From Wikipedia: A Stradivarius is a stringed instrument built by members of the Stradivari family, particularly Antonio Stradivari. According to their reputation, the quality of their sound has defied attempts to explain or reproduce, though this belief is controversial.
So it is not surprising then that when somebody claims “global warming is to blame” they’ll get called on it as this reporter in the Vanouver base Province newspaper has done. h/t to reader Antonio Sans – Anthony
Musical prof a mouthpiece for eco-propaganda
She should know the jury’s still out on climate change
By Jon Ferry, The Province B.C. Canada
What set my teeth on edge last week was not the chilly weather, though Wednesday was the coldest March 11 on record. It was a University of B.C. professor’s claim that global warming is largely responsible for the fact folks can no longer make the heavenly-sounding violins they used to hundreds of years ago.
Not that I should be surprised: Global warming gets fingered for virtually everything these days, especially at our eco-infatuated universities. For these grant-hungry institutions, the fashionable notion that humans are mainly to blame for warming the planet is a godsend. It opens up so many fields of study where taxpayer funding can be justified on the grounds of saving Mother Earth and everything on it, including fabulous old fiddles, from climactic Armageddon.
Eugenia Choi, the UBC professor, clearly knows a thing or two about violins, including the 300-year-old Stradivarius she plays. She’s a concert violinist with impressive global credentials. And I wouldn’t dream of questioning either the moral duty she says she feels to protect these fine, handmade instruments or her interest in global warming. As reported in the university’s official news publication, Choi recently travelled to the Arctic with scientists and [U.S. president] Barack Obama team members, and “saw first-hand the plight of polar bears.”
No, where I take issue with the nimble-fingered professor is over her contention, as detailed in UBC Reports, that the reason a violin like a Stradivarius can now cost more than a house is largely because “global warming has changed how trees grow.”
How so? Choi explains: “You can no longer create new violins of the same quality. There just aren’t the same types of wood or density.”
And there’s a chance she’s right. Certainly, in 2003, a New York climatologist and a Tennessee tree-ring dating expert claimed that a mini ice age in Europe at the time master instrument-maker Antonio Stradivari was producing violins may have affected the density of the wood he was using — and hence enhanced the instruments’ tone quality. It was a theory supported last year by Dutch researchers. But it was far from conclusive.
Earlier this year, Texas researchers had a different theory, namely that the violins from the golden age of Italian instrument-making in the late 17th and early 18th centuries owed their celestial sound to chemicals in the wood preservatives. And other theories over the years have focused on everything from the fiddles’ glues and varnish to their unique shape. But as a Wikipedia entry on the subject concludes: “There remains no consensus on the single most probable factor.”
My point here is that the scientific debate over the violins made in Cremona, Italy, during a 70-year period of global cooling is far from over. It’s as unsettled as that over climate change today.
Our universities should be keeping an open and inquiring mind about both — at least if they’re interested in higher learning, as they claim to be.
Instead, they simply seem intent on cheerleading for the green team, pushing eco-propaganda. And that shortchanges us all.
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I remember reading a recent article that says the ‘density’ theory was not why the Stradivarius was better. It had to do with the resins and type of varnish used. Can’t recall from where, but I do remember it. The ‘density’ theory came out a few years ago and the new work is very recent, which may explain why the esteemed Professor is still espousing the ‘density’ theory to explain the Strad.
That and Stradivarius made his violins in the depth of the ‘Little Ice Age’, and the warming experienced thereafter is not due to ‘Global Warming’ as currently defined.
OT heads up….
UW-Milwaukee Study Could Realign Climate Change Theory
Scientists Claim Earth Is Undergoing Natural Climate Shift
“But if we don’t understand what is natural, I don’t think we can say much about what the humans are doing. So our interest is to understand — first the natural variability of climate — and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,” Tsonis said.
http://www.wisn.com/weather/18935841/detail.html
Delete after seeing this … I won’t be offended.
Lee Kington
I got to hear the “Red Violin” (from the movie of the same name) in concert a few years ago. It was very impressive. The story is that the red color and beautiful sound were the result of it being stained with the violin maker’s wife’s blood. (She died in childbirth.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Violin
Maybe they just aren’t using the right stain anymore, or perhaps people are too consumed with mindless nonsense to build world class violins.
Yes — and climate change will also lead to outbreaks of head lice, killer mold in houses, and will cause your hair to fall out.
