Decryption of Italian violin making

The violins made by Italian violinist antonio stradivari are world-famous. Jozsef Nagy Wali, a Hungarian-born scientist at Texas A&M University, has studied stradivari's violin for many years and found that insect pests and the help of unknown pharmacists are the key to the outstanding timbre of this famous piano. His research conclusion was published in the British journal Nature on1October 30th.

Decrypt the famous piano

Three centuries ago, in the northern Italian town of cremona, stradivari made a world-famous violin, which has extremely perfect timbre and sound quality.

Since then, music historians, musicians, chemists and pharmacists have been trying to solve the mystery of stradivari's famous piano. People have made various speculations about the secret of making a famous piano: Did stradivari use a special glue? Is the wood he used from an ancient church in Europe or an ancient tree with dense rings?

Nagyvary led a team to carry out this research. They seized the precious opportunity of musical instrument maintenance, took shavings from five ancient violins and studied them carefully by infrared spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance.

These five violins include a violin and a cello made in stradivari in 17 17, a violin made by Guarneri Delger Seuss, another musical instrument manufacturer in cremona in174/0/0, and a violin made in Paris in 65438+ 1940.

Mothproof treatment

Nagyvary's team compared these shavings with maple trees from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Central Europe. At that time, craftsmen used these maples to soak, cook and bake wood before making musical instruments. Among them, three violins made in cremona showed signs of chemical treatment, while the other two did not.

In an interview with AFP, Nagyvary said that what kind of chemical substances wood has been treated needs further study. However, according to his experience, he speculated that in the17th century, people in cremona often used metal oxides to preserve wood.

Nagyvary guessed that these chemicals were used not only by famous piano manufacturers stradivari and Deljesus, but also by furniture manufacturers. "Because there was a big pest in cremona at that time," Nagyvary said, "so craftsmen either processed wood in special places or treated it with a mineral powder and boiled it to kill moths."

If the moths in the wood are not killed, the wood will be gradually destroyed. Nagyvary believes that this medicine can not only prevent moth, but also improve the vibration ability of wood, and make the Stradivari violin have a mellow and beautiful tone. Audio experts praised it as "low noise", while violinists said that there was "no annoying hoarse timbre" in the bass area.

Varnish coating

In addition to moth-proof treatment, the hard varnish coating on the violin surface is also the key to the outstanding timbre of the famous piano. The paint contains crystal powder, and the wood coated with this paint is not attractive to moths.

Violin coatings not only have the protective and decorative properties of general coatings, but also have their acoustic properties. This layer of paint treatment makes the treble tone of Stradivari violin pure, bright and extraordinary.