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Strad's Secret
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RIVISrA DEl.LA COMUNlTA'ITALIANA
ju/iafl Brown
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Antonio Stradivari was bOrn in
1644, into a respected family of
craftsmen in Cremona, a northern
Italian town that was already famed
far afield for its violins. .
Stradivari was apprenticed to' the
instrument maker Nicolo Arnati at
aroUnd the age of 12 and by the time,
he'died, aged 93, he had made around
a. thousand .violins and at 'leaSt 300.
oilier stringed instruments, including
,cellos, lutes and guitars. .
A productive life, certainly, and a
reasonably well-rewarded one: he sOld
most of his output for the equivalent
of around four pounds each, ,and
apjX:arcd WeIr satisfied with the mOd~
erate, middle-class income and lifestyle
his craft brought him and his
family. Stradivari' conld never have
dreamt that; 250 years after ,his death,
his violins are auctioned
and reach
prices anywhere
from £200,000 to
several million.
What makes a
Sti'adivaiius violin
(he usually signed
his work with the
Latin version of
his name and was
careful to ensure,
during his lifetime;
that no instrument
except those made
completely by his
own hand bore his
label) so valuable and so special?
I had a rare chance to find out for
myself when a 'Strad' came up for
auction at Sotheby's. As a keen
amateur violinist, I had always wondered
whether sueh an instrument
would make a dramatic difference to
my playing, so although the guide
price of £300,000 was beyond my
means, I went along to IIy it out.
The Strad, its centuries-old varnish
gleaming with a deep, red bloom, lay
waiting in an anteroom. I picked up
the instrument, tuned it and played.
The effect was electrifyingl The violin
resonated and sang out in a way
that I had never experienced before. It
was like driving a high performance
racing car after a clapped-out Mini -
pure exhilaration I
But driving high performance cars
requires great skill. And the same
applies to Strads. A Strad won't
suddenly turn you into a virtuoso.
Still, for a few 'brief moments, I
glimpsed it's magical properties.
During his career Stradivari made
certain subtle changes in the proportions
of the violin, gradually increasing
the instrument's power. While his
early work followed the traditions of
his ,teacher Arnati, by the close of the_
:17'h century the Stradivarius had become
. flatter and· broader, and the
bridge began to look'as it does today.
'Probably the greatest of the Strad
known as the 'Soil' of 1714,' says
Peter Biddulph a London violin dealer,
who had sold a number of Strads.
'Many people think this is the finestsoUnding
violin in the World an(\ it's
appropriate that it's played by the
Israeli Itzhak Perlman, probably the
greatest living violinist'. .
But violin makers have long copied
the proportions of
Stradivarius's instruments
- without achieving
the Same results. So
the secret must lie elsewhere.
But where?' In the
deep, lustrous auburnred
varnish, according to
one theol}'. But there's a
problem. Strads have
withstood nearly 300
years of wear and tear.
Not surprisingly, the rich
varnish on many has
taken a battering and, in
some cases, most of it
has been worn away. Yet these instruments
still sound magnificent.
In the 1980s, a US researcher
ciin1e up with a new theol}': the secret
lay in the wood. Stradivari used wood
- maple and spruce - that was delivered
to Cremona by being floated
along the Italian canals; perhaps the
contact with water had changed its
character. The idea was initially supported
by electron microscope pictures
of the violin's surface: Strad
wood was found to be riddled with
tiny, open pores, while those of
modem instruments were closed.
But later research suggested that
whether the pores showed as open or
closed under examination was not
dependent on the violin' but on how
the wood sample had been cut and
prepared before examination.
Electron microscopy, however,
may yet provide the answer. Recent
research in Cambridge has found a
layer beneath the Strad's famed varnish.
Under the electron microscope it
appears like a: seam of manipan
sandwiched between the cake of wood
and the icing-like varnish.
This turns out to be consistent
with another idea put Jor;ward in the
1980s. For some time experts had
been arguing over whether the craftsmen.
of Cremona had used a wood
sealant before applying varnish to the
instruments they were making.
John Chipura, an American geolo­
,gist and violin enthusiast, published a
letter in the magazine The Slrad
suggesting that this sealant may well
'have been a'layerof'Roinan cement.
Readily available, the cement was the
Italian 'Polyfilla' of its time and was
made from local volcanic ash, whose
mineral constituentS are vel}' similar
to those revealed by Barl