Posts Tagged ‘musical instruments’
“Off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony”*…
Elly Fishman, with the story of a master craftsman…
It’s a few minutes past 10 in the morning, and John Becker stands just inside the door to his company’s office in the Fine Arts Building downtown. He wears a black workman’s apron, which he fits to his body by wrapping the ties around his torso twice. With his shoulders slightly hunched, he quietly observes the almost surreal scene unfolding before him.
A few feet away, Joshua Bell and James Ehnes, two of the most prominent solo violinists on the planet, hover over an Arts and Crafts–style wood table. Normally, Bell, a former child prodigy known for his virtuosic, animated playing, and Ehnes, a musician’s musician celebrated for his technical prowess, would be the superstars in the room. Both have won multiple Grammy Awards, and between the two of them, they have performed in nearly every major concert hall and with all the best orchestras in the world. But here, in Becker’s studio inside his office, another icon takes center stage.
“I’m really nervous and excited,” says Bell, his hands stuffed in his pockets. “It’s like meeting my wife again after two months. I’m a little overwhelmed.”
“Oh yeah, I understand the feeling,” Ehnes chimes in, his tone nearly giddy. His eyes are set on an object perched on a gray cloth that covers the tabletop. “I’ve never seen this violin before. It’s incredible. It’s so beautiful.” He pauses as though to take in every contour. The spruce wood — a swirl of orange and red hues — glows under the morning light. “It’s stunning.”
The violin in question belongs to Bell. The 310-year-old instrument, which Bell has said is worth as much as $15 million, is among the roughly 650 made by the renowned 18th-century Italian craftsman Antonio Stradivari that survive today. Bell left it with Becker for repairs, and over the past two months, the master luthier applied protective polish to preserve the original varnish, removed the top to make internal repairs, and handcrafted several cleats to reinforce tiny cracks in the wood. Bell has flown in from New York to retrieve the violin, which has been his concert instrument since 2001, before he departs on a tour of South America and Italy.
Ehnes plans to leave his own Strad with Becker for more minor repairs — a bridge adjustment, a varnish touchup, a new sound post — which will take only a day. The Canadian has made this essential stop before heading to concerts in South Korea and Japan.
Becker turns to Bell and asks if he wants to give the violin a try. It may look beautiful thanks to the fresh polish, but after 213 hours of painstaking work, the true test is how it feels and sounds…
He’s trusted to repair some of the world’s most fabled — and expensive — instruments. How does John Becker manage to unlock the sound of a Stradivarius? “The Violin Doctor,” from @Elly33 in @ChicagoMag.
* Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
###
As we treasure timbre and tone, we might send sonorous birthday greetings to Fritz Kreisler; he was born on this date in 1875. A composer and violin virtuoso, he one of the most noted violin masters of his day, and is regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time, known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing– instantly recognizable as his.
Kreisler owned several extraordinary violins made by luthiers Antonio Stradivari, Pietro Guarneri, Giuseppe Guarneri, and Carlo Bergonzi, most of which eventually came to be known by his name (e.g., “Kriesler’s Stradivarius”). He also owned a Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume violin of 1860, which he often used as his second violin.
“How low can you go?”*…
… Pretty low if you have an octobass– which the Montreal Symphony now does…
The Montreal Symphony Orchestra has just become the only ensemble in the world to employ an octobass… Here it is dwarfing its new orchestra mates in Montreal:
“This is an octobass – it’s so low it will turn your insides to jelly,” @classicfm
Because of the extreme fingerboard length and string thickness, the musician plays it using a system of levers and pedals which engage metal clamps that are positioned above the neck at specific positions and act as fretting devices.
The octobass, which typically plays a full octave below the double bass, has never been produced on a large scale nor (though Hector Berlioz wrote favorably about the instrument and proposed its widespread adoption) used much by composers. Indeed, The only known work from the 19th century that specifically calls for the octobass is Charles Gounod‘s Messe solennelle de Sainte–Cécile.
Per Berlioz, the octobass’ three open strings were tuned C1, G1, and C2. The fundamental frequencies of the lowest notes in this tuning lie below 20 Hz—the commonly-understood lower bound of the human hearing range—still, these notes are audible due to the overtones they produce. More interesting these inaudible lowest notes (like the 32′ stop on an organ)– known as “infrasound“– elicit a physical reaction: feelings of awe or fear. It has also been suggested that since it is not consciously perceived, it may make people feel vaguely that odd or supernatural events are taking place. In any case, it’s why sound designers in thrillers and horror movies mix infrasound into the tracks at moments meant to be tense or frightening.
* “Born to Hand Jive,” Grease
###
As we stretch, we might recall that it was on this date in 1925 that Lonnie Johnson made his first recording, “Mr. Johnson’s Blues,” in a session for OKeh Records. A Blues guitar innovator, his music fueled a blues craze throughout the rest of the decade and influences the next generation of blues and folk musicians.
