A Stradivarius "Ex-Nachez" made in the year 1716 by famed Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari is pictured at Sotheby's in Hamburg Oct. 21, 2003. I Bet You Did Not Know | A Stradivarius and Turkish Maple. The Turkish maple, were shared by the makers of gondolas and violins.
Mavi Boncuk |
A Stradivarius[1] is among the most coveted items in the world, considered to be the best-stringed instrument ever created. The violins, violas and cellos produced by the Stradivari family during the 17th and 18th centuries are prized for their remarkable sound and incredible craftsmanship, and a new study explores the possible techniques used by Antonio Stradivari.
Maple for the old Italian makers came from Croatia, Dalmatia, and even from Turkey. Straight grained maple from Italian Alps[2] were used for cheaper instruments and maple deemed too curly for oar making was turned over to luthiers such as Stradivarius, Guarnierius, Amati[3] and others.
During the Ottoman Italian wars of 1645-1669 caused oriental gums to vanish from the Italian market.However the myth of the Cremona varnish still survives.
The woods most commonly used in violin making are Maple, Spruce, Ebony, Boxwood, Willow and Rosewood. Usually the back, ribs, neck and scroll are made of Maple while Spruce is used for the top, blocks, and linings. Ebony is used for the fingerboard, pegs, tailpiece, and end pin because it is the strongest of all light woods. Boxwood is sometimes substituted for Ebony because it is much easier to find. Many violin makers today are using North American broad leaf maple. This wood can produce as good of a sound as any if it is properly aged. and may add to the tonal quality.
[1] A Stradivarius is one of the violins, violas, cellos and other string instruments built by members of the Stradivari (Stradivarius) family, particularly Antonio Stradivari, during the 17th and 18th centuries. Only about 650 original Stradivari instruments (harps, guitars, violas, cellos, violins) survive today, thousands of violins have been made in tribute to Stradivari, copying his model and bearing labels that read "Stradivarius" on them.According to their reputation, the quality of their sound has defied attempts to explain or equal it, though this belief is disputed. The wood used included spruce for the top, willow for the internal blocks and linings, and maple for the back, ribs, and neck. There has been conjecture that this wood was treated with several types of minerals, including potassium borate (borax), sodium and potassium silicate, and vernice bianca, a varnish composed of gum arabic, honey, and egg white. Stradivari made his instruments using an inner form, unlike the French copyists, such as Vuillaume, who employed an outer form. It is clear from the number of forms throughout his career that he experimented with some of the dimensions of his instruments.
A more modern theory attributes tree growth during a time of global cold temperatures during the Little Ice Age associated with unusually low solar activity of the Maunder Minimum, circa 1645 to 1750, during which cooler temperatures throughout Europe are believed to have caused stunted and slowed tree growth, resulting in unusually dense wood.[29] Further evidence for this "Little Ice Age theory" comes from a simple examination of the dense growth rings in the wood used in Stradivari's instruments.
[2] Article | ‘Fatto di Fiemme’: Stradivari’s violins and the musical trees of the Paneveggio
AARON S. ALLEN
Musical trees in the historical imagination For centuries a particular microclimate in the Val di Fiemme has provided ideal conditions for the growth of resonance wood, the fundamental material for constructing the quality musical instruments central to the sound of Western music. Today part of the Parco Naturale Paneveggio/Pale di San Martino in the Italian province of Trentino, the Paneveggio is known as ‘la foresta dei violini’, the forest of violins.1 From here, in the eighteenth century, the wood of the spruce2 embarked on a long and arduous, yet delicate and fortune-dependent, journey: musical trees of the mountain-valley forests were brought to nearby cities, where luthiers transformed them into musical instruments for use in the concert hall, where the imaginations of countless audiences have been transfixed for centuries. Contrary to what happened to other musical woods, such as the pernambuco used to make violin bows, a combination of global values and local environmental and cultural conditions shielded the spruce from Venice’s insatiable desire for timber and contributed to centuries of sustainable forestry in the Paneveggio. Resonance wood from Fiemme has been used throughout the world, but its history is tied especially to the city of luthiers, Cremona, whose most famous son was Antonio Stradivari (1644/49-1737). Stradivari’s instruments and their attendant myths, both products of the long eighteenth century, provide a case study to begin disentangling a web of cultural and ecological values and meanings. ARTICLE LINK
[3] Amati is the last name of a family of Italian violin makers, who lived at Cremona from about 1538 to 1740.
No comments:
Post a Comment