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estebanana -> RE: Strad's Secrets Exposed? (May 8 2013 2:37:59)
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There are a lot of misconceptions about Italian violin making. A lot of people think Stradivari innovated a flatter arched top; Gasparo da Salo and the Brescian school had used flatter arching, it was not a new idea, but the was the way in which Stradivari used it that made it work.
Violin innovation is closley linked to string making innovation. The higher arched models of the Amati's were designed to get the string in motion faster using the bow of the time period, because the gut strings of the late 1500's were not as good as later strings. As string making became better and better, scale lengths changed, composers wrote higher and higher on the fingerboard and arching became flatter. As the bass strings for the cello became over wound with fine wires, the scale length became shorter and enabled the composers to give it more intricate melodic lines.
The whole thing was driven by composers and string makers and the violin makers changed designs as string making technology improved gradually. Going from pure gut bass strings to overwound bass strings was something like the phenomena after WWII when guitar strings changed from gut to nylon. It changed the way the guitar was heard, built and played. These instruments are driven by string making technology.
There were no secrets, just techniques of that day. Most of the problems in understanding the working methods and order of assembly of Cremonese instruments has been solved by violin makers working today. A lot of the information which is claimed as lost can be reverse engineered by close observation and practice. The reason is was claimed "lost" is because the later commercial mass produced in instruments from Germany and France etc. did not use the Cremonese order of assembly or other methods used in Cremona and Italy prior to 1700. They still produced violins, and some good ones, but not the same style as the Cremonese who were the logical conclusion of 200 years of tradition, innovation and inquiry.
One of the other reasons the Cremona techniques were obscured is because later writers like The Hill Family and Ed Heron Allen, et al, wrote incorrectly about the Cremona school, it touched off a hundred years of myths that until the more accurate scholarship of the last 20 to 25 years were held as gospel. People that perpetuate the myth of secrets are just not up to date on the literature available now, but continue to discuss based on the 19th century observations.
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