Put your finger on one ring - that is the British Army going over the top at Ypres. To demonstrate the wood's acoustic qualities, he takes out a little musical box. He winds it up and it tinkles. He places the tinkling box on that strip of wood and the tune suddenly fills the room. Not only much, much louder but warm and full. Later we walk through the village to meet one of the many musicians of the Risoud Forest. By the side of a wood-burning fire, by a table he made from a giant spruce, David Guignard takes out his cello and plays a bit of Bach - no pun intended.
Around here you would not be surprised to learn that people wear paper shirts and grate wood shavings on their spaghetti. I was happy to live at the foot of those trees. Guignard's music teacher taught him that wood is never quite dead. It is always reacting to changes in temperature and humidity, always evolving. I listen to the crackle of the fire and the sound of cello strings making the wood sing.
And think that I will never quite hear this music in the same way again. Because around here, when you hear an instrument like this, you think of the snow and the wind and the cuckoos and the bees in those tall violin trees. I bought a violin recently and the maker said that later in his career the wood used by Antonio was much inferior to the wood used by Guiseppe.
He did not explain how he, and by implication they, were judging quality. He told me he had the chance to pick out the best pieces of wood from his regular supplier. I should have asked him what 'best' means. Perhaps someone here can answer that? I agree, if you think of a single person or maker. However why all the famous makers did use wood of one single valley? There should have been some competition of different suppliers also in these times.
I think, he just knew, that wood coming from this particular source would be a quite excellent sounding one - eventually yet validated decades earlier by former great masters of Cremona. If he did additional choices at all, eventually in beautiness as also makers of our days and some sound-related tests.
Provided, that Peter Ratcliff would be wrong or Martin Swan told wrong and the wood did not come from one single valley - THEN we would have to assume other things. However I believe, this claim concerned the maple-wood.
I just try to look. However I am not a maker. Some years ago there was an exploration about the wood-choice in spruce of 14 renowned modern austrian makers " Resonance wood [picea abies L. The makers seemed to regard :. I assume we are talking about spruce and the variety of wood as far as grain width etc. The English common name for this tree is norway spruce today, but it has been called pine, red spruce fir, or deal in the past.
There is little doubt that Stradivari used Picea abies from the Alps. Although there is plenty of spruce in colder parts of Europe at lower altitudes, they are simply inferior to the high-altitude spruce in the Alps a Norwegian violin maker told me so. Stradivari's grandson said that spruce was sold by dealers in Brescia Pollen's book. I think this was probably true.
Exactly which part of the Alps they came from is still unclear. The dendrochronology research may be able to point to certain regions in the Alps, but no details have been published yet. Stradivari never went into the mountains to pick trees. Tree cutting was highly regulated. He was busy making violins in Cremona. He bought wood from the dealers.
The traditional view is that the flamed varieties came from the Balkans and the plain ones were local. There are several possible species that all seem to work. The tonewood dealer does not generally identify the species being sold. The flame pattern is due to growth condition rather than a particular species. Both plain and flamed maples can make equally good sounding violins as seen in great master instruments of the past.
But the flamed pattern is more beautiful and more popular with customers. You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account. And thanks to the decomposition over time of a wood component called hemicellulose, the Stradivari and Guarneri instruments used in the study had 25 percent less water than modern instruments.
This latest study analyzes trace chemicals preserved in the maple wood used to make the soundboards of Stradivari and Guarneri instruments.
The research involved a rare collection of Cremonese wood samples of spruce and maple used by Stradivari, Guarneri, and Amati, and the results were then compared to modern spruce and maple tonewoods, as well as woods from antique Chinese zithers and less exceptional old European violins.
They found traces of borax and several metal sulfates in the wood samples dating between to As David Bressan explained over at Forbes:. Borax , also known as sodium-borate, occurs naturally in evaporite deposits produced by the repeated evaporation of seasonal lakes.
Borax is still used today in various household laundry and cleaning products, and in the past was used also as an insecticide and fungicide, killing pests. Copper and zinc sulfates , often associated with copper ore, likely served the same purpose.
Alum , an evaporite mineral containing sulfur, aluminum, potassium and sodium, was added to the mix to form a weak acidic environment in the wood, preventing mold growth. Halite , common table salt, was added as moisture control, keeping the wood too dry for microbes and fungi, and at the same time preventing the deformation of the instrument caused by humidity fluctuations. This is welcome news to Nagyvary, who also co-authored this latest paper.
These methods were kept secret. There were no patents in those times. The CT scanner used by the scientists is normally employed to study the density of the tissue within a patient's lungs using X-rays. However, Dr Stoel, working with a professional instrument-maker, Terry Borman, of Fayetteville in Arkansas, was able to build up a picture of a violin's density variations using CT scans, which carried no risk to the valuable instruments.
On top of this, this conventional approach to measuring wood density is not able to measure variations within a single plate — which appears to be the difference that may explain the quality of the antique instruments.
Dr Stoel, whose study is published in the online journal Public Library of Science, said the density variations within the wood are caused by the type of wood growth. Early growth in spring is less dense than summer growth, and the antique instruments appear to have a more balanced mix of early and late growth. He began crafting stringed instruments in , establishing his workshop in Cremona, Italy, where he stayed until his death aged 93, father to 11 children.
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