Quality of Stradivarius Violins Linked to Wood Treatment

Scientists at Texas A&M University have analyzed Stradivarius and Guarneri violins and found a brutal chemical treatment of the wood is responsible for their unique sound quality.

Obtaining minute wood samples from restorers of these instruments (“no easy trick and it took a lot of begging to get them”), they burned the wood slivers to ash to identify the individual chemicals used via advanced spectroscopic analysis. Numerous chemical compounds were found in the wood including borax, fluorides, chromium and iron salts. Borax alone has a long history of preservative use, dating back to Egyptian mummification and insecticide.

Stradivari and Guarneri aggressively treated the wood for their instruments for purposes of preservation, especially protection against the widespread problem of worms eating away at the wood. First theorized to be the reason in 1976, this heavy chemical treatment is directly responsible for the unmatched modern sound quality of these stringed instruments.

Antonio Stradivari produced about 1200 instruments in his lifetime, of which about half survive. His contemporary Guarneri del Gesu had trouble selling his own instruments, but they are now considered of equal quality and value as Stradivari's.

These results were published in the current issue of the journal Public Library of Science, subsequent to a preliminary analysis published in Nature in 2006.

Source: ScienceDaily