Exploring Timbre of Stradivari Violins

Why is the sound quality of some violins preferred over others?  In this episode, we talk to Carlo Andrea Rozzi (National Research Council of Italy) and Massimo Grassi (University of Padova) about the myth surrounding Stradivari violins as well as their research into the aspects of violin timbre that cause listeners to prefer one instrument to another.

Associated paper: Carlo Andrea Rozzi, Alessandro Voltini,  Fabio Antonacci,  Massimo Nucci, and  Massimo Grassi. “A listening experiment comparing the timbre of two Stradivari with other violins." The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 151, 443 (2022); https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0009320.

Read more from The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA).
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Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=1022

Transcript

Kat Setzer  00:06

Welcome to Across Acoustics, the official podcast of the Acoustical Society of America's publications office. On this podcast, we will highlight research from our four publications. I'm your host Kat Setzer, editorial associate for the ASA.

Kat Setzer  00:24

Today we'll be talking with Carlo Andrea Rozzi, and Massimo Grassi about their article, "A listening experiment comparing the timbre of two Stradivari with other violins," which appeared in the January 2022 issue of JASA. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. How are you? 

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  00:40

Thank you. We are doing very well. Thanks for inviting us to join your transmission. 

Massimo Grassi  00:46

Yeah, thank you, Massimo here. Thank you very much from a very hot Italy. 

Kat Setzer  00:51

Of course! So just first, tell us a bit about yourselves and your research backgrounds. 

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  00:56

Okay, I might start because I'm actually the one who is mostly out of place in this paper. I'm a theoretical quantum physicist. My main research interest is actually in nanoscience and doing simulation about material science. I'm working in the National Research Council of Italy. Why do I fit in this paper is because I have received the formal education in violin, so I've been playing since when I was a kid basically, also professionally in orchestras. And been active since well, around 2006 in didactics and science communication, science popularization in the field of acoustics. So only recently I made some research. And well the occasion was a collaboration with the International Violin Making School in Cremona. 

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  01:48

Maybe before Massimo introduces himself, I would like to mention that in this paper, the authors are very interdisciplinary, which is a feature I think it's very important in all the studies in musical acoustics and about musical instruments. So besides myself, and Massimo, also Alessandro Voltini, who is a senior violin maker in Cremona, Fabio Antonacci is an acoustical engineer working in Acoustics Lab in Cremona Polytechnico. And then Massimo Nucci, Massimo Grassi, are psychologists. Massimo, you can introduce yourself, perhaps? 

Massimo Grassi  02:23

Hello, everybody. So I'm an associate professor of psychology at the University of Padova, Italy, which now happens to be one of the oldest universities in the world, because last year, we celebrated 800 years. But this is not the reason why I was involved in this project. I mainly work on experimental psychology, and even more in auditory perception. To be honest, I never worked in the past on something like related to the timbre or the sound of musical instruments, but it's something that, let’s say, is in the area of my research area.

Massimo Grassi  02:59

So I'm mainly working on auditory perception and psychophysics. And actually, Carlo involved me in the project when the project was already started, because we met in Milan a few years ago. And then we kept in contact afterwards. He had this chance to run this experiment, so he asked me whether I could help him in organizing the experiment. And so we did.

Kat Setzer  03:23

That's cool. It sounds like such an interesting collaboration. So what was the goal of this study? 

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  03:27

This study actually started with the goal of exploring violin timbre perception in general, let's say. So, we felt that there are some unanswered questions about this, especially, for example, why the sound quality of some violins is preferred to the sound quality of other violins. And if you ask musicians or players or expert listener survey, you very often have a clear and consistent preference when they listen to different instruments. So but why is it so? What is, what are the ingredients that make violin timbre so special and make you prefer one to another? And also a side question, which is very relevant for me as a physicist, is if there is any measurable like physical quantity in the instrument that we can correlate with pleasant timbre? This is not trivial at all. 

