Stradivarius, the end of the legend?

Stradivarius VS moderns violins

 The legend says that Stradivarius are the best violins ever made and that the secret of its acoustic disappeared at the same time as Antonio Stradivari died.

Most of the violinists believe that instruments by Stradivari and Guarneri ‘del Gesu’ are tonally superior to other violins – and to new violins in particular. Many mechanical and acoustical factors have been proposed to account for this; however, the fundamental premise of tonal superiority has not yet been properly investigated. Player’s judgements about a Stradivari’s sound may be biased by the violin’s extraordinary monetary value (about 10 millions $) and historical importance, but no studies designed to preclude such biasing factors have yet been published.

In order to get objective response, Claudia Fritz (acoustic researcher at the CNRS) decided to ask experienced violinists to compare violins by Stradivari and Guarneri ‘del Gesu’ with high quality new instruments.

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The fisrt experiment took place in USA in September 2010. Claudia Fritz Took advantage of  an  international violin playing competitions in Indianpolis, to ask to 21 famous volionists gathered for this occasion, to join the experiment. She asked them to play and to compare 6 violins, three new and three old.  The old violins consisted of one by Guarneri ‘del Gesu’ (c.1740) and two by Antonio Stradivari (c.1700, c.1715). The experiment took place in a hotel room specially chosen for the quality of his acoustic. The musicians wore modified welders’ goggles, which together with much-reduced ambient lighting made it impossible to identify instruments by eye.  The conclusion were amazing: Most of the musicians prefered new violins to the Stradivarius and the Guarneri.

After this first experience, main critics said that a hotel room wasn’t adapted for violins acoustics, and they suggested that a concert hall would be more suitable. Other critics said that the violonist ‘s choices weren’t enough relevent to know which violins were the best and they suggested that audience viewpoints should be considered .  So Claudia Fritz decided to organize a second experiment in France near Paris at the Auditorium of Vincennes. The experiment involved 6 Old Italians (including 5 Stradivari) and 6 new instruments. Violonists, violin makers, audiophiles, critics made up the audience.

The last experiments took place in New york in 2013 March during a famous exhibition for Violin Maker call Mondomusica. This exhibition was organized by the city of Cremone in Italy where used to live the most famous violins makers, Antonio Stradivari, Guarneri del Gesu, Amati….

As in Indianapolis, Claudia want to take advantage of the presence of finest violin ‘s experts during the exhibition to ask them to participate as audience to a comparison between stradivarius and modern violins. The conditions of the test were closed from The Paris ‘s test. The aim of Claudia Fritz was to collect more data to refine his study about difference between old and modern violins.

The day before the test Claudia and his team, composed of the famous american violin maker Joseph Curtin, Fan-Chia Tao R & D director for the violon string manufacturer Addario, the american violin maker, Samuel Zygmuntowicz  and three american professionnal violonist, chose among 15 modern violin 3 violin they prefered to play. Those 3 modern violins will be compared to 3 stradivarius.

The day after before the test Claudia and Joseph Curtins proceed to the physical test of the 6 selected violins. The aim of this test was to know the vibrational and acoustic behavior of the violin regardless of violonist. (see feature’s captions)

The preference test took place in the Great Hall of the Cooper Union. The musician wore modified welders’ goggles and translucent curtain separate the stage from the hall so that together made it impossible to identify instruments by eye.  The violins were played and compared two by two. Each pair consists of a Stradivarius and a modern violin. The two professionnal violonist, Elizabeth Pitcairn and Aaron Boyd were playing extracts of the overtures of Tchaïkowski and Brahms concerto.

The conclusion of those two last tests are still analysed by Claudia Fritz and his team, but it  seem that the conclusion are close from the Indianapolis test: there is no difference in acoustic perception between modern and old violins.

The challenge of Claudia is to get a logical outcome to the question: Is there is a difference between the perception by violonists and music lovers of the old finest violin such as stradivarius or Guarneri Del gesu and the modern violins? The first results issued from the Indianapolis blind test reveal that the difference exist between violon but not according to their age.

If the results of Paris and New York experiments corroborate the Indianapolis results, its should dramatically change mentality enabling a lot of people to get the best of violin at a cost 100 times less than a Stradivarius.

Claudia Fritz want also to know if a correlation occur in the collected data between the human acoustic perception and the physical dynamic behavior of the violins . The existence of  a correlation would help the craftmen to improve the acoustic of their violin.

Notwithstanding all the above, the particular visual beauty and historical importance of old Italian violins will no doubt maintain their hold on the imagination of violinists and their audiences for a long time to come.