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Readers of these pages are urgently requested to join in the exchange of thoughts. I intend to provide this forum with a more or less provoking theory now and then (not necessarily mine), with the aim of trying to be able to make a distinction between interesting and useless ideas. E.g.:
I We know virtually nothing about the inside of classical Italian violin making.
With the inside I mean their phenomenal control of the tonal results. And, though since the first Amati mankind hasn’t been without violinmakers, I do think that the tradition which we normally consider as unbroken, is in essence 19th century German, and not classical Italian. Considering:
- that violinmaking has for 150 years been almost exclusively a family business of the Amatis (including pupils and related families);
- that violinmakers are not especially noted for their literacy (even Stradivarius’ grammar and orthography, though he was the head of a big business, were rather shaky);
- that they did not have the Herz and the decibel to describe acoustical properties;
- transferring the inside of their knowledge must have been a rather time consuming business. One also gets the impression that not everything was taught to all pupils.
Would it, all in all, be too farfetched to suppose that the already thin thread broke somewhere in the second half of the 18th century? There was a lot of untimely dying, there were a few hopelessly ungifted pupils, and the general decay of the business didn’t boost the motivation to uphold the grand style of former days. Imagine that your customers were kings, popes, archdukes etc. when you started out on the business, and well within your working career you had to adapt to working for musicians.
Moreover the change of musical taste that gradually came about in the second half of the 18th century, made the old knowledge more or less superfluous. From a central force in European musical life, Italian violinmaking was transformed into a sideline.
To illustrate the probability of the unthinkable I will refer to the story of the once very famous Dutch bell founders, the Hemonys. They had at their disposal a very refined set of glass resonators, the activity of which they were able to show by sprinkling them with sand. With the aid of these resonators they were able to tune their bells so well, that their chimes were famous all over the world. Even czar Peter the Great wanted one. The knowledge about this tuning and the use of the resonators, what I would call the inner knowledge of bell making, got lost, without leaving a trace whatsoever, within 2 generations. The Hemonys worked around and so can be considered contemporaries of the Amatis and Stradivari.
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II About Stradivaris drawings:
he didn’t venture into mathematics, but had a big business to run. His drawings were in the first place indispensable to keep everybody on the right track. Take the measurements from the drawing, as indicated, and transfer them to the workpiece. Even a pupil who can barely read or write, will understand immediately, and the master will be left with at least some spare time for his own work. Moreover, instead of calling him a control freak, I propose that his was a most sensible method of storing a lot of complicated data in a very elegant way.
Stradivari did not collect these data by complicated mathematical constructions for two reasons (at least):
- if the working out of geometrical proportions was his main aim, isn’t it strange that al drawings that have come down to us are full-size? Paper wasn’t that cheap in those days;
- the only sound reason that I can think of for his continual experiments with the form and layout of his instruments is tonal improvement. Did he first make the geometrical construction to make instruments according to it? Or did he first make a prototype (after a few experiments), of which he transferred the vital data to a life-size drawing?
Apart from all this, there are always problems with matching Strad’s measurements as given in the drawings with pictures of his instruments. Many of his measurements have a decidedly 3-dimensional character, especially those in connection with the f-holes. May the problem not be that we try to match the real measurements with a projection of them? Can it be that his drawings refer to real instruments only?
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III
An even not too close look at the thicknessing of Italian fronts and backs leaves one with the impression that they where not particularly concerned about the exact geometry of them. Taking into consideration that they were accomplished woodworkers, and that Stradivari has had at least two tools, probably made for him on his own design, werewith to control platethicknessing, this utter disdain for geometrical evenness must have been on purpose. I agree with others who suggested a like solution before, that the classical Italian violin makers “tuned” their instruments in the white. Not too strange, as archive delving has showed that many of them where employed now and then as professional violinists.
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