In my opinion the Stradivarius doesn’t compare to the top
violins of today. Today’s violins are more powerful and they allow for greater
technique. Before you get your cello spikes out hear me out.
I’m really quite sick of reading blog post about why the Stradivarius
(or many of the other Old Italians) is the best violin in the world. I’ve seen
scientific experiments, blind folded tests of these violins with modern violins
to try and determine the exact thing that makes the Stradivarius is so
spectacular. I’m sorry to say folks but the sad truth is that it’s not. It is
indeed a unique sound but saying that the Stradivarius is the best sound is
outrageous when you think about it.The concept of sound is solely determined by ones interpretation of that sound.
The core reason that instruments were created was because an
instrument could perform technical feats that no voice could ever achieve.
Therefore the human voice is the absolute and utter benchmark for any musical
sound and all instruments should imitate the human voice as closely as possible.
However somewhere along the Western Classical Music Canon someone decided to
that the Stradivarius is the sound that all violins should be compared to. Therefore
even though modern instruments can create a sound that is closer to that of the
human voice or if they can create a more powerful sound and make technical tasks
easier but they will never be considered as good or dare I say better than the Stradivarius
sound simply because something happened in the past to make the entire western classical
music world acknowledge the Stradivarius as the absolute in violin
manufacturing. We think that a Stradivarius plays an amazing sound simply because it is a Stradivarius.
People look at the Stradivarius as though it is this magic
piece of wood that will make even the novice violinist play spectacularly. The
reality is that it’s simply an artifact of our history. Why? It’s because the genre
of western classical music is frozen in time. The modern professional classical
musicians are obsessed with replicating exactly what happen in the days of
Bach, Beethoven and Mozart instead of performing music that is even more
powerful than these immortals could ever have imagined. Sure it’s extremely
arrogant to think that we could play anything like a Beethoven orchestra might
have but the modern world doesn’t even try. We look at Beethoven and have this
mentality of “if you can’t beat them join them”. It’s exactly the same with the
Stradivarius except we actually have created violins with greater purpose. We
are just too stuck in the past to realize how powerfully they can fulfill their
purpose i.e. to imitate the human voice; the purest instrument of all.
