You don't hear things by that instrument maker every day. The grandaddy of the guy that taught Stradivarius.
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Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence
21–30 of 46 posts
Re: Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence
#22> The instrument remained in the French court until the French Revolution, after which the basso fell out of favor and the “King” was “drastically reduced in size” through an alteration process that “stood at the forefront of musical instrument development during the last quarter of the 18th century
I had to process that sentence a couple of times to understand that the process the author was talking about wasn't the guillotine.
Re: Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence
#23Is the mystique around Stradivarius instruments subjectively put on a pedestal like wine tasting or audiophiles or can someone actually tell the difference in a blind test?
I'm a semi-professional violinist who got to borrow a Strad for a couple months and whose long-term teacher has the lifetime loan of a del Gesu (and has had access to a Strad but prefers the del Gesu!)
I don't have Studies to back this up, but anecdotally:
* Playing fine violins takes a lot of practice with the specific instrument to begin to unlock its potential. I was scratching the surface after a couple months; people with longer-term loans say it takes years.
* Strads in particular are surprisingly hard to make sound good at first. I'd say there was a good two weeks where I sounded better on my $2500 Chinese-made violin than I did on the multi-million dollar Strad. (del Gesus sound great out of the box. This is widely agreed upon but I don't know why it is)
* In terms of pure craftsmanship there are many contemporary makers who are working as well as Strad and del Gesu, and I don't place much stock in them having access to uniquely good wood or magic varnish or anything like that.
* However, for poorly-understood reasons the act of playing a violin "opens up" the sound and also gives you access to more and more tone colors. A 300-year-old violin that's been played a lot will therefore have a much bigger tonal palette than a contemporary violin, even if any individual tone color isn't strictly better than the tone of a contemporary violin.
* The corollary is that in the year 2300 I believe top-end contemporary instruments will be as good as Strads are now.
* If you just thought "what if we simulate the vibrations of playing on new instruments to expedite their aging", you're not the first! Some luthiers hook new instruments up to a specialized amplifier and effectively play music through the violin for a couple weeks before selling it. A lot of people claim this helps a lot, but I don't have first-hand experience of it.
Re: Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence
#24Is the mystique around Stradivarius instruments subjectively put on a pedestal like wine tasting or audiophiles or can someone actually tell the difference in a blind test?
Stradivarius instruments deserve being put on a pedestal for historical reasons. Stradivari basically defined the sound of the modern violin, using flatter arching and f holes with smaller hole areas than the Amatis, which resulted in a significantly more powerful instrument that was better suited to playing in a concert hall (vs. the chamber music of earlier times). Stradivarius violins are also noted for their extr…
There is another factor in bieng chosen as the current player of any instrument such as a Stradivarius, the moment they are handed there charge and told,there is the door, go, must produce a level of focus not encountered in most peoples lives.
Re: Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Furthermore, there are many intangible qualities of the way an instrument resonates and feels while playing that often contributes more to the better playing than the raw sound itself. It’s strange to say but instruments have a sort of soul and that can inspire musicians which leads to better sound
I understand what you're getting at, and I can appreciate it, but it's also kind of bullshit. You say "instruments have a sort of soul and that can inspire musicians which leads to better sound" - well, if that's the case, then people should be able to hear the difference in that sound in blind tests, which so far they basically haven't.
But a cello is not a machine on which you press one button and then one sound comes out. You can't just press the button on both machines and then check which makes the better sound. Playing a cello is a feedback loop between the instrument, musculature, nerves/brains, emotions, culture.... It's not unthinkable to me that something like that would take a couple decades of work by highly skilled people to lead to an extraordinary outcome.
Re: Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Old string instruments generally remain playable[1] so it most probably wouldn’t be too delicate to play. However most old Amati and Stradivarius instruments will have had a refit during the Romantic period to play on metal strings. This massively increases the string tension compared to the gut strings that would have been used in the original design. This refit often involves a new bridge, soundpost and nut[2] and…
Replying to myself to add two further things which I should have mentioned before. Firstly I looked at the photos and that instrument is on gut. You can see it clearly here[1]. So you may have found it interesting idk but you can ignore everything I said about setup. Secondly one thing that makes this instrument so special is that as rare and precious as original Amati and Stradivarius violins are, original cellos an…
The new horniman remains super, but I miss the old dusty, "dolmech recorder collection in a case untouched in decades" horniman.
Museums have to renew. It's a massive improvement overall for community engagement but the old one was a place you could feel like you were discovering things, not being told things. The science museum London is the same: cleaned out the trash, made it less romantic and interesting.
Re: Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence
#27Is the mystique around Stradivarius instruments subjectively put on a pedestal like wine tasting or audiophiles or can someone actually tell the difference in a blind test?
I'm a semi-professional violinist who got to borrow a Strad for a couple months and whose long-term teacher has the lifetime loan of a del Gesu (and has had access to a Strad but prefers the del Gesu!) I don't have Studies to back this up, but anecdotally: * Playing fine violins takes a lot of practice with the specific instrument to begin to unlock its potential. I was scratching the surface after a couple months; p…
People are making instruments in Tasmania from deep flooded lake bottom revovered Huon pine and other ancient wood. I'd be fascinated if this old wood, Virgin trees from hundreds of years ago, had the same kind of tonal range.
Re: Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Old string instruments generally remain playable[1] so it most probably wouldn’t be too delicate to play. However most old Amati and Stradivarius instruments will have had a refit during the Romantic period to play on metal strings. This massively increases the string tension compared to the gut strings that would have been used in the original design. This refit often involves a new bridge, soundpost and nut[2] and…
Replying to myself to add two further things which I should have mentioned before. Firstly I looked at the photos and that instrument is on gut. You can see it clearly here[1]. So you may have found it interesting idk but you can ignore everything I said about setup. Secondly one thing that makes this instrument so special is that as rare and precious as original Amati and Stradivarius violins are, original cellos an…
> Firstly I looked at the photos and that instrument is on gut. You can see it clearly here[1].
Aren't the two string on the left of that picture made of metal?
Re: Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Replying to myself to add two further things which I should have mentioned before. Firstly I looked at the photos and that instrument is on gut. You can see it clearly here[1]. So you may have found it interesting idk but you can ignore everything I said about setup. Secondly one thing that makes this instrument so special is that as rare and precious as original Amati and Stradivarius violins are, original cellos an…
> Firstly I looked at the photos and that instrument is on gut. You can see it clearly here[1]. Aren't the two string on the left of that picture made of metal?
I would think they're gut core with metal winding around them - much as the bass strings on a classical guitar are nylon with a metal winding.
On a modern instrument the core would be metal as well.
Re: Hear the "Amati King Cello", the Oldest Known Cello in Existence
#30> The instrument remained in the French court until the French Revolution, after which the basso fell out of favor and the “King” was “drastically reduced in size” through an alteration process that “stood at the forefront of musical instrument development during the last quarter of the 18th century I had to process that sentence a couple of times to understand that the process the author was talking about wasn't the…
Yeah it did strike me too as quite funny. Pun intended or not, is the question.