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  04:23

Actually, as I said, the project started initially as more didactical investigation so we were working in the International School of Violin Making in Cremona. And we were making like informal experiments, listening experiments, with the students. Like we were trying to teach them what it means and it takes to perform a double-blind listening experiment. And we were working on hearing education, so it's very hard at the beginning if you are not expert to tell how to describe, even to describe a violin sound, and but if you want to be a good violin maker, you have to acquire this skill. So initially we were just playing with double-blind listening and ask them to rate and or to comment the sounds. So later on this developed, became a real scientific question, like more structured scientific question. 

Kat Setzer  05:16

Okay, that's cool. So this was originally focused on just violins in general. How did you end up bringing Stradivari violins into the study? 

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  05:24

Yes, as I said, the occasion was actually the study started in Cremona, where Stradivari was born and many other masters were born and active in the 17th and 18th century. And also, there is a famous collection of historical instruments. So after the study was shaped, like from a scientific point of view, we thought, "Well, why don't we actually exploit this availability of historical instrument then, we put them in the mix, and we make an experiment also using those instruments?" Actually, this accidentally joined the larger field of study, specifically about historical instruments. But this was not our initial goal. As I said, we were studying violin timbre in general, and then we ended up including these famous instruments in the experiment. 

Kat Setzer  06:21

Okay, so a little bit of serendipity in a way. What are the sound qualities that listeners look for in a good violin?

Massimo Grassi  06:27

Oh, I might try to respond, also, because I'm not a violinist. And in fact, one of the most funny things was to work with violinists and people that are in the violin world, which is a specific world, in a sense, in the sense, with its own peculiarities. To be very honest, we, of course, investigated and found some sound qualities that somehow are preferred, like, for example, people do not like, if the sound of the violin is very nasal, or they prefer, for example, they might prefer a violin, that there's a stronger bass response, and even some very high frequencies too, and so on. But regardless, let's say a recipe -because we didn't find the recipe actually- I might say that, in general, especially when players are involved, and very expert players are involved, the choice of the violin is something very personal. And even with violin makers, it might be personal too, in the sense that you end up with having your idiosyncratic idea about, you know, the perfect sound, the perfect instrument, and so on. And you might end up with some individual differences. Some common things emerge. And for example, in our study, actually, it was interesting to see that there was a kind of, let's say, common response, but there was not like, I mean, a very simple recipe that I might tell, okay, a good violin, should sound like this, that, or that. And then again, if we add into the mix the player for example, things becomes even more complex, because of course, the player might have his own taste, etc, etc, etc. So it's a very difficult question. Actually, we came out with one. But of course, like any experiment is limited in space and time. And therefore, the results of our experiment might not explain the whole literature on violins, for example.

Kat Setzer  08:35

Right, right. So there's a lot of variables that could change. And then also on top of that, it's just very subjective, what people ended up preferring.

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  08:44

Yeah, maybe I can add something about this because of course, we are here all focused on timbre, but clearly violins must have also other qualities to be judged well by players and listeners. For example, they must be loud, they must be able to be heard from a distance, they must be able to stick out of a full orchestra, for example. So here we are really focused on a specific aspect, but there are many that have to be taken into account when judging a violin in full, let's say.

Kat Setzer  09:18

Got it. So can you give us some background on the Stradivari violins? What does one of these instruments cost? Why do they have the reputation that they have? Which violins are the closest competitors, that kind of thing? 

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  09:28

I'm not an expert in the history of violins, of course, but I will tell you what I know. Well Stradivari is actually one name in a bunch of names that were active in Cremona, as I said, starting in the 17th century, and there a strong school was built. So Stradivari became like the eponym of these names of the school. So the most, the most famous and spread name, but a bunch of of masters must be credited who have created the modern violin, let's say. So clearly, there are also earlier examples, for example. There was a school in Brescia, which is another town in northern Italy, close to Cremona, slightly earlier. And probably these two schools were connected. But so the point is that in Northern Italy at that time, a new instrument was born. So they improved the art and craftsmanship of violin making, and probably, actually, historically, we know it is so, they introduced changes that made the violins sound better, in comparison to the other contemporary violins. So at that time, we know for sure, from historical sources, that there was a superiority in the sound of these violins. Then, of course, violins changed  shape later on. Some major changes were also introduced in the 19th century because music evolved and, of course, an instrument must evolve together with the music it's supposed to play. 

