February 13, 2008

Man destroys Stradivarius in a fit of slapstick.
posted by Capt. Renault 16 years ago
  • From the second link:
    Approximately 600 violins, cellos and other stringed instruments created by Stradivari in his Cremona, Italy, studio during the late 17th and early 18th centuries remain in existence around the globe today, with some used by the world's top instrumentalists and others displayed in museums or galleries.
    I'm not certain of the philosophical persuasions of the owners of such rare fiddles, but tarring them all with the same instrumentalist brush is uncalled for.
  • Oh yes, and what a mistaka to maka!
  • Gah! "Did I do that?" /Urkel
  • fuckin' idiot.
  • That thing was nasty anyway. It was painted with preggo-blood, yuck!
  • I was hoping it was smashed on-stage - a la Townshend.
  • Me too. Or, in the alternative, that in wailing over his smashed Strad, he knocked over a priceless Ming vase.
  • Then he could have lit it on fire and kneeled before it doing that Jimi Hendrix humpy, wiggly-finger thing.
  • This guy is an irresponsible twit. My wife and my mother-in-law both own expensive violins (actually that's a little redundant- any decent instrument will cost more than a top of the line luxury car). In my mother-in-law's case she is lucky enough to own a Guarneri Del Gesu that she got for a song in 1955 and is now appraised at a mind boggling sum. I know from them, that they never forget the value of the thing they hold. In my wife's case, she fell down the stairs while holding her instrument and used her body to shield the instrument resulting in nastier injuries than if she just saved herself. She says she would do the same today. Broken bones can be mended, but if an accident is severe enough (and it sounds like this guy's was) that can be just flushing a bit of irreplaceable history down the drain.
  • Sorry kamus, in that situation, screw history. It's still just stuff.
  • BURN!
  • But you're still wrong, Cappy.
  • Technically, not a burn, as he didn't post in that debate. More of a "where the fuck were you" sort of thing. OTOH, glad to see you echo Pleg's and my calls for burning, Larababy.
  • Me and Pleg against the horde, fighting for justice as though for the city wall... Nickdanger on our side would shurely have tipped the balance in favour of right...
  • in that situation, screw history. It's still just stuff Well, I would agree that if it's between a choice between a human life and a violin, then the human life trumps. But my point was that responsible players don't put themselves in that situation in the first place. The story about my wife illustrates how most string players feel about their instruments. In many cases, the player has a long relationship with the instrument and they begin to feel, with some justification given the idiosyncratic qualities of individual instrument/bow combinations, that the instrument is an actual extension of themselves. I also have a hard time believing that landing on his case saved his life, though I could be wrong. Note that this is really only true of stringed instruments- with other instruments, though there are some individual characteristics of other instruments, there is much more uniformity to the manufacturing process and thus are easier to replace.
  • Well, I had no idea that I was needed. And I pretty much spend 2-3 hours a night scanning the sky for the Danger-signal and I'm pretty sure I didn't see it on January 18. /crossed arms But, for the record, yes, I would have voted to burn it. Burn it all, I say. Burn and smash and splinter and destroy all priceless objects until there's not a piece bigger than a dime to be found anywhere on the earth. Take THAT posterity!
  • Yay!
  • Actually, if you use your instrument to protect yourself, screwing history, I guess you might be called an instrumentalist. We'd better find the rest of the Strads and confiscate them.
  • My cousin is famous for falling down a long flight of stairs, whump-whump-whump on his butt all the way down, whilst holding his arms aloft with the neck of an electric guitar clutched securely in each hand.
  • Hell, I've done the same thing with a bottle of beer.
  • Skrik, I didn't get the joke until I looked it up and found this: instrumentalism A philosophy of science which judges the worth of a theory by its fit with empirical evidence but requires no understanding of causal correlation. Thus, for example, the gravity model works reasonably well, but has no theoretical underpinning.
  • I believe all surviving Strads have been modified at least to the extent of a new neck, since modern technique requires a longer neck than they were given by the Master. Often the modifications and repairs go well beyond that. Most have also, frankly, been played to buggery and 'repaired' from near collapse. Or so I'm told.
  • Yeah, the only original bits are the ribs, blocks and the belly/back, in most cases.
  • .. the parts that give them the unique sound.
  • I find it hard to believe that we lack the necessary technology to do a decent replica of a Stradivarius instrument.
  • Me too...how much is hype and how much is a sound so superior that a listener could distinguish it from a high-quality modern violin?
  • Well, I've done the blindfold test with the Guarnerius. It definitely sounded better than the "cheap" $70,000 violin. Was it worth the extra half million? Not to me, but I'm no violinist- it's not just the sound, it's the response and feedback to the player.
