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.
If Carlos Santana walked into a music store shop and picked up any model of guitar, I betcha the music he made with it would unmistakeably sound like Carlos Santana.
Shortage of Wood. I once worked in an equatorial country that has (had) huge resources of tropical rain forest trees. Back in the seventies, due to an international logging moratorium, this country was no longer able to export raw logs of Mahogany, Teak, Meranti or any other valuable wood asset. They were allowed to export it if the wood had been through some manufacture process.
So what was the manufacturing process…….. Plywood. Exported and used for packing car parts.
Combating climate change may not be a question of who will carry the burden but could instead be a rush for the benefits, according to new economic modeling presented at “Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges & Decisions” hosted by the University of Copenhagen.
Contrary to current cost models for lowering greenhouse gas emissions and fighting climate change, a group of researchers from the University of Cambridge conclude that even very stringent reductions of can create a macroeconomic benefit, if governments go about it the right way.
“Where many current calculations get it wrong is in the assumption that more stringent measures will necessarily raise the overall cost, especially when there is substantial unemployment and underuse of capacity as there is today”, explains Terry Barker, Director of Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research (4CMR), Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge and a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Congress.
Global warming gets fingered for virtually everything these days
Nah! He’s confusing it with passive smoking.
Edward (10:21:33) :
“Finding good wood suitable for building guitars is also pretty tough to do these days. Fender and Gibson cannot build the quality of instrements they produced in the 1950’s thru the early 1970’s because that quality of wood does not exist any more. One piece Alder bodies, single piece mahogany bodies, ebony fretboards and Brazilian Rosewood are nearly impossible to obtain as the old growth forests have been harvested for these woods. Even the cheapest guitars made in the 1960’s were made from solid wood. Today the overwhelming majority of guitars are made of plywood. I’m doubtful you could make a violin sound good out of wood chips and glue.”
I’m sorry but this is just bunk. There’s plenty of great wood to make guitars, especially domestic species like walnut, maple, cherry, etc. There are many great guitars being built today that exceed the quality of instruments from the 50s and 60s (e.g. PRS). And there’s also no immediate shortage of Alder, Mahogany, Rosewood (Indian), etc., though some imported woods may see restrictions or bans in the near future.
All of the great electric guitars of our youth were not great because of the wood necessarily, but because of the design, pickups, hardware, and…mostly…because our music idols played them. Heck, Leo Fender made his necks out of slab sawn maple, just like you see in Home Depot! So, why is it that today a 1955 Fender Strat goes for almost as much as an antique violin? Supply and demand…
And guitar players and dealers will also tell you that while there are lots of great Les Pauls and Strats from the 50s and 60s, there are also lots of klunkers too…
Frank K is right. I have worked with a number of producers of traditional handcrafted wood products. Some of these companies such as James Purdey go back to the 1700s. I am not aware of any drop in quality of wood or in the manufacturing process. If anything, they are now able to source better wood than they could 300 years ago because of modern communication and travel.
The way I see it, propagating a mystery around the Stradivarius goes hand in hand with publicizing the brand’s prestige status and thus propping up their prices at auction. Nothing more.
Shut up and play, Eugenia.
Re: Jeremy (18:53:23) :
I salute you and everyone like you – well said.
Fascinating … to read all the comments, and see how people think about such a topic as GW, violins, trees and dendrochronology.
BUT, I think something is missing. … Darwin’s theory of Evolution … (or at least survival of the fittest)
By way of analogy, we’ve lived in our house for 20 years. One cupboard is of course the “glass and cup” cubby. We keep buying glasses to replace the broken one. The whole cupboard is now full of Darwin’s Fittest. Not a single glass matches, alas. But the ones that are in there, are nearly indestructable.
It could, should and I would argue, must be the same for violins, guitars and all music instruments. The greatest ones generally survive the longest. Toss an OK, somewhat beaten up, regular violin in a box of other stuff that no one wants to throw away, and it will sit there, slowly getting abraded by the additions and occasional removals of ‘stuff’. Strings will break, parts lost. At some point, after 20, 30 or more movings around, it will be nearly worthless – or at least worthless in its present condition. If “restored” (if the name is famous enough, warranting the very expensive deconstruction and reconstruction – and ONLY then), it can be brought back to a thing of relative beauty.
So, Darwin’s theory of Glassware and Musical Instruments (as I hereby dub it) applies. The renowned violins statistically are more likely to survive long past when the ordinary instruments succumb to becoming kindling to Old Uncle’s funeral pyre.
And yes – I’m saying they’re “better” to be sure – but also that they’re protected, cared for, shown, hidden, played, and well checked for impending problems. They should and probably will last millenia.
Now, as to whether new instruments can be made that sound on par? Well, of course they can, and do. In a Scientific American article about 10 years ago, the physicists authors abstracted the tone-board characteristics to the degree where they were able to make a plexiglass, balsa, plywood and styrofoam “violin” (that didn’t have a shape remotely like a violin), that when played by a virtuoso violinist, sounded better in a double-blind test than the University’s showcase Strad, three Amatis, a new French violin, and a handful of other well regarded units. The listeners were all professional conductors and violinists.
The moral of the story is clear: Science does know what makes a violin sound “good” and “great”, all the poppycock above about “not knowing” notwithstanding. It knows and can model mathematically the component features, then predict with high confidence the outcome. The plexiglass-and-balsa-and-styrofoam violin was only the “third try”. That is pretty impressive in its own right.
In any case – about the GW side of things – let’s just get back to basics. GW and GC and GNuthing exists at various stages. One needs look no further than any of the daft comments from “the professionals” along the lines of “it hasn’t been this warm in over 450 years”.
Well … doesn’t that imply that it WAS this warm over 450 years ago too?
Of course it does. GW my foot. Climate variability is a natural part of this chaotic planet’s response to still mysterious space-weather effects, solar cycle forcing, and who knows what-all else. Yah, if CO2 were really part of the picture to the degree that the radicals would like us to believe, then we’d already be cooking in a 40C stew – midwinter. Not so. There are a lot of checks and balances in the heating / cooling equation. And time-constants measured from centuries to eons with the great oceans of the planet working their magic.
GoatGuy
Jeremy:
Thank you for all you do and did. You are not alone.
http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/03/men-of-west.html
What about the pernambuco trees?
It has long been my understanding that Stradivarius and other instruments made around that time sound different due to the wood density arising from the cooler period of the Little Ice Age, causing slower growth. It makes a degree of empirical sense at least.
(It is also possible that age has allowed the wood to season more, and more modern instruments will gain the added timbre in another century or so.)
Of course, where the article gets it wrong is in the conclusion. The sound reproduction isn’t not replicable now due to global warming, but rather was only possible in the first place due to a cooling period, the LIA. Its not quite “is the glass half full or empty”, but recognition that the cooler climate made the sound possible.
What will be interesting is, if the “Modern Little Ice Age”, which may be starting right now (you heard the name here first folks!) kicks in for the next few hundred years, the short-term warming phenomena of the 20th century may be responsible for its own unique sound due to the less dense wood of its instruments. Will people in the future lament their inability to replicate the guitar breaks of Jimmy Hendrix or Carlos Santana? And if so, will it be due to the density of guitars of the future, or the fact that Global Warmers have shut down the power industry and electric guitars of the 22nd century will work on clockwork mechanisms?