All may not be lost. We may be headed for another era of dense-growth trees if the cooling continues. “Climate change may usher in era of runaway musical beauty!” Interesting article if read without guilt of “man-made” global warming injected.
I hereby start a new activists group called Save the Violins!
We can organise a coalition of well off guilt-ridden young people quite easily and use them to throw rocks at working class miners to force the shut down of coal-fired plants in Croatia and Italy. That will be step one towards saving the violins.
While that is going on I’ll bribe a few politicos to ensure I get the contracts to install solar panels throughout the regions where maple wood is harvested for violins.
One business is not enough though. We can add more sectors to our Green portfolio.
I suggest we also get our young eco-activists to break into the factories of Italian super-car makers and cause massive damage. A few bribes to Berlusconi and a few other mafiosos should ensure that our investment in electric sports cars will pay off nicely once all the carbon criminals at Ferrari and Lamborghini are chased out of the business.
This Green technology business is good, but it can only be ultra-profitable with a bit of activism, subversion and industrial sabotage.
Global cooling created it and killed millions, I wonder which is better, music or death?
“Our universities should be keeping an open and inquiring mind about both — at least if they’re interested in higher learning, as they claim to be.”
Amen!
The cool weather/density hypothesis doesn’t have much going for it, as the same density profiles can be produced in other ways. Such as drought or not thinning a stand of trees.
Thanks Anthony, I thought it was courageous from this reporter to call this one especially in the Province where David Suzuki must have shovelled tons of snow this winter…
Antonio Stradivarius was a good fiddle maker and he probably cornered the market as regards suitable trees. How many trees would he have used to make only 1,101 instruments in all, by current estimates? That’s the reality, not some clown harping on about density of wood 300 years ago. What are we talking about here? A forest or 20-30 trees?
A distant relative of mine builds harpsichords. Not many in total and he was given a felled tree of pearwood for certain key components. That one tree will see him out in all probability. A special tree no doubt, but will someone in 300 years to to guess our present global temperatures from a harpsichord? I bleeding well hope not. As in all things, numbers matter.
Years ago when I lived in Honolulu, a friend there own a Stradivarius. He would leave it sitting out on an end table in the living room (He said the best secuirty was to keep it in plain sight). He felt the warm moist tropical air made it sound better. I must admit it sounded delightful.
I wonder if Ms Choi would prefer that we returned to the temps of the Little Ice Age? Maybe she should pop over to Edmonton and check out the weather.
Well, after all, it’s been apparent for quite some time that the oso progressive AGW Garden of Eden is cold, not warm, and that the original beings were indeed Polar Bears – who played violins.
Despite many attempts, no empirical process is able to distinguish the music of a Stradivarius from other violins of the highest quality (both modern and ancient).
It should hardly be surprising that somebody who devotes so much time and energy to a fundamentally unverifiable phenomenon, would also draw a link to global warming.
It seems to me there ought to be other sources of dense spruce. Heck, some spruce near treeline in New Hampshire’s White Mountains are a century old and only a few inches in diameter.
One claim about Stradavari was that the logs were floated down a river, and that was one source of the mineralization. We’re not allowed to have log drives any more, too dangerous, messy, etc.
There are some suggestions that the violin makers also engaged in misinformation about their techniques, so pretty much any claim needs to be approached with skepticism.
Not knowing much about violins, I’m curious if the quality of a Stadavarius was matched or approached before or shortly after that 70 year period?
The real question is when was the tree living, a few generations before Stradivarius at least. Perhaps he had access to some fine old logs harvested long before. How wood is dried has a big effect on the final product. Even kiln-dried wood has to sit for a minimum of three years, in a dry climate, to get the cell walls to collapse so that the wood cannot ‘re-inflate’ with moisture. This permanently changes the wood. Since tree rings are more indicative of water availability than warmth, one might want a tree that just barely has enough water to survive. I have heard of the theories regarding wood, resin, varnish, etc. No one really knows as far as I can tell, and the answer is probably some combination. Sounds like the climate situation. It’s not how much we know, rather how little. From a woodworker and violin player, amoung other things.
For the music she’s playing, a Romantic era violin would be more appropriate, or at least a Quercetani reconstruct. It’s counterintuitive to play Sibelius and Brahms with a Strad, unless the one she has has been reworked (::cringe::) to be louder… Wonder what bow she’s using. Strange woman, obviously very talented, but her if p then q circuit seems a bit iffy.