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  11:06

So nowadays, these historical instruments were restored, and  sometimes refurbished or revarnished, or even changed, structurally. So it's now hard to tell how exactly  these instruments would sound at that time. What we know is that they became famous at the time and, of course, they were played by prominent violin players  throughout centuries. And they maintain their fame throughout centuries, which means that they resisted the judgment of very strict and expert musicians. So this is probably the reason why they acquired popularity, increasing popularity and also their value, their money value, I mean,  has been growing consistently. 

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  12:02

So you asked about the prices I think nowadays, they range from a few to many millions, whatever currency you wish to use, euros or dollars. I think the Lady Blunt Violin, the violin was Stradivari one was sold for around 20 Millions.

Kat Setzer  12:21

Oh, wow.

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  12:21

 Yeah, and, of course, violas, because nowadays, way less viola survived compared to violins. So violas are much more valuable because they are rare in comparison to violins, so I think one viola was was announced at an auction for 45 million.

Kat Setzer  12:45

Oh my goodness.

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  12:47

 Yes, I don't know if it was sold ever for this value,  but it was rated like this, like that. Yeah, so this is what I can tell you. Probably Massimo can can add something about this.

Massimo Grassi  13:01

Yeah. Again, by coming from a different world, I may say that there is also some mysticism about violins. Okay, the price of course nowadays does not reflect any longer the value of the object, of course. It's like a piece of art. If you buy a van Gogh, it's not that you are buying just the paint and the canvas; you are buying a van Gogh. And the same is for Stradivari, but one of the nice things that I noticed when we were studying and making this experiment is that in the violin world, there is the same thing that you might see in other musical instrument worlds. So, for example, I used to be a rock guitarist and play rock guitar in the past, long hai and so on. When I was a teenager, I really wanted a Fender Stratocaster, and the reason why I wanted the Fender Stratocaster was because Jimy Hendrix was playing the Fender Stratocaster. And in the same way people now want the Stradivari because it was the violin of Giovanni Battista Viotti or they want, for example, the Guarneri "del Gesù" because it was the violin of Paganini. So the idea is pretty much the same: you are in the audience and you see this fantastic virtuoso playing this violin and rather than thinking that are the fingers the important thing that make the sound, you look at the violin and you say, "I want that violin because it sounds so cool." And so actually, people did, as Carlo said, however, Stradivari was making very good instruments as well, and they were beautiful, and they were well sounding. So if you put all the things together, like a very good instrument, very well made, in the hands of a very good player, then you kind of create the beginning of a myth.

Kat Setzer  14:46

Yeah. So it's just this, this reputation that has developed over time and it's the history and it's all the kind of the stories and the different concerts that have been played with these and all that.

Massimo Grassi  14:57

Yeah. Just to give you an example, Stradivari, of course, now is the violin that people want. Perhaps now, I might say, Carlo might correct me, the people want more Guarneri del Gesù than Stradivari than a few years ago. So, even in the myth violins, there is a kind of a continuous challenge going on. But a few years ago, let's say 100, 150 years ago, if I remember well, but I could, I might be wrong, people wanted Steiner violins, which was an Austrian maker. And in that period, the Steiner violins were the violins people wanted to have. So even historically speaking, let's say, the best violin has been changing over the years, of course, according to the taste of the period, whatever reason, and blah, blah, blah. So, it is a complex phenomenon the creation of a myth like Stradivari; it's not like something simple it is the violin that sounds so good that everybody wants have.

Kat Setzer  16:06

Yeah. Are there any, like, close comparisons for modern violins right now?

Massimo Grassi  16:11

Even in the research nowadays, you can see that many new violins sound very well, in the sense that there are very good instruments nowadays. But perhaps the, let's say, the most representative sentence about the status of this violin world is one sentence that I read in a paper by Claudia Fritz. And okay, so let's suppose that we have this very good new violin, but you ask a violin player, whether you would like to have one of these very new, nice, well-sounding violins or a Stradivari. People go for a Stradivari. The minimum is just because you are buying a capital that you know, you're gonna sell in 10 years time, and it's going to sell at triple of the price you bought it today. So, you know, this is the story in a sense.

