Re: [Phys-l] Master Violin Materials

[Michael Edmiston <edmiston@bluffton.edu>]

This is not really new work.  A biochemist retired from Texas A&M 
University, Joseph Nagyvary has been publishing work about violins since 
about 1978.  He also makes and sells violins that are mistaken for and 
sometimes believed better than the "Italian Masters."

His website is:

http://www.nagyvaryviolins.com/

One of his early discoveries was that the pit-hole membranes in the wood of 
the old violins are missing.  His idea was that the water-logged wood in 
Venice subjected the wood to bacteria or fungi that "ate" these membranes. 
No doubt the fungi used by Fran­cis Schwar­ze is doing the same type of 
thing to the wood.

But Nagyvary has shown there is more to it than this.  There appears to have 
been other chemical treatment of the wood by the "Italian masters," and they 
also had special varnishes.  But Nagyvary does not believe all this was 
special knowledge of the "Italian masters" because this was just the way 
things were done in Venice and Cremona at that time.  So the master were not 
really masters at all, they were just regular violin makers who were lucky 
to use wood that was processed in the regular ways of the times, and the 
varnishes were the regular varnishes of the times.

By duplicating the wood and varnishes, Nagyvary has been making violins for 
many years that have fooled people into thinking they were Strads or 
Guarneri's, etc.

PBS ran a NOVA program called "What is Music."  Nagyvary's violin work was 
featured on this show, as well as other interesting segments, many of which 
describe the physics of music.  I use the show when I reach the sound 
portion of my general physics class.

What Is Music?
NOVA explores the science of musical sound—from what makes a classic violin 
to how the human brain perceives music. Bells, trumpets, human voices and 
computers all perform.
Original broadcast date: 11/21/89
Topic: social sciences/miscellaneous

Unfortunately this does not appear to be available anymore from WGBH.



Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Bluffton University
1 University Drive
Bluffton, OH 45817
419.358.3270
edmiston@bluffton.edu


--------------------------------------------------
From: "Brian Whatcott" <betwys1@sbcglobal.net>
Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 8:38 PM
To: "Forum for Physics Educators" <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>; 
<rete@maillist.ox.ac.uk>
Subject: [Phys-l] Master Violin Materials

> **There has been some discussion of late about the wood used to make
> violins by the Italian Masters. One suggestion I ran across, concerned
> the use of waterlogged wood
> [for some reason which I forget...]
>
> Today, I ran into this blind trial of another wood treatment - as
> relayed from a paragraph in "World Science":
>
> Fran­cis Schwar­ze of EMPA, the Swiss Fed­er­al Lab­o­r­a­to­ries for
> Ma­te­ri­als Test­ing and Re­search, de­vel­oped the new vi­o­lin by
> treat­ing it with spe­cially se­lected fun­gus, which he says im­proves
> the sound qual­ity by mak­ing the wood light­er and more un­iform.
>
> In the test, the Brit­ish star vi­o­linist Mat­thew Trus­ler played five
> dif­fer­ent in­stru­ments be­hind a cur­tain, so that the au­di­ence
> did­n’t know which was be­ing played. One of the vi­o­lins Trusler
> played was his own “Strad,” or in­stru­ment made by the most sto­ried
> vi­o­lin mak­er of his­to­ry, An­to­nio Strad­i­vari, in Ita­ly in the
> 18th cen­tury.
>
> The oth­er four were all made by Swiss vi­o­lin mak­er Mi­chael
> Rhon­heim­er—two with Schwar­ze’s fun­gally-treated wood, the oth­er two
> with un­treated wood.
>
> A ju­ry of ex­perts, to­geth­er with the con­fer­ence par­ti­ci­pants,
> judged the tone qual­ity of the vi­o­lins. Of the more than 180
> at­ten­dees, al­most half, or 90, felt the tone of a fun­gally treated
> vi­o­lin dubbed “Opus 58” the best. The Strad reached sec­ond place with
> 39 votes, but 113 mem­bers of the au­di­ence thought that “Opus 58” was
> ac­tu­ally the Strad.
>
> “O­pus 58” was the one made from wood that had been treated with fun­gus
> for the longest time, nine months, Schwar­ze said.
>
> /snip/ Schwar­ze claims the mas­ter re­ceived in­ad­vert­ent help from a
> “Lit­tle Ice Age” which oc­curred from 1645 to 1715. Dur­ing this
> pe­ri­od Cen­tral Eu­rope suf­fered long win­ters and cool sum­mers
> which caused trees to grow slowly and un­iformly – cre­at­ing ide­al
> con­di­tions for the fun­gus to at­tack.
>
> For the new vi­o­lins, Schwar­ze uses Nor­we­gian spruce wood treated
> with the fun­gus / Physi­por­i­nus vit­rius/ and syc­a­more treated with
> / Xy­laria lon­gipes/. /snip/ "
>
> *****
>
>
> I wonder if strains of such fungi can be obtained commercially?
>
> Brian W
>
>
> **
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