Princhester, you didn’t pay attention to the second paragraph of my post you quoted from. Just to recap, my point was:
Responsiveness is a very important feature of a musical instrument. How could anyone argue otherwise?
The responsiveness of a small set of modern violins has been shown to be superior to that of a small set of Stradivarius violins
This has been demonstrated in two very well designed studies published in PNAS
So yes, I have evidence, and it supports the view I believe you are taking!
MichealEMouse, I grew up listening to vinyl, and I’m mystified by its resurgance. An acquaintance had me over and was so proud that he just got a turntable. He put a record on and asked me what I thought. I was polite, of course, but, truthfully, what I thought was “It sounds shitty. Just like I remember it sounding!”
Wordman, playing that vintage D18 would be awesome! You’ve got mine beat by about 3 decades. Lately, though, I’ve spent much more time with this baby!
Of course. It might also be the case that, by splurging on the Strad, a musician acquires some sort of luster of exclusivity that draws even greater crowds. Both concerns have preciously little to do with any ‘objective’ quality of the instrument, however—one is mass appeal, the other marketing.
All I’m saying is that the idea that one violin is objectively better than another is simply a category error, because violin quality is not an objective, physical property, but intrinsically subjective. Again, if the listener is in some way differently structured from the average human, then he will have a different notion of good and bad violins, without being any more right or wrong than regular human listeners. That’s why I think on that front, supposedly objective studies miss the point to some degree.
don’t ask, thank you linking to that. I’m looking forward to reading it all - but just took the time to read the conclusion. But as to your quoted bit, the potential tactile response of a bow is incredibly nuanced and yes, the feeling you get (and I mean “feeling” here as perceived by touch) is really important. And that’s why violinists will spend 1000s of dollars on a bow! (That would be a great follow-up experiment. Are expensive bow worth the money. And the money that is spent on them is not trivial!
Wordman, yes, I got the Luis and Clark about 10 years ago and I love it. I went looking for an upgrade from the student violin I was using, and had to get in the mid-teens to get the sound I was looking for. The Luis and Clark easily matched that in sound (and, dare I say it, responsiveness) for far less. The one area where it definitely surpasses wooden violins is the dynamic range. Playing full out, it is far louder than a wooden fiddle, but you can still play as quietly.
My wife makes fiddles. She and I have discussed this type of issue often, and she has read/discussed it w/in her profession. As folk have observed, it has been established pretty conclusively that Strads are not inherently “better” in any respect than excellent modern instruments.
I find the history of the fiddle curious. There is no clear antecedent for Amati, and since Strad/Guarneri/et al, the box has really not changed over the past 300+ years.
Fiddle making itself has changed significantly recently, even over the past decade. Today you can get EXTREMELY good instruments from China for very low prices. And, instead of the traditional method of a solitary craftsman doing everything from gouging the plates to carving the bridge and final set-up, these Chinese instruments are assembled on assembly lines. One worker makes nothing but ribs, another nothing but linings. There are so many well made boxes coming out of China, that several makers/vendors buy pre-made boxes “in the white,” which they finish, set up and sell. Many folk do not appreciate the effect of proper set-up on a violin’s sound and playability…
And, yes, they use the latest tools whenever practicable. But even if you had electronic equipment doing the rough shaping, there are several steps at which there has not yet been a machine built which can perform the same tasks a human can with his/her eyes/ear/fingers together. Especially since wood is a “live” material, the whole is something more than the sum of its parts.
And bows are an entirely different creature. Very interesting, as pernambuco becomes more elusive.
The thing is that musicians who play Strads and similarly valuable instruments are walking around and traveling with instruments that are basically irreplaceable and worth perhaps five to ten million dollars. Someone tried to auction a Stradivarius viola last year with bids starting at $45 million (although it failed to sell at auction). At those prices, you’d practically have to have the concert in a bank vault. So if the musician can get as good a performance with a modern instrument that costs only tens of thousands, there’s much less risk when traveling with it. (Plus that means the musician could realistically expect to be able to buy such an instrument.)
Dinsdale, you’re right, the box itself didn’t change much from the baroque to the 19th century, but there were other significant changes to the instrument that impacted its sound - longer fingerboard, different angle to the fingerboard, heavier bass bar, putting a chin rest on the box. Interestingly, the vast majority of Strads et al. were remodeled during the 19th century.
Dewey, fortunately, there is another perception that if an instrument isn’t played, it goes to hell. (I think that has been challenged scientifically, too.) But the good outcome is that musicians can’t afford Strads, etc., but the rich people who buy them tend to lend them out so they do get played.
Yep - seems like I was just reading/discussing this quite recently. Was there something recently in Strad/Strings?
There was a puff piece on 60 Minutes w/in the last year in which Perlman was waxing on about the “incomparable Cremona sound” or somesuch silliness…
I always find interesting the methodologies of the studies, how to ensure that they are testing what they wish to, andisolating various factors. But I’ll step out. You obviously have far more expertise than my superficial hearsay.
Dude, do you actually play an instrument? Any instrument?
“Responsiveness” is very much a real thing. Anything, anything that reduces the gap between a musician’s thoughts and the sound the instrument is making will of course make a difference in the quality of the performance (which is not necessarily the same as the tone of the instrument).
Look, I’m a half-assed amateur guitar player, but even I can feel and tell the difference between an instrument that practically plucks the note right of my brain and one where I have to think about how to make the sound.
And if I were a great guitar player (which I’m not), I’m betting the audience could tell the difference too, even if they couldn’t quite put their finger on what the difference was.
