Climate Linked To The Quality Of Musical Instrument Making

Eureka Alert ^ | 12-5-2003 | Mary Tobin

[blam]

Ping.

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[mylife]

Violin makers have known this stuff for a long time

[GeronL]

musical instruments cause global warming?

[mylife]

no climate effects the growth of wood.
the resulting patterns in wood have an effect on tonal resonance

[GeronL]

So we should get the wood for the instruments from a clean unsoiled area of... Anarctica?

[mylife]

LOL

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

So they could use petrified wood.

[smokinleroy]

There must have also been some climatic anomaly between 1957 and 1974 to produce THESE sonic gems!

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!

[capt. norm]

"The less intense solar radiation and activity coincided with a sharp decline in temperature during the Little Ice Age and a period of very cold weather in western Europe."

We are now in a period of increased solar activity but I hear scant few mention that it could have a hand in increased temperatures (global warming). No, it just has to be industry's fault. They can't make a big political stink about the sun, so this requires blaming it on capitalism.

[Sabertooth]

So they could use petrified wood.

They do, but only for scoring horror films.

[The Westerner]

Fascinating. Just heard Vivaldi's Four Seasons played by a violinist using a Stradivarius. Very beautiful and pure harmonics on that instrument.

[metesky]

Antonio Stradivari of Cremona, Italy, perhaps the most famous of violin makers, was born one year before the beginning of the Maunder Minimum. He and other violinmakers of the area used the only wood available to them--from the trees that grew during the Maunder Minimum.

Why would that necessarily be a completely true statement?

I spent thirty-five years building houses and while I assume that most of the lumber we used was grown during my lifetime, there was one very memorable exception.

We built a mortise and tenoned open beamed living room that was structural as well as ornamental and the owner wanted the "perfect" beam for the center carrier. I found the beam at an outfit that for five generations specialized in taking old buildings apart and saving the structural components.

Originally one of "the Kings trees" this massive Maine white pine beam was taken from a 250 year old house that had been dismantled fifty years before I got my hands on it.

From the growth rings one could tell that the tree had been growing for at least 200 years before Columbus hit Hispaniola.

I have the cut end as a stand alone end table sized cribbage board.

[blam]

"From the growth rings one could tell that the tree had been growing for at least 200 years before Columbus hit Hispaniola.

Excellent story thanks. I've heard similar stories in my area about 'heart pine.'

A FReeper once told me that the wood from Noah's Ark was likely to be in some wooden structure in present day Turkey.

[metesky]

I've heard similar stories in my area about 'heart pine.

Some of the rivers down in 'Bama are chock full of Southern Yellow Pine logs that sank during the old logging drives, bottomed out and sealed of from the atmosphere for fifty years or more. The heartwood of these logs is rock hard and of a beautiful reddish coloration. It makes some of the best solid wood flooring around.

A young entrepeneur up here just started the same type of salvage operation a few years ago. I hope he makes a good buck at it.

[blam]

"A young entrepeneur up here just started the same type of salvage operation a few years ago. I hope he makes a good buck at it."

I have read about the same here also.

[Little Bill]

I suspect that the wood used in these instruments probably came from the 13th century, before the little Ice age, I wonder how long they were cut and cured,

[SaveTheChief]

Though I would love to own a Strad, or a violin made by one of his comtemporaries from Cremona, there are many fine modern-day luthiers around the world. Italians still make very good violins, but I would love to have a violin made by one of the many American violinmakers out there today. Given the difference in price, I think one could get pretty close in quality and save hundreds of thousands of dollars.