Kat Setzer  17:04

What research has been done around the sound of Stradivari violins previously?

Massimo Grassi  17:08

Yeah, there have been a few experiments on Stradivari violins, to be honest, not so many. And the reason is practical. Not so many people are willing to give you their instruments, because they cost so much money. Of course, you have to imagine that is no easy to put your hands on a Stradivari. So, for example, again coming from a different world, I was surprised the very first day when we did the experiment that I could not get closer than two meters from the violin, I could not touch them. And the violin actually came into the hall where we did the experiment with a guard and a lawyer. So, the object was, you know, together with someone else that was taking care of the object all the time. So you understand that this not a simple object that I can give you, and you can simply play and do whatever you like. And of course, this limits the number of studies and research you can do, because of course, you need to be lucky enough to find people that give you the violin. And of course, at the end, you need to be lucky enough that people give you the right to publish what you found, because of course, maybe they want to see the results. 

Massimo Grassi  18:18

There are a few studies that investigated the sound of old and myth violins. Let's say that this study is actually somehow revealed that the myth is really a myth in the sense that of course in these studies, the sound of Stradivari was good, but it was not judged like superior than the sound of modern and contemporary violins. So these studies were definitely important to, let's say, set the ground and understand that actually, in the very end, these are very good crafted violins, very good sounding violins, but they are always real objects, let's say, they are not myth or superior, like in a religious sense.

Massimo Grassi  19:03

Let's say the difference, for example, we introduced in our study in comparison to the previous ones is that in the previous studies, these violins were given to experts, violin players, and these players were asked to play the violin -okay- and judge the sound of the violin while they were playing the violin. In our case, we had a professional player playing the violin and people listening to the violin, which is a different thing in the sense that if you are playing the violin, of course, the sound you perceive is different from the sound that the audience is perceiving because, of course, your ear is very close to the violin. Plus, while you're playing, of course, you have all the feelings that comes from your hands that are moving on the violin, or the feeling that the touch is giving you. And so several sensations come to your mind. If you are just simply listening to a violin, let's say in a concert hall, of course, your judgment and your situation might be different from the one of the player. So our peculiarity and definitely, let's say, the originality of our work was that we had people listening to the violin, in a concert hall with just one player playing for everybody. So it was like, let's say, a concert situation. And in general, anyway, just to conclude, previous studies actually revealed that there is no special thing in the sound of the Stradivari in the sense that it doesn't stand out of the crowd, let's say, not in particular, at least if you compare it with comparable violins, so very good violins produced by very good violin makers. And then, for example, also, these did not extend to an ability of the listener to distinguish old from new violins. This was another topic in the violin world, whether old violins in general, possessed a, let's say, a quality that was over new ones. And actually, these studies were good at revealing that there is no distinction in the perception between old and new violins. Let's say, violins are violins, so no matter whether they are produced 200 years ago, or 20 or 10 years ago, let's say.

Kat Setzer  21:28

Okay. There is no way to perceive that difference in the age of the violin, really.

Massimo Grassi  21:33

It is difficult to tell the age of a violin from the sound, definitely. Even from the touch, maybe.

Kat Setzer  21:38

Yeah, got it. Okay, so let's get into your research. What are the four timbral dimensions that you studied? 

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  21:44

Okay, actually, timbre is one of the most elusive qualities of sound. Also, if you look, there are many definitions around the  American National Standard definition is actually a negative definition; it tells you what timbre is not. So it's not loudness. It's not pitch. It's something else. And so all the rest is swept under the carpet of the word timbre. It's actually a multi-dimensional perceptual attribute, so it's very hard to find, also, a definition in terms of adjectives. Very often people use metaphors to define timbre. And it was actually fascinating to see how different musicians or listeners define the same sound with a full range of different adjectives. So the choice was tough. We experimented a bit and we tried to focus on some adjectives that look like to give the largest variance or were easier to discriminate between them among the listeners. So in the end, also, we had the constraint that the experiment couldn't be too long, because after a while, you are fatigued by continuously listening to stimuli. So we focus on actually three timbral dimensions, which correspond to the adjective: nasal, bright, and open, and their opposite of course, also: nasal/not nasal, bright/dark, and open/closed. Then we use the fourth dimension, which is the timbre pleasantness which is generic is just a measurement of  preference. Let's say, we focus on this, just these three dimensions, these three adjectives. So of course, timbre is so complicated that you have also to confine the stimulus if you want to have any meaningful response from your experiment that we, we focus on the, on the timbre of stationary sounds. So the simplest possible sound that you can produce on a violin just bowing it in a plain, constant way, because if you consider the musical sound that will be much more complicated than this. 

