This diagram looks remarkably like the evolutionary tree of bacteria and archaea, but it’s actually the evolutionary tree of the violin.
From Imitation, Genetic Lineages, and Time Influenced the Morphological Evolution of the Violin
The following is bacteria and archaea.
Ole Bull’s 16th century violin by Gasparo da Salò, now in the Bergen Vestlandske Kustindustrimuseum.
Funnily enough Gasparo da Salò isn’t mentioned in that tree. He’s presumably further along the Maggini line, since the latter was one of his students.
Bubblecar said:
Funnily enough Gasparo da Salò isn’t mentioned in that tree. He’s presumably further along the Maggini line, since the latter was one of his students.
Which is the best one?
dv said:
Bubblecar said:
Funnily enough Gasparo da Salò isn’t mentioned in that tree. He’s presumably further along the Maggini line, since the latter was one of his students.
Which is the best one?
They’re all very fine, in their way.
Mind maps look similar.
Bubblecar said:
dv said:
Bubblecar said:
Funnily enough Gasparo da Salò isn’t mentioned in that tree. He’s presumably further along the Maggini line, since the latter was one of his students.
Which is the best one?
They’re all very fine, in their way.
This June, Sotheby’s will be auctioning off the Macdonald viola, created in 1719 by the legendary Italian violin-maker Antonio Stradivari. They’re asking for a minimum bid of $45 million, which would make this viola the most expensive instrument ever sold.
This price tag may break records but Stradivari’s instruments often fetch millions of dollars, due to both the cachet of the name and their reputed quality. Many people genuinely believe that they are superior to newly made violins and many scientists have tried to work out why.
But to Claudia Fritz from Sorbonne University, the search for Stradivari’s secrets is a “perennially fruitless one”… because they don’t exist. In two studies, she has shown that professional violinists can’t tell the difference between the so-called “Old Italian” violins and newly made ones.
“Strads are amazing instruments. They have survived 300 years and are beautifully made,” says Fritz. “I don’t want to destroy the Strads but I want to show that their amazing properties aren’t unique. You can find them in new violins as well…
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/07/stradivarius-violins-arent-better-than-new-ones-round-two/
Bubblecar said:
Funnily enough Gasparo da Salò isn’t mentioned in that tree. He’s presumably further along the Maggini line, since the latter was one of his students.
I wouldn’t want to bet on which line he was. He’s not on the chart as Bertolotti either.
Sebastian Klotz isn’t on the chart either, but at least it’s clear that his violins are like those of Steiner (and possibly Guarneri del gesu).
> Many people genuinely believe that they are superior to newly made violins and many scientists have tried to work out why.
Yes. The SBS TV program on violins that I watched yesterday (which prompted this thread) described two separate studies to see whether the violins of Stradivarius and Guarneri really did have a better tone. In one, the blind playing was live and there were about 50 audience members. All 50 quickly rejected the two modern violins, and they were almost equally divided between the Stradivarius and the Guarneri.
In a different blind playing shown on the SBS program, there was a web video and anyone who wanted could vote for their favourite violin tone. In this case the worst was a Stradivarius. There could be three reasons for this – one is that the sound would have to be reproduced through a speaker which distorts the sound quality, a second that the listeners weren’t connoisseurs, and a third that there are some 650 surviving Stradivarius instruments and some of them are unplayable. In particular, very few Stradivarius violins have original neck, bridge and chin rest. All this was illustrated on the SBS program.
From my previous knowledge, modern attempts to find out why the Stradivarius (and similar) violins have such a great tone included a study of how the side-to-side variation of thickness of wood on the back of the violin improved the tone, and how other thickness variations improved the tone, and how different wood treatments and varnishes improved the tone. I gather that Stradivarius tortured the wood within an inch of its life, resulting in the violin not being made from “wood with varnish” but rather “cellulose reinforced plastic”, which is much stiffer.
What do you think of the above diagram? Do you think that by studying the Maggini violins we could gain some insights into the origin of life?