Word: violine
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...lordly violin and its less illustrious relatives in the string family are in trouble. As today's concert halls grow more cavernous, it becomes increasingly difficult for a solo violinist to project his sound above a thundering orchestra and out to the most distant seats. And even if he does, many stereo hi-fi addicts contend that the sound is only a pale echo of the "electronically enhanced" concertos that they can conjure up in their living rooms...
...resin and vegetable coloring. But the precise proportions and the method of application remain unknown. Luthiers have been experimenting with secret formulas for decades, but so far none has been able to match the resiliency, golden luster and lasting power of Stradivari's "pasta." Varnish, contends London Violin Dealer Desmond Hill, is all-important because "it acts as a shock absorber. If the finish is too hard, it makes the tone brittle, if too soft, it makes the tone soggy...
Fiddlesticks, says Konrad Leonhardt, director of the Mittenwald violin school in Germany. "Delightful as the Stradivari varnish might be to look at," he says, "it hardly contributes anything to the sound." Time, say the experts, is far more important. "A man reaches his prime around 40, a violin at about 100," explains Cremona Luthier Pietro Sgarabotto. Thus many luthiers insist that old violins are better only because they are older, that a century from now the fiddles being made by such modern masters as Sacconi, and Carl Becker Sr. of Chicago, will equal the fabled Strad. That, of course, remains...
...American ethnic groups as a huge symphony orchestra in which each instrument retains its own characteristics, makes its particular contribution and, together with the other instruments, creates a wonderful or a terrible sound. Surely, to achieve a good sound, a French horn does not become a violin, nor does a piccolo turn into a kettledrum; rather, each strives harder to play in harmony with the others...
...time Kurt was in high school, the ruinous inflation of the 1920s was sweeping Germany. Deciding to become a teacher, he left Ebingen for a small Catholic academy in a nearby town, where he got a first-class education, mastered the organ, piano and violin, and became something of a linguist (today he speaks English, French, Spanish and Italian). After graduating in 1925, the young teacher found himself only another among Germany's millions of unemployed. But he had taken to writing poetry, and this proved to have a practical value. A millowner in Ebingen read some of Kurt...