  • > the response and feedback to the player These are possibly emotive responses that are more to do with the history of the instrument than its physical properties. We shouldn't discount these responses in considering the value of the instrument. I haven't thought much about this, but it would seem to me that we have sufficient technique to create close-to-exact replicas of anything that was made 300 years ago. It might be elaborate (3-d imaging, microwave probing, etc.), but we should be able to get there eventually.
  • I bet $100k could buy a case capable of protecting the instrument from such an accident.
  • "..how much is hype and how much is a sound so superior.." I've seen the frequency response on a spectrum analyser and there is a definite difference in the sound of a strad compared to a normal high quality concert violin. They have a better warmth, but also a very marked high-end clarity. They have a full sound, comparable to a human voice rich in tones from the mid to top ranges, rather than, say, just a weak tinny voice, or a basso profundo. The frequency response is right thru the range from low to high. They 'sing' in the top end without being thin sounding. They obviously lack a strong bottom-end (low freq) sound due to their size, but even there they have richer tone than other violins. From what I'm told, the resonance in the belly is unique to this make of violin (but each one is obviously slightly different) and has never been successfully copied, even by master luthiers. Yes, we lack the technology to make even a half-assed replica of a Stradivarius. Ask a guitarist about the difference between, say, a real Gibson Les Paul guitar and a very good copy of a Les Paul. Similar sort of deal (even though most of the parts of these instruments are machine made these days - the original Les Pauls were much more crafted by human hands). Human skill in high quality instrument making can't be copied by technology. Yet. Many have tried, and are still trying. Millions have been invested in the attempt. All have failed. It is partly because the sound of the instrument is not due to any one factor of form or material, but a combination, and the qualities that make Stradivarius violins superior are not even fully understood, or even agreed upon, aside from the purely technical analysis of the resonance and frequency range. And what kamus said.
  • Heehee, she got it for a song. /is twelve
  • It's the preggo-blood.
  • That's what I was thinking, waxboy -- couldn't a decent case have saved this from happening? Or do violinists use a soft-sided case?
  • So bassically, this guy was fiddling around, when viola! He nearly broke his neck taking a bow. He was gutted, but he didn't fret long before he took out his cellophone and called for help. Pagan ninny.
  • I've been waiting for that, TUM. I was afraid that a cat gut your tongue.
  • What an f-hole!
  • I too, wondered how long she would string us along before sticking her neck out.
  • What a luth-er!
  • Way to take her down a peg, Cap'n!
  • I rosin-t these stupid puns
  • I think there is way too much violins on television.
  • And not enough sax.
  • These puns are viol. Sorry if I soundboard.
  • It doesn't say in the article, but I'd imagine the thing was insured, wasn't it? I mean, not that that replaces history or anything, but I would think he'd be in line for an insurance payout to cover repairs, etc.
  • Presumably an idiot like this didn't bother to insure.
  • I'd guess the instrument is on loan, no? Hopefully the owner has insured it.
  • Sorry, he's now been lent a Stradivarius. The broken violin was by "G.B. Guadagnini, whose father was reportedly a student of the great Antonio Stradivari". It still cost him a million bucks.
  • Wood grows utterly unique to a certain place and time. I wonder if this is why these venerable instruments can't be reproduced.
  • It has been thus speculated.
  • I took out my great-uncle's violin the other day, and asked it if it had any worth. It didn't answer, because it's a violin, but I gather it'd rather be played than stuck up in closets wherever I live.
  • Hey Hank, what about this from Wikipedia? Texas A&M University biochemist Joseph Nagyvary succeeded in making a violin somewhere near the quality of a Stradivari by leaving the wood to soak in brine.[7] Because of the lack of land in Venice, during that period imported wood was often stored in the seawater of the Venetian Lagoon, where a type of decomposition had a slight effect on the wood. Nagyvary managed to acquire wood shavings from a Stradivarius violin, and under a microscope he found the natural filter plates in the pores between the tracheids were gone. He also treated the wood with a preparation of borax in the manner of Stradivari, who used it to prevent infestation. By late 2003, Nagyvary refined his techniques and produced a violin that was tested in a duel with the Leonardo da Vinci Stradivarius of 1725.[8] Both violins were played in each of four selections of music by violinist Dalibor Karvay behind a screen to an audience of 600 attended by 160 trained musicians and 303 regular concert goers. This was the first public comparison of a Stradivari with a contemporary instrument before a large audience where the audience would cast ballots on the performance quality of each violin. The consensus was that Nagyvary's instrument surpassed the Stradivarius in each category by a small margin.
  • THat reminds me of the Salute to Doughy Guys. (Youtube)
  • I hope the new wood works as well as the old... But as for Capt'n Renault's post on why the man fell on his Strad... I learned it was actually built by Guadagnini... And I even recognize the violin image shown here, since I worked with it graphically for the author of the book <:(!)
  • Dan, that's an interesting tidbit from The Man in the Know. The new wood will never be weighted with history.