By Melanie McDonagh
The Stradivarius - or Stradivari, the Italian form, for violin buffs - is the creme de la creme of stringed instruments. Like medieval stained glass, they're proof that some things don't get better with the march of technology; the 17th-century artisan from Cremona who worked in an attic can still outclass the entire contemporary stringed instrument industry.
Except perhaps not. A new blind test conducted on players and audiences and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal, suggested that audiences who listened both to instruments made by Stradivarius and one of his contemporaries, and new ones, actively preferred the modern sort - even saying that the tone travelled better, the reputed USP of the Stradivarius.
Satu Vanska, assistant leader violinist in the Australian Chamber Orchestra, with the Stradivarius Violin the orchestra has acquired under a new fundraising program.Credit: Brendan Esposito
The players - concert performers - had a merely evens chance of identifying an old from a new violin. And after playing each instrument twice, six preferred new violins and four chose old ones.
So, myth shattered? Not quite, though it usefully reminds us of the huge advances made by modern violin manufacturers in the past couple of decades (two of the report's authors are from the industry). And like any craftsman who produced more than 1,100 pieces, Stradivarius made some better than others: those that did best in the test were from his so-called golden period.
The Ames Stradivarius violin, which was stolen in 1980 from the late virtuoso violinist Roman Totenberg.Credit: Reuters
Besides, the exercise misses the point. Of course a player is looking for the legendary tonal quality and projection of a Strad. But there are the magical, intangible factors too: the notion that you're playing an instrument that is part of the history of music and of the instrument; you're handling a piece that was, or may have been, played by the greatest violinists. You become part of the tradition; the sound you produce was made from the same instrument over three centuries.
And the same is true of old things in general. I've got a couple of little wooden figures bought in a Parisian street market, two mis-matched friars, one crudely carved like a toy, the other personable - perhaps from the religious houses destroyed during the French Revolution. They're part of an unknown history and bear the personality of their dead makers.
But ordinary finds from charity shops also have that elusive quality that comes from being owned by one generation and transmitted to the next. Things aren't just things, objects that fulfil a purpose: old objects have a history, a human interest that goes beyond function.
I don't care if (some) modern violins sound as good or better than (some) by Stradivarius. I know which I'd prefer to hear, and to play.
Telegraph, London