Timber quality key to Stradivarius violins’ mystery

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London, Jul 3: For centuries, experts have debated over the secret of the Stradivarius violin’s heavenly sound. Now, a new study claims to have solved the mystery of why the 300-year-old instruments are the best in the world.

Researchers in Europe have discovered that the main reason for the superiority of Stradivarius violins over their modern-day counterparts is the density of two wooden panels used to make its body. According to the researchers, timber used in musical instruments from the 17th and 18th centuries has a consistent density throughout the violin, allowing them to produce notes of unparallel richness and power.

By contrast, today’s violins are made from wood whose density fluctuates across the instrument. In their study, the researchers compared five antique violins made by the Cremonese masters Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri Del Gesu with seven modern-day instruments, using a medical scanner that can gauge the density of the two wooden plates that make up the top and the back of the body.

They found that overall the density of the two groups of violins was the same, but what differed significantly was that the two plates of the older instruments had more uniform density compared to the more inconsistent densities of the modern plates, The Independent reported. The vibration and sound-radiation characteristics of a violin are determined by an instrument’s geometry and the material properties of the wood.

“New test ethods actually allow the non-destructive examination of one of the key material properties, the wood density, at the growth ring level of detail,” said Berend Stoel, who led the research team at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

According to Stoel, the density variations within the wood are caused by the type of wood growth. “Early growth wood is primarily responsible for water transport and thus is more porous and less dense than late growth wood, which plays more of a structural support role of much more closely packed tracheids (the light and dark grain lines of wood),” he said. The study has been published in the Public Library of Science journal.