Interesting research with a local angle:
FOR CENTURIES, experts have debated whether special varnishes or wood treatments were the secret to the instruments� rich resonance, which some consider superior to contemporary violins.
Now a tree-ring dating expert at the University of Tennessee and a climatologist at Columbia University offer a new theory � the wood developed special acoustic properties as it was growing because of an extended period of long winters and cool summers.
“It just amazed me that no one had thought of this before,� said Henri Grissino-Mayer. “The relationship between the violins, the trees that they were made from, the climate that existed when the trees grew and how it affected wood density to create a superior tonal quality.”
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Grissino-Mayer at Tennessee and Lloyd Burckle at Columbia suggest a �Little Ice Age� that gripped Europe from the mid-1400s until the mid-1800s slowed tree growth and yielded uncommonly dense Alpine spruce for Antonio Stradivari and other famous 17th-century Italian violinmakers.
The ice age reached its coldest point during a 70-year period from 1645 to 1715 known as the Maunder Minimum, which was named after the 19th-century solar astronomer, E.W. Maunder, who documented a lack of solar activity during the period.
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Grissino-Mayer developed a 500-year chronology, from 1500 to the present, for 16 high-elevation forests of larch, spruce and pine in five countries from western France to southern Germany. He discovered an unprecedented period of slow growth from 1625 to 1720 characterized by compact, narrow tree rings.
“We would suggest that the narrow tree rings that identify the Maunder Minimum in Europe played a role in the enhanced sound quality of instruments produced by the Cremona (Italy) violinmakers,� Grissino-Mayer and Burckle write, noting that �narrow tree rings would not only strengthen the violin but would increase the wood�s density.”
Henri Grissino-Mayer’s and Lloyd Bruckle’s theory implies that the density of the wood was the biggest influence on the quality of the sound. Their saying this means that they no very very very very little about the making of violins. There are many aspects in the making of violins that greatly effects the sound and the quality of the sound. For example, the sound post greatly effects the quality of the sound. Any tiny variation in the placement of the sound post — a tenth of a mm to the left, a tenth of a mm to the right, a tenth of a mm in any direction will greatly effect the quality of the sound. That is only one of a hundred different considerations in the making of a violin that greatly effects the quality of the sound. Relatively, the density of the wood on the cell level, effects the quality of the sound about one one-thousandth of a degree in comparison to the many other factors involved in the entire process of violin making. Therefore, the theory of Burckle and Grissino-Mayer has a mirco tiny effect on the quality of the sound, if their theory is in fact correct.