Old violins or new: which do players prefer?
Résumé
Most violinists believe that the instruments of Stradivari and Guarneri 'del Gesu' are tonally superior to other violins and to new violins in particular. Many mechanical and acoustical factors have been proposed to account for this. However, the fundamental premise of tonal superiority has not yet been properly investigated. We therefore designed a playing test in which 21 experienced violinists each compared three violins by Stradivari and Guarneri 'del Gesu' with three high quality new instruments, under double-blind conditions in a room with relatively dry acoustics. We found that (1) the most-preferred violin was new and the least-preferred was by Stradivari; (2) there was very little correlation between an instrument's age and monetary value and its perceived quality, and (3) most players seemed unable to tell whether their most-preferred instrument was new or old. These results present a striking challenge to conventional wisdom. Differences in taste among individual players along with differences in playing qualities among individual instruments appear more important than any general differences between new and old violins.
Domaines
Acoustique [physics.class-ph]
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