There’s an article, January 7, 2004, at news.nationalgeographic.com about wood density, etc. I didn’t know as much about Maunder when I read first read the article five years ago. Thanks, Anthony, for adding to my education. “Sunken logs” retrieved from a century’s stay in the Great Lakes are very popular for instrument making because of their density.
There’s also the concept that playing a fine instrument for 300 years changes the quality of tone.
I saw this canard in the news a few weeks ago and struggled to think of what underlying assumption could lead from global changes in climate to changes in hand selected trees. Back in the day violin makers would find the best tree even if it meant climbing a little higher up the hill, or even going north a few miles.
The best assumption I came up with is that today’s violin makers must just go to Lowes and buy some global average wood and try to make Stradivarius quality instruments.
That story is more consistent with deliberate alarmism than bad logic.
The thing is that Stradivarius most probably not has build violins from wood that has grown in the Mauder minimum, because the log would have been on stock to dry for about a decade, he would not have used the outer rings of the spruce (about 25 to 50 years) an the log would have come from an tree that was 150 to 200 years old. And for a cello the tree should be 400 to 500 years old… so much for the Mauder minimum in violin building that would meen the trees had grown form 1450 to 1650.
Then again… a virtuoso violinist is going to pick up a Strad at any opportunity and make beautiful music, whereas he/she will not do the same with the $45 violin in the school section of the music store, whereas the beginner is likely not going to have access to a Strad to play.
Thus, logically, Strad’s all sound great because only an accomplished violinist is ever going to play one.
If the secret is in the wood, shouldn’t contemporaries of Stradivarius have made instruments just as good?
Well it’s another urban legend situation.
The main thing that these 300 year old violins have going for them is that they are 300 years old. Who says they sounded that great 300 years ago.
One of my fishing friends, happens to be one of the two top violin/string Instruments experts on the West coast of the United States. Only one other person on the East Coast knows more about fine violins, than he does. He has a large collection of fine instruments, including a very fine (and stunningly beautiful) Stradivarius Cello; he has string basses from those old masters. His violin bow collection contains bows that cost more than some violins.
I think most experts consider the violins of Amati to be better than any Strad. There are some modern violin makers who can make perfectly fine sounding violins. Same goes for other fine instruments like Pianos.
Yamaha, can make a piano that is as fine sounding asw any Steinway, or any other famousw make you want to name; and what’s more they can make as many of them as anybody wants to buy.
This violin chap once had one of these top Yamahas in his store; he didn’t typically deal too much in fine pianos; and it sat there for quite a while as he tried to figure out who he was going to let buy the thing. You can buy an excellent Yamah piano for a lot less money than this model (I almost did); but if you want the best and are willing to pay (not unreasonable price) you can get one that is as good as any piano ever made.
Hey this chap takes in fine violins for “maintenance”, and that might mean taking the whole thing apart, including taking the top and bottom timbers off; and after he repairs cracks or some other blemish; well he simply puts them back together and readjusts them.
Fine violins are not gifts from the gods; modern builders can do very well making excellent sounding violins.
But of course if you have one of the old masters; why would you not talk it up; after all only the creme de la creme of violinists should be aloud to play a fine Amati or Stradivari violin; so if you have one; ergo you must be a fine violinist and command more money for performing.
Best violinist I ever heard was David Oistrakh (Russian guy) maybe it was Igor; they were father and son and I forget which is which but it was the father. No stage calisthenics; he just looked down at the audience with a look that said “screw all of you, I’m just going to play my violin”; and he did so effortlessly.
So maybe in another 300 years all those Strads will have dry rot, and sound like Oscar’s trash can lid, while the 20th century violins will be dreamboats.
Hey the violin I played in High school was a Strad; said so right on the label inside it; but I was no David Oistrakh, so it sounded like Oscar’s trash can lid.
George
Leon Broznya wrote:
“Yes — and climate change will also lead to outbreaks of head lice, killer mold in houses, and will cause your hair to fall out.”
So that’s it! when my hair fell out Lice became an endangered speices!
During the next “Jose’s” minimum there will appear a new breed of Stradivarius.
Global climate change is causing my receding hairline! Why doesn’t anybody do something!?! Now! Stop CO2 before I loose the rest of my hair! Please?!