Word: moennig
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...Telling. The U.S., too, has its liutai. Standouts: Wisconsin's Carl Beck er, Philadelphia's William Moennig & Son, Manhattan's Simone Sacconi. It also has such well-grounded amateurs as New York's Norman Pickering, who makes stringed instruments when he is not developing fine components for high-fidelity machines. By use of electronic devices, he has isolated dozens of "resonance systems" which give violins their unique sound. To work out his finished instruments' initial "tightness" of tone, he uses a mechanical generator that vibrates the bridge. But most professionals simply get students to play...
Russia's David Oistrakh to William Moennig Jr. during his U.S. visit: "I'd love to play one of your violins in my concerts, but I must use a Strad. Otherwise, if I made a mistake, people would blame it on the instrument...
Made to Measure. For "The Primrose," Young Bill Moennig spent a year and a half studying the violist's playing technique, then almost six months shaping and making the viola. Primrose told him: "I want quality with power so that the music will come out without an obvious wrestling match in front of the public." Moennig tried to blend the measurements of a Strad and an Amati, to get the Amati's mellow roundness with the greater brilliance of the Strad...
...Young Moennig was apprenticed to his father for 15 years in Philadelphia before he was allowed to study in the Saxon village of Markneukirchen, where, since 1622, ten generations of Moennigs have fashioned string instruments. He brought back to Philadelphia enough seasoned Carpathian spruce and Tirolese maple to make 300 fiddles-which, at the rate of four new violins a year, will take a long time. He is convinced-that the wood is what counts. Harvard once made electrical tone tests of imitation Strads and Amatis that Moennig had built for the Curtis Quartet-and reported them slightly better than...
...Stradivari costs in the neighborhood of $40,000. Bill Moennig, who charges from $750 to $1,000 for his, is slightly cynical about it. Says he: "Invariably the tone of an instrument is rapturously admired until the audience learns it was finished a week or a month before. Then they come out with the bright statement that they'd noticed a bit of newness in the tone...