Everyday Mysteries
Devotees see the best Cremona violins as an unattainable standard. Yet some players, makers, and scientists insist that the mystique of ancient violins is mostly in our heads. Carleen Hutchins, who has been making and researching violins for 50 years, believes time will prove some of today's instruments are as good as any Stradivarius. "We can do everything except [give them] 100 years of playing," she says. The skeptics say even trained listeners can't reliably tell an old violin from a new one on the concert stage.
There is no doubt that the Cremona makers were highly skilled craftsmen. But the debunkers say that searching for lost secrets is nonsense. Your local True Value Hardware store has better varnish than Stradivari used, for one thing. "No one can tell the sound of a varnished from an unvarnished instrument," adds James Beament, author of The Violin Explained, "for varnish, like beauty, is only skin deep."
Hutchins, who says "old-time violin makers hate my guts," says the best modern makers have not only the skill but also the science to help them accomplish what Stradivari had to do by ear--and trial and error. One key, she believes, is carefully adjusting the wooden top and back plates of the instrument so that they vibrate in patterns that reinforce certain tones. Unlike the simple, regular vibration patterns of string, plates vibrate in a series of complex and difficult-to-predict modes. And shaving off a fraction of a millimeter of wood from one spot can dramatically alter the relative loudness of a note's overtones, or harmonics, which are what determine the timbre of a sound. Different patterns of overtones are why a violin and a flute--or a good and a not-so-good violin--can sound so different, even when playing the same note.
Hutchins analyzes the vibration modes of a violin plate by covering it with a powder of aluminum flakes, then placing the plate atop a loudspeaker emitting a single tone. She then progressively raises the tone's pitch until the wood begins to vibrate. The glitter jumps into a pattern revealing how different areas of the plate vibrate up and down. Hutchins believes there are three modes in a plate that are most important to violin tone.
One reason comparisons between old and new violins are so difficult--and potentially misleading--is that the sound ultimately depends on the skilled hands of a player. Expectations on the part of both performers and listeners color a performance and how it is perceived, notes Gary Sturm of the Smithsonian Institution's musical instrument collection.
Violinists, says the Boston Symphony's Churchill, who owns a 1691 Stradivarius, have a unique bond to their old instruments. "We are in awe of its age, we are in awe of its price, but we're also in awe of the potential of such an instrument in our hands," she says. Perhaps that's what most makes a Strad a Strad.
NOISE: GOOD OR EVIL? Electrical engineers have been fighting hums and hisses ever since they discovered how to capture a signal on a wax cylinder or in a radio beam. Low-level noise takes many other forms that erode the quality of transmitted signals, from static and snow that bedevil television pictures to random electronic pulses that disrupt online communications. So it probably seems quite odd that some researchers are asking whether there are situations where noise is good.
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