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 'VALl ilPAV ,UL 5 % ijlKf ten I What’s Up at the MSC February Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday MSC Townhall Lee Greenwood 8 p.m. G. 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