Ear of the Beholder--Part 1

For centuries, violinists have sung paeans to the accomplishments of the Cremona master violinmakers—especially Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu. These two geniuses constructed instruments that are regarded as the zenith of their art. The violinists of today—at least those of appropriate means—will pay several million dollars for an original 300 year-old Strad or Guarneri violin. Do these instruments warrant such a price?

For many years, scientists have studied these venerable violins, trying to figure out what makes their sound so special… or is it special? Is it the varnish they used? Is it the wood? Does an instrument improve with age, as its body absorbs the vibrations of its own music? Was there some kind of magic that the masters had that is a lost art? Various tests have been made, but none so far has shed any real light on the quandary. The owners of the surviving violins are not open to someone dissecting their precious treasures, so the years pass, without an answer. In the meantime, musicians remain convinced that there is something transcendent about a Cremona violin that escapes today’s artisans.

Finally, last year a French acoustician partnered with an American violin maker to design an experiment that shed some new light on the issue. At an international violin competition in Indianapolis, they recruited 21 professional violin players to participate in the experiment. (Previous listening tests had never used professional players, so they were open to criticism that lesser talented players were not adequate for the job.) The researchers were able to talk owners of three precious old violins to allow their instruments to be used: two were Strads and one was a Guarneri. They added three new, high-quality violins to the package, so the players had a total of six instruments to compare.

The tests were conducted in a darkened room and the musicians wore dark goggles, so they could not see which instrument they were playing. Two different kinds of tests were conducted: (1) each player was handed two random violins (one old and one new) and was asked to choose the better one, and (2) each player was allowed to play every one of the six violins and pick the one that they’d like to take home.

The results were startling. In the first test, there was no clear winner of the six violins, but there was one clear loser: one of the precious Strads. For the second test, only one-third of the 21 professionals chose an old violin as the best. In fact, two-thirds of them preferred the sound of a new violin. The musicians were flabbergasted at the results. Before the test was conducted, they were convinced that they could readily tell the difference between an old jewel and a new violin. Some of them expressed the feeling that the test was the experience of a lifetime.

So what’s the message here? It seems to be obvious that some kind of mystique surrounds the preference for the old masters. Like similar findings in blind tastings of wine, people can delude themselves about the superiority of expensive items. When it comes down to an objective test, when inherent biases are avoided, maybe there is nothing so special about those high-priced violins. Sure, those old masters were pioneers in making superb violins, but maybe today’s makers are doing as good a job.

This comparison fascinated me, because it is similar to a test that I conducted a couple of decades ago, when I taught a course on musical acoustics at the local university. I loved teaching this course, since it brought together two of my passions: physics (which I was also teaching at the time) and music. The basic focus of the course was the study of how musical instruments make their sounds. The course was a challenge for both the students and me. Most of them were music majors trying to brave their way through an intimidating science course (foreign territory to them!) and I was struggling to make the material comprehensible to non-science types.

My biggest obstacle was to try to convince the music majors to accept scientific truths about their instruments. These truths had been arrived at over many years by conducting experiments whose results provide insight into how Mother Nature works. In science, one accepts the validity of propositions only after repeatable experiments end with the same results. Anyone can conduct these experiments—whether neophyte student or experienced scientist. It’s a democratic process. One is delving into the facts of how the physical world behaves, and these facts are independent of any human perception.

The topics that music students study, however, are quite subjective. Their perceptions and emotions play a central role in how they discern the quality of a musical performance. It’s in the ear of the beholder. It’s what one senses or learns to appreciate over time, as one’s ear becomes educated. There is no scientific instrument, for example, that can tell which of two flute players is the better performer. Music students learn to accept the word of their professors as truth, even the gospel. They rely on the reputation or talent of their teachers. Faith and belief can play a large role in their discriminating tastes.

More on musical instrument sound quality next time…