this?
By the way, I personally don’t rule out that modern violins may be (or may become) as good as Stradivari.
I largely agree, Tusc: Playability and tone are different aspects (with complicated feedback therebetween!), but this:
Receives the same answer. Both playability and tone are dependent on the structural physics of the instrument, which regular playing affects not at all, experimentally - only the storage *conditions[/]i affect the instrument’s structural properties.
Again, that sounds rather like you were getting used to the nuances in playability rather than the instrument itself changing, but I suppose it might have been stored in different conditions which changed its material properties. As for “measuring this”, well, if no experiment can find any change whatsoever in the instrument itself after those two weeks then Ockham’s Razor would point to changes in the player’s motor functions instead.
I shall throw in here even something else:
You can tell on the feedback you get from the instrument that is was played on by someone else. I feel that even quicker on my piano then on a violin.
So if there were, say, five pianos in a room which had not been played for a given period, and I played one, you could come in and tell me which one had just been played?
That would be extremely impressive, and I simply cannot conceive of a mechanism for how this might be true. Playing might free up some joints or elements which had rusted a ilttle, perhaps, but simple excitation could not change the structural properties of the soundboard, IMO.
Actually, there is one example I know of which does benefit from playing - the electric bass guitar. The mechanism is rather crude and perhaps not what is being suggested here: bits of dirt, dust and skin get trapped between the string windings and can be “shaken” out to acheive a brighter tone (the unequal distribution of mass deadens the upper partials in the Fourier analysis).
However, this technique is hardly “playing”, since the string needs a good solid, sustained plucking at amplitudes far outside anything you would actually consider doing in a musical performance, equivalent to literally bashing piano strings with a metal hammer.
I was saying that the responsiveness of the feedback allows the musician to play better. It doesn’t necessarily change the physical characterics of the sound produced, but the musical ones. The blindfolded listeners may identify this as better or they may not, but neither way does it demonstrate the violin to be better or not.
We’ve a long way to go before we can take an uncarved piece of spruce, and understand its internal structure (unique in every case) well enough to then carve it to the exact shape needed for the exact physical responses required.
The range of timbre is more than the sound produced in one playing of one note - a violinist can modify the qualities of any one note by a vast amount. One characteristic of individual instruments is what scope they have for this variety. And the use of this variety is another aspect of the subjectiveness in all these tests - the ability to vary timbre in different ways affects the performance.
I don’t know if it is able to recognize on a strange instrument if that was been played on recently while the others were not.
I was talking about my own instruments. It doesn’t matter who plays them besides me. I feel that they were played on by someone else. It is a subtle difference in responding to your touch you can only notice when you know your instrument very well yourself.
On my piano I feel that immediately. If my children for example disobey me and start using it as their own study instrument, I discover it immediately the next time I start to play. Well, to be more correct: I can’t tell it was one of them… But nobody else would do this to my instrument, so they hang every time again