Johnson was also a talented pianist and violinist, and is is recognized as the first to play an electrically-amplified violin.
“Speed is carrying us along, but we have yet to master it”*…
A call to contemplate the potential negative effects of internet technology along with its promise…
Conversations about technology tend to be dominated by an optimistic faith in technological progress, and headlines about new technologies tend to be peppered with deterministic language assuring readers of all the wonderful things these nascent technologies “will” do once they arrive. There is endless encouragement to think about all of the exciting benefits to be enjoyed if everything goes right, but significantly less attention is usually paid to the ways things might go spectacularly wrong.
In the estimation of philosopher Paul Virilio, the refusal to seriously contemplate the chance of failure can have calamitous effects. As he evocatively put it in 1997’s Open Sky, “Unless we are deliberately forgetting the invention of the shipwreck in the invention of the ship or the rail accident in the advent of the train, we need to examine the hidden face of new technologies, before that face reveals itself in spite of us.” Virilio’s formulation is a reminder that along with new technologies come new types of dangerous technological failures. It may seem obvious today that there had never been a car crash before the car was invented, but what future wrecks are being overlooked today amidst the excited chatter about AI, the metaverse, and all things crypto?
Virilio’s attention to accidents is a provocation to look at technology differently. To foreground the dangers instead of the benefits, and to see ourselves as the potential victims instead of as the smiling beneficiaries. As he put it in Pure War, first published in 1983, “Every technology produces, provokes, programs a specific accident.” Thus, the challenge becomes looking for the “accident” behind the technophilic light show — and what’s more, to find it before the wreckage starts to pile up.
Undoubtedly, this is not the most enjoyable way to look at technology. It is far more fun to envision yourself enjoying the perfect meal prepared for you by your AI butler than to imagine yourself caught up in a Kafkaesque nightmare after the AI system denies your loan application. Nevertheless, if Virilio was right to observe that “the invention of the highway was the invention of 300 cars colliding in five minutes,” it would be wise to start thinking seriously about the crashes that await us as we accelerate down the information superhighway…
The work of Paul Virilio urges us to ask: What future disasters inhere in today’s technologies? “Inventing the Shipwreck” from Zachary Loeb (@libshipwreck) in @_reallifemag. Eminently worth reading in full.
For a look at those who don’t just brush aside Virilio’s caution, but actively embrace speed and the chaos that it can cause:
Accelerationism holds that the modern, Western democratic state is so mired in corruption and ineptitude that true patriots should instigate a violent insurrection to hasten its destruction to allow a new, white-dominated order to emerge. Indeed, some of the foremost exponents of accelerationism today were at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. They included: the Oath Keepers, whose grab-bag ideology states that “paranoid anti-federalism envision[s] a restoration of ‘self-government’ and ‘natural rights’;” QAnon adherents, who remain convinced that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that former President Donald Trump was thwarted from saving the world from a Satan-worshipping pedophilia ring run by Democrats, Jews, and other agents of the deep state; and, of course, Trump’s own die-hard “Stop the Steal” minions, who, against all reason and legal proof, seek to restore the former president to office.
The objective of accelerationism is to foment divisiveness and polarization that will induce the collapse of the existing order and spark a second civil war…
Read the full piece: “A Year After January 6, Is Accelerationism the New Terrorist Threat?“
* Paul Virilio
###
As we practice prudence, we might recall that it was on this date in 1854 that Anthony Fass, a Philadelphia piano maker, was awarded the first U.S. patent (#11062) for an accordion. (An older patent existed in Europe, issued in Vienna in 1829 to Cyrill Demian.)
“Music helps set a romantic mood. Imagine her surprise when you say, ‘We don’t need a stereo – I have an accordion’.” – Martin Mull
“A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn’t.” – Tom Waits
“Yes, there are two paths you can go by / But in the long run / There’s still time to change the road you’re on”*…
Every winter and spring, rains across the central U.S. combine with snowmelt along the northern reaches of the Mississippi River to inundate the hardwood-dominated bottomlands of the lower Mississippi. When the floodwaters recede and soils dry up in summer, logging crews harvest species of trees that include green ash. Being partly submerged for months encourages these trees to produce thin-walled cells with large gaps between them, creating a low-density wood prized by musical instrument makers. Since the 1950s, American guitar giant Fender Musical Instruments has used this kind of ash to create its iconic electric guitars. Countless music legends, from bluesman Muddy Waters to rockers Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones and Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, have loved their Fenders, and many say this wood gives the instruments a warm but crystal-clear twang. This niche has earned it colloquial labels such as “swamp ash,” “music ash” or “punky ash” in the lumber and music industries (although the names are used for a couple of others species of ash as well).