Kat Setzer  24:04

Right, right. Since timbre is so elusive, if it sounds like you ended up having to use expert listeners for your study. Why did you want to work with these people instead of non-musicians? And how did you assess their abilities?

Massimo Grassi  24:17

In auditory perception in general, there is a distinction among people. So there are, let's say, golden ears and not golden ears. And of course, you are not given golden ears, but in many cases, you learn to listen to sound in the sense that there is some learning involved in sound listening. And there is a fairly large literature demonstrating that in general, for example, musicians tend to have better auditory abilities than nonmusicians. And it was, let's say, a kind of forced choice to select the violin makers in the sense that they are practicing their ears and the sound of the violin every day. And during the task and the experiment, the thing that they had to do was judging nuances. So, when you, for example, in the experiment just to give you an idea, we had an industrial violin, let's say 300 euros, and the Stradivari, okay. And people were just simply listening to the sounds and comparing them. Even if you listen in a comparison, in a straight comparison, the industrial violin 300 euros with the Stradivari, the differences you see if you come from, let's say, a non-violin world are not huge. It's not like one sound so incredibly bad, and the other sounds so incredibly incredible, let's say. So you need to be an expert to listen, to discriminate these little nuances. It is like, pretty much like wine tasting. There are just people that can tell good wine and bad wine. And of course, there are people that can tell you several characteristics about the wine. And of course, it's just a matter of practice, practice, and practice. The same things happens with the violin. Violin makers, also, in a sense, which were the participants of our experiment, were very interesting, because they were rarely tested in the literature, but they are the ones that are producing the violin. So if you want a new violin, you go to a violin maker and ask for a new violin. And this person is in charge of producing an instrument that is sounding good, okay. So in a sense, maybe violin maker might be even more interesting than the musicians because, of course, they try to satisfy a customer. And they try to capture, let's say, as much as possible, a common taste, or even some specific characteristics, if the effect the violin player has or needs to have some specific characteristics. But in general, these people try to satisfy not their own taste, but the other people's taste. So they judge the sound of the violin, let's say, in that kind of more neutral way, if you want to. 

Kat Setzer  27:12

Okay, so, for our listeners on the audience, we actually have some of these sound files, so you can hear them yourself and see... can you tell the difference between these different violins?  [two scales played by violins]

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  28:05

Everyone is free to make his own mind about the sounds, if there is a preferred the violin, so if the first violin was preferred to the second or not, if they can come up with adjective defining this timbre, and, well, we cannot collect the answers right right now, but but I think it's an interesting experiment. And also, it confirms I think what Massimo already said that it's kind of hard to distinguish sounds when they are so boring, and so... the stimuli are so simple. I mean, if you play a full length piece of music, then it will be more, much more obvious to tell that these two violins and tell that they are different and how they're different. But in this condition, it's really tough. 

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  28:54

Yeah. So assessing listening abilities is something that, it's usually done with, like, a questionnaire that you that you collect beforehand. But that's not enough, we felt that we needed a way to somehow test the ability live during the experiment. So we kind of implemented this within the protocol of listening. So basically, it's very simple actually, some of the stimuli were proposed twice. And also in some occasion, the same violin was played twice. And so by counting how consistent the ratings from the listeners are, you can have a feeling about their abilities. And again, no one must be, must feel offended, because ability is not like a universal property of a person. Just as tiny distraction is enough to make you judge a sound badly, even if you're an expert. So in the in this context, the experiment took about, like 40-45 minutes. I mean, you could have tiny variation of attention or disturbances from one listening to the other. So it's important to, to be able to distinguish the abilities of the listeners while you are doing the experiments. 

