Page 4/The Battalion/Friday, February' 7, 1986
A&M prof says water-soaked wood makes better violii
University News Service
Dr. Joseph Nagyvary, professor of bi
ophysics and biochemistry, said new evi
dence shows the wood Stradivari used to
make his violins was soaked in water — not
dry seasoned as is commonly believed.
Modern violins are made with wood that
has been seasoned, a process Nagyvary says
is a great mistake and diminishes the qual
ity of sound.
Nagyvary said microscopic examination
of wood samples taken from several violins
made by Stradivari, Guarneri and other
important 17th and 18th century Italian
craftsmen revealed century-old traces of
f ungi that altered the shape of the wood
cells. The fungi could have come only from
water immersion, he said.
Several years ago, Nagyvary, who has
carried on a long-standing love affair with
violins and violin making, discovered a dra
matic difference between the wood used in
a Guarneri instrument and what is used in
modern violins.
Using electron microscope photographs
provided by James R. Scott at A&M’s Elec
tron Microscopy Center, Nagyvary found a
larger amount of the pit holes in the Stradi-
veri wood cells were open, compared to the
holes in commercial tone wood, which is
dry seasoned.
Recently, he discovered the presence of
water fungi, which eat away gummy
material in the wood and make it lighter
and dryer. The fungi also force the cell
walls to separate or loosen up.
To determine if he could corroborate
the evidence he gleaned from the fungi
with historical information, Nagyvary trav
eled to Europe and examined old shipping
records stored in villages and monasteries.
The records showed logs had been sent
downstream along the rivers leading from
the Tyrolean Alps, the Bolzano area —
where much of the wood used for violins
was cut — to the Italian towns where the in
struments were made.
found on the labels of bottled mineral wa
ters from northern Italy.
search and the scarcity of wood sain;
“Most (modern) violin makers have den
ied that water transportaiton of the logs
was important,” he said. “They insisted
that the (Italian) violin makers went to the
Alps and got their wood dry, just like the
German makers who settled in the Alp val
ley of Mittenwald. But these makers never
made great violins.”
Nagyvary said he found additional evi
dence about water immersion in the miner
als deposited on the wood. He said the ra
tios of calcium, potassium and sodium
found on the wood exactly match the min
erals found in many waters of Lombardy,
and even correspond with the proportion
Using his new-found knowledge, Nagy
vary commissioned craftsmen in Bulgaria,
Hungary and Italy to make 18 violins from
wood, on which the amphibian fungi had
acted.
“According to unbiased musicians, the
violins are very strongly similar in tonal
quality to the old Italian violins,” he said.
He said the musicians in the Houston
Symphony Orchestra, Oberlin College and
the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadel
phia are using his violins. Top violinists
such as concertmasters Glenn Dicterow of
the New York Philharmonic and Victor Ai-
tay of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
have played and praised earlier instru
ments he developed several years ago.
Nagyvary’s research has been difficult
because of a lack of funding for his re-
He said it took 10 years to findi
separate samples, which were pro
him by the curator of instrument
U.S. Library of Congress in Wasl
The samples were taken fromtw
made by Stradivari and two byC
during the course of repairs.
Many violin dealers and mab
given little credence to his claims
acoustical consequences ofdiffen
composition.
“They deny it because it is
barrassing to admit that most violii
made of the wrong wood durint
150 years,” Nagyvary said. “\ft,
wrong is that the seasoning oftlr
bad. For the aficionado, it willbd
accept that the missing secret in?
behind the Stradivari tone is notIm
genuity but merely a fungus."
10
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