Stradivarius Innovations
With astounding prescience, Stradivarius recognized that in time, greater demands for volume and sonority would be made upon the violin. Somehow he foresaw, if not precisely the symphonies and orchestras of the late eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, then at least the likelihood that music was moving in that direction. Through constant experimentation–varying by a fraction of an inch the arching of one instrument’s back, another’s length, the overall dimensions of yet another–he created what Dutch scholar Dirk J. Balfoort called “the violin of the future” capable of producing not only delicate, sweet sounds but powerful, crystalline tones, strong and clear enough to perform brilliantly with the orchestras of today.
These highly precise words – excerpt from a ‘top quality’ article by Neil Grauer “Heavenly Strings”. He further explains:
Had it not been for Stradivarius, Balfoort wrote a half century ago, “the violin would have become the victim of tradition, because it would in the long run have ceased to be able to adapt itself to the requirements of the times.” Thanks to Stradivarius, the violin has been able to remain “the Queen of musical instruments“.
Stradivarius was the one who finished the form of the instrument . . . It has never changed since Strad’s time… – it ended with him. You couldn’t improve on what he did.
A great Stradivarius allows you to express yourself on every level . . . It has a range of possible expressiveness within it that allows the person to be totally at ease with what he wants to say with the music. I mean, you’re dealing with colors, you’re dealing with sounds and you’re dealing with emotions. And the music has all these emotions going on with it. A Strad has the ability to translate the emotions aurally to perfection–the performer’s emotions. And there’s something about the sound that grabs the listener. A Strad is a Strad.
That’s understandable. But wait a minute.
Being a violin fan, scientist and maker, I know for sure that good contemporary violin makers can create as good or even better violins than Antonius Stradivarius did. So I am surprised, why prices of old Cremonese instruments are steadily increasing and reached so high values. Isn’t it possible that bottom reason of the phenomenon remains psychological matters.