Kat Setzer  30:18

Okay, got it. So once you assess the listeners abilities, how did you test the violins? 

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  30:23

Well, we actually collected a lot of ratings from the listening test, around 2800. While in the end, we only were working with five violins. So we don't claim that we can draw universal conclusions from the physical features of the violins in relationship  with the results of the listening experiment. So we decided to keep this basic, and we perform the so-called impulsive measurement of the sound radiation, which, basically you hit the violin, very lightly, of course, with a tiny hammer, and then you record the sound of it. And then you can work on this kind of measurement to at least assess what is the broadband response of the instrument. We didn't do anything more complicated than this. 

Kat Setzer  31:21

How do the timbral dimensions relate to the physical aspects of the violins?

Massimo Grassi  31:25

Well, of course, the physical aspect of the violin changes also the sound, I'm not going into the detail now of the specific shape of the object. But definitely what we observed is that there was a link, let's say, between the shape of the violin and some timbre sound aspect of the violin itself, and also, this timbre characteristics, were, let's say, some of these characteristics were preferred by the listener, and some other ones were not preferred. So for example, just to give you an idea, again, the Stradivari violin had this, let's say in comparison to the other ones, a very prominent bass response, and also bright response, but was lacking in the middle of the frequency range, let's say. So, whereas in contrast, the very famous 300 euros violin was exactly the opposite. So it was lacking of bass response, was lacking of high frequency. So it was not very bright, and in the very end was very nasal. I'm exaggerating, again, if people listen to the samples of the experiment, perhaps they say, okay, but I might, I not hear that. Okay, but in any case, our listeners did, and so in a sense, we could observe, let's say, a relationship between preference and sound, and also sound and object on the other side, which doesn't mean that in the very end, we have a recipe for producing good violins. That is really another story. Absolutely too difficult. But at least we observed some relationships. Of course, nobody has now the recipe for very good violins, and Carlo might correct me, but in the majority of cases, for example, when you are producing a new violin, in many cases, you might take inspiration from old ones. So might, you might get the footprint of old ones, and replicating an old model, rather than producing.... you are producing a new violin, but actually, you are trying to copy an old model, I don't know, an old Stradivari or an old Guarneri del Gesù and so on.

Kat Setzer  33:43

Okay, so what did you end up finding about the pleasantness of a violin sound in relation to its acoustical characteristics?

Massimo Grassi  33:50

Again, I anticipate something here, what I said before, in general, for example, we prefer, let's say that maybe it might be easier to say, in a negative way, we know now perhaps what people do not like of a violin is a very nasal sound, which is the typical characteristic of very cheap violins. So I don't know, like the instrument you buy, when your daughter or son starts to play the violin at school or something this end. Of course, you don't get them a Stradivari, I guess. But you get them, I don't know a 200, 300 euros violin, which is perfectly fine for the job in the sense that they got to learn. And if you listen to these violins in general, they've got a very nasal sound, not to speak about the, let's say, the feeling that the instrument gives you under your finger and so on and so forth. So this is definitely, let’s say, the most clear results we have in our panel of results. 

Massimo Grassi  34:50

But we also observed something interesting. And so we had two different violins, one again by Stradivari and another one made by a maker of 120 years ago. And they were similar, physically speaking, acoustically speaking, and people were perceiving them similar, too. So... which was very interesting in a sense. I know it sounds like a small result, but you know, if you know that on the other side, you have a Stradivari and a less famous violin. And you see that physically speaking, they are similar, and you see the people judge them similar, it means, that in the very end, also, this allure of the instrument sometimes is just in the name more than in the object itself. Sometimes, of course, because we didn't mention it previously, in the experiment, we actually had two Stradivari, and one in particular, was, let's say, standing out of the crowd, and was the Stradivari that people prefer. The other one was judged to be good, but not as good as the other one.

Kat Setzer  35:52

So I feel like you've already answered this question a bit, and I can deduce what your answer is going to be. But the real question of the day, do Stradivari really sound better than other violins? 

