"The Violin - Perfection Found Early"

Sydney M. Williams

Note from Old Lyme

February 22, 2011

The Violin – Perfection Found Early

“The violin, as we know it, is the most perfect development

of the large number of instruments played with a bow.”

                                                                                                                The Musical Times
                                                                                                                May 1, 1888

“Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.”

                                                                                                                 Voltaire (1694-1778)

Not having much of a music sense, so shutting my eyes and enjoying the sensation, I was sitting recently in Old Lyme’s First Congregational Church, the venue for Musical Masterworks, letting my mind wander. Two violinists were playing Dmitri Shostakovich’s Duets for Two Violins with Piano in three parts. Not quite day dreaming, it occurred to me that we live in a time when technology has radically changed our lives, for better and for worse, but mostly for better. Skis, clothes, tennis racquets, cars, TV, telephones, drugs, music synthesizers, golf clubs – myriad products that we use every day have been improved from advances in technologies and the use of new materials, be they composites or rare earth minerals. Yet a violin made by Antonio Stradivari in 1710, from material available today, has never been improved upon. Why?

The nave of the church, which hosts Musical Masterworks and which was rebuilt in 1909 with the aid of artists from the Old Lyme art colony, achieves almost perfect acoustics. Musical Masterworks is a series of five chamber music concerts that have been held every year for the last twenty. The series was begun with Charles Wadsworth, the founding director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, as artistic director. Two years ago Edward Arron, the artistic director for the Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert, succeeded him. The artists come from around the world and have included this season Yosuke Kawasaki and Catherine Cho (violins), Marya Martin (flute), Andrew Armstrong (piano) and Randall Scarlata (baritone).

Antonio Stradivari was likely born in Cremona in 1644. Around the age of 13 he was apprenticed to luthier, Nicolò Amati, grandson of Andrea Amati the earliest maker of violins that still survive today. As Stradivari inscribed his violins with Latin slogans, they became known as Antonius Stradivarius violins. Today, those instruments made during what was considered his “golden” period, between 1700 and 1720, command prices in the millions of dollars. The highest price paid at a public auction for a Stradivarius was $3,544,000 at Christies in New York on May 15, 2006. It is estimated that instruments have sold for higher prices in private sales.

While a Stradivarius is generally considered the best violin ever made, there are have been blind tests, conducted between 1827 and the present, that question that conclusion, but in none of those tests has the sound quality of a Stradivarius ever been found wanting. Wikipedia suggests that while the techniques used in their construction have long been debated, it is known that Stradivari experimented with sizes. The woods used are known: spruce for the harmonic top, willow for the internal parts and maple for the back, strip and neck. The wood, which was stored in Venice in and under water before being used, was treated with several types of minerals; the varnish comprised a mix of natural products. There are theories that the wood used was denser than that generally available today, due to the stunted growth of trees, a function of the Little Ice Age, which lasted from the mid seventeenth to the mid eighteenth century.

Whatever Antonio Stradivari did, the result is mesmerizing: the notes that evening flowed, somberly in the Prelude, cheerfully in the Gavotte, and the Waltz made the listener believe he/she was in mid-nineteenth century Vienna.

However, lacking musical sophistication, my attendance at these concerts is somewhat akin to taking a nine-year old to see Shakespeare in the Park. It’s easy to become distracted. I sit there and let the music sweep over me. I marvel at the composers and consider their genius, as writing music of this sort must be like writing a play, only far more complicated. Each instrument is played according to the specific demands of its individual script, sometimes in tune with the other instruments and at other times alone, or in opposition. The composer, faced with an empty sheet of paper, must write the music for each instrument; he must be able to hear the tune in his mind, the sound and tune from each instrument and how they blend into a cohesive whole. Their genius is beyond my comprehension.

We live in an age where meetings on Facebook constitute a relationship and when twittering, IM and YouTube have replaced person to person dialogue. Listening to Ms. Catherine Cho and Ms. Kyung Sun Lee, their bows moving rhythmically across the strings, producing sounds that can only be described as heavenly, I bask in the wonder that technology, which has altered our lives in so many ways, has been unable to improve upon an instrument made three hundred years ago in the ancient city of Cremona. And I smile.