Everything you say here is true of guitars as well. We’re in a sort of golden age of inexpensive, Asian-made guitars. It’s amazing what you can get for five hundred bucks, as opposed to thirty or forty years ago, when I started playing.
A little more hearsay anecdote. My wife has had the opportunity to play several Strads, Guarneris, and I think 1 Amati. Has generally said they are beautiful to play, make her Suzuki exercises or bluegrass fiddling sound real good! One time she told me she was driving some guy w/ $3.5 mill worth of Strads to the airport - I told her to make sure the guy knew that any damage wouldn’t be covered by our insurance!
I’m pretty sure you’d have to be a pretty phenomenal fiddler to appreciate an instrument costing more than $20k or so. Actually, $10k will buy more fiddle than the majority of nonprofessionals could appreciate. I think the last fiddle she bought was around $6k maybe a decade ago, and she’s nowhere near exhausting its capabilities. There are a lot of pretty good luthiers who have never sold a $10k instrument.
Me, I wouldn’t know about responsive. I just thump away on my plywood Englehart!
You say I’m set on picking a fight but in both this thread and the last time you and I had this discussion exactly the same thing happened: the OP (or someone in the thread) asks about what unique un-reproducible physical property leads to the better sound of Strads compared to other instruments . Various people point out that actually in blind tests people like high quality modern instruments just as much as Strads if not more so there’s no objective basis for saying they actually are “better” indeed quite the contrary.
The very idea of the word “objective” coming anywhere near music (even in the negative) seems then to offend you so much you seem to feel it necessary to try to “rebut” what is being said by talking about how the individual experience of music is subjective or that musicians interact with their instruments in subjective ways that alter their playing neither of which are propositions that anyone ever disagrees with you about.
So who exactly is picking the fight?
In fact I think next time this subject comes up (and it comes up semi-regularly) anyone raising the subject of blind testing of Strads probably needs to add a “WordMan” rider like this : “Yes WordMan, I do understand that playing and listening to music is a subjective experience. Nothing I have said contradicts this, and pointing this out is in no sense a rebuttal of the basic point (on which we all agree!) that there is no objective evidence that Strads are “better” than high end modern instruments, indeed if anything the contrary. Thank you.”
This discussion tends to get distorted by a certain poster who is absolutely determined to be in furious agreement with me if I use the words “objective” and “music” within the same thread.
I have never said that responsiveness wasn’t a thing. I don’t doubt for a moment that better instruments allow better playing. I do doubt that the True Benefit of Strads is that their mystical responsiveness allows one to play better when one plays some other instrument. It’s an untested proposition. And I pointed out that since blind testing done on Strads vs high end modern instruments doesn’t reveal an audience preference for the former, any responsiveness benefit of the former seems illusory at worst and not too relevant to this particular OP at best.
Sigh. You sounds like someone slamming a broken screen door.
Here are the statements that matter:
Are Strads the Best, in some huge, identifiable way? No, they are amongst the best.
Are acoustic tests important and definitive? No. At best, they show how silly the premise that “Strads are the Best!” is.
Can acoustic tests monitor all the important attributes of an instrument? No, they miss reponsiveness for one example.
Do Strads have “mystical responsiveness”? No, see above. Like all great instruments, they have superior responsiveness.
Yes, on a regular basis, someone will ask “so, are Strads really the best as the legend says?” On regular basis, the best answer to Fight Ignorance is “no, Strads are not the best - the statement is silly and testing for it is even sillier.”
Why is everyone still going on about responsiveness? I agree it’s very important, but in the linked (latest) study that’s essentially what the test was, as the musicians were judging which violins they liked playing better.
Also, the testers won’t release the make(s) of the new violins, so it’s not even clear they’re in the top 1%…
You have every right to doubt that, but are incorrect in saying it’s an untested proposition. The two papers I linked to up thread demonstrate that a small subset of Strads don’t have better playability than a small subset of modern violins. And the second paper actually has players evaluate the test violins against their own. Your point has indeed been demonstrated experimentally.
This might be a goofy take, but could one argue that Strads ARE inherently better, simply because they are generally PERCEIVED as better?
I’m thinking about pro golfers. You could line up 100 drivers or putters, seemingly identical in every way, and the pro would say 1 or 2 of them are clearly better than the rest. Now, IS that club any different/better in any measurable respect? Or is is simply that once he convinces himself it is better, that adds to his confidence and performance? Understand what I’m trying to say?
So maybe a fiddler elevates his game when playing a Strad, in part due to emotional reasons.
BTW - ISTR reading that Strads are not all “easy” to play. As I hear it, at least some are quite idiosyncratic. If you are good enough to figure out how to adapt your playing to that particular instrument, magic can happen. But they are definitely not “one-size fits all”., and may NOT be the best option for anyone other than a top player.
In his autobiography, Andre Previn describes watching Jascha Heifetz teaching a master class. Heifetz corrected one of the students by demonstrating, on his Strad, the proper way to play a Bach work.
The student protested that Heifetz played a Stradivarius, and she had only a crummy modern instrument. Heifetz put down his Strad, took the student’s cheap violin and began playing it, and (according to Previn) it sounded exactly the same. Heifetz handed the student’s violin back to her and said, “So?”
Chet Atkins has a similar story that’s part of his legend: someone approached him after a gig and said “that guitar sounds amazing!” He took it off and put it on a nearby couch, looked at it and said “How’s it sound now?”
One time she told me she was driving some guy w/ $3.5 mill worth of Strads to the airport - I told her to make sure the guy knew that any damage wouldn’t be covered by our insurance! 