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  36:02

Well, I think, as it stands, this is an ill-posed question. I think we contribute to  debunk a little bit this this point of view. So especially in the past, there was this attitude either to consider all the instruments of Stradivari or of all the Italian makers, as a single set so, and to make their sound a myth. And this was, of course, this is wrong, this was proved to be wrong. On the other hand, there was this other attitude to diminish their value somehow, because science, they couldn't prove that you can by the ear distinguish a Stradivari from another. This is also wrong, because the same fact that these violins basically set the standard for the modern instruments. But as Massimo said, all the model makers are basically trying to replicate or, let's say, use these blueprints as a model, per se, demonstrate that these are actually myth violins. And the fact that the makers in, well around 300 years, now are able to make violins that sound as good as the old ones, well, is a good thing. And I would, I would be surprised of the of the opposite, actually. So I think we must remove this excessive polarization of the question, and really judge the sound of violins, one by one in a non-religious way. So maybe there are actually some Stradivarius, probably, we were lucky that we had one in our experiment that, from the timbral point of view, are actually considered superior to others. But of course, we only tested five violins, probably, you can find another violin in the world or in the history that was as good as this this one for what concerns timbre. And probably yes, this also contributed to make these Stradivari violins very popular and forced everybody to imitate them. But of course, there are many good makers. They can profit from all the past history and experience and they also now can profit from a few scientific techniques that they can import in their labs. So yes, I think there are many good violins around, even among the modern ones.

Massimo Grassi  38:36

Yeah, if I can add on top and to summarize also, because this is very important for us, as Carlo said, judge each violin one by one. So there are not like "the Stradivari," "the new violins," the “Guerneri del Gesù," Of course, there are good and bad violins. Of course, there are people that know how to make violins, for example, Stradivari was one of them, definitely, but not all Stradivari sound the same, not all new violins sound the same, or all of the old ones sound the same, and so on. And of course, we are talking about a world that is made by hands, that are these violin makers, they use their hands, they take a piece of wood, and today, and they make a violin in I don't know how many months. And of course, this is a very long process, it is a very long path, very difficult path. And of course, like there are some rules to follow, but this is it. So in the very end, you have to judge the single object.

Kat Setzer  39:35

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Do you have any current or future research plans related to violin sound?

Massimo Grassi  39:40

Yeah, actually, this podcast was a good opportunity to start again talking about the violins. Of course, as usually when you end up writing a work, you think, "Okay, well, let's do immediately the next step." And then unfortunately, you realize that life is made of 24 hours per day, seven days per week, and so on. So we have something planned, we didn't start yet. But definitely in this experiment, we were playing real sounds to people in our concert hall with real violins, and so on. And of course, in this type of experiment is nice because it's very ecological, like you simulate into an experiment, the characteristics of a concert, let's say, for example, but of course, you cannot really act on the sound of the violin. What you could do is like many people doing experiments, you can, for example, record in high quality, the sound of a violin, and then at that point is you can start to play with it, I don't know, you can filter the sound here, there, in different ways, and understand whether what is the characteristic that drives the timbre of the sound and the pleasantness of the subject. And of course, if you do it like that, with recorded sound into a laboratory, you are directly manipulating the sound of your objects that you really understand the cause and effect or the direct relationship among the things like sound on the one side, and pleasantness perceived by the listener on the other. So this should be our next step, actually, Carlo, we should really do it at some point.

Kat Setzer  41:24

Well, I'm glad this podcast has moved you forward in deciding to work on your next project. That sounds very fun. And thank you again, for taking the time to speak with me today. It's so fascinating to think about how we assess and analyze qualities in musical instruments, particularly those differences that are so fine that they may be indiscernible to you know, your just average untrained listener. It's also nice to know that while many Stradivari live up to their reputations, there are modern violins of equal acoustical quality available to folks who don't have millions of dollars to spend on an antique. Thank you again for taking the time to speak with me today. I wish you the best of luck in your future research. 

Carlo Andrea Rozzi  41:59

Thank you very much.

Massimo Grassi  42:01

Thank you. Thank you.

Kat Setzer  42:04

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