Once cheap and readily available, swamp ash became an integral part of Fender’s DNA over the decades, says Mike Born, former director of wood technology at the company. But earlier this year an acute shortage forced Fender to announce it would move away from using swamp ash in its famous line of Stratocasters and Telecasters—reserving the wood for vintage models only. Fender blamed the dwindling supply on longer periods of climate-fueled flooding along the lower Mississippi—which is endangering saplings and making it harder for lumber companies to reach standing trees—as well as the looming threat of an invasive tree-boring beetle. Another renowned U.S. manufacturer called Music Man raised similar sourcing concerns in 2019, which the company described as having “one of the worst harvests in recent history.”
The ominous situation shows how climate change consequences can reverberate through all aspects of society—even rock and roll. And the swamp ash supply could soon become still more tenuous because experts expect global warming to continue making floods worse. “The average player just won’t be able to afford it,” Born says…
Flooding and a wood-boring beetle threaten supplies of storied ‘swamp ash’: “Climate Change Hits Rock and Roll as Prized Guitar Wood Shortage Looms.”
(Violin makers have their own version of the same issue…)
* “Stairway to Heaven,” Led Zeppelin… on which Jimmy Page played the solo on his swamp ash “Dragon Telecaster.”
###
As we harmonize, we might spare a thought for Leon Theremin; he died on this date in 1993. A Russian inventor, he is best known for his eponymous theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments and the first to be mass produced. While the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” is the example of theremin use that springs first to most folks’ minds, that performance was actually on a knock-off (a similar-sounding instrument invented by Paul Tanner called an Electro-Theremin); still, it had the effect of driving demand– both for the theremin and for electronic instruments more generally.
He is also well-known in more arcane circles as the creator of “The Thing” (the Great Seal bug)– a covert listening device that hung in plain view in the office of the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and allowed Russian intelligence to eavesdrop on secret conversations for seven years. Concealed inside a replica of the Great Seal of the U.S. gifted by Moscow to Ambassador Averell Harriman in 1945, it was “passive” (relied on energy from nearby sources)– and is thus considered by many to have been the ancestor of RFID technology.
“Different musical instruments provide for different music”*…
The German polymath and Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher [see here] had a lifelong fascination with sound and devoted two books to the subject: Musurgia Universalis (1650), on the theoretical (and theological) aspects, and Phonurgia Nova (1673), on the science of acoustics and its practical applications. It’s no surprise then to learn that his famed museum at Rome’s Collegio Romano boasted— in addition to “vomiting statues”, ghost-conjuring mirrors, and other curious wonders — a vast and diverse collection of musical instruments.
Much of what we know of Kircher’s museum today is thanks to his student and fellow Jesuit priest Filippo Buonanni (1638-1725), who succeeded Kircher as both Professor of Mathematics and, upon Kircher’s death, as chief custodian of the museum for which he produced an epic and exhaustive, near-800-page catalogue in 1709. Following in his master’s footsteps, Buonanni too held a dizzying array of interests and specialisms including numismatics, microscopy, spontaneous generation, Chinese laquer, seashells (on which he produced the first monograph), and also, like Kircher, music.
Inspired by the collection of instruments in Kircher’s wunderkammer, and intrigued by the stories behind them, in 1722 Buonanni published his Gabinetto Armonico pieno d’istromenti sonori (or Harmonic cabinet full of sonorous instruments), an attempt to catalogue, for the first time, the musical instruments of the world. While there’s a short and often illuminating text for each instrument it is the 152 engraved plates — executed by Flemish artist and publisher Arnold van Westerhout — which really steal the show. The featured instruments are divided into three sections — wind, string, and percussion — and preceded by thirteen brief discussions of other musical categories, including: military, funeral, used in sacrifices, and, intriguingly, as used at sea: not sirens, but chantying sailors. While some of the instruments gathered in Buonanni’s book are as simple as the bee-keeper banging his tub, or the clacking of shoes against the floor, some are highly crafted, technical machines; the great organ at Palazzo Verospi requires a fold-out page to show it all. We are also treated to what might be considered more incidental instruments, for example, the bell about a bound criminal’s neck and the sound of a soldier’s sword being struck…
Engravings from an ambitious and beautiful attempt to catalogue, for the first time, the musical instruments of the world: “Filippo Buonanni’s Harmonic Cabinet (1722)”
Browse the volume on the Internet Archive; see the full collection of drawings on Flickr.
* Amos Oz
###
As we celebrate sound, we might send melodic birthday greetings to Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti; he was born on this date in 1685. A composer (and keyboardist), he is regularly classified chronologically as part of the Baroque period (along with his famous father, Alessandro Scarlatti); but Domenico’s work– perhaps especially his 555 keyboard sonatas– were richly influential in the development of the Classical style.
You must be logged in to post a comment.