The music in the wood
I remember watching a television program many, many years ago about the hunt for the "why" behind the incredible sound quality of Stradivarius violins. The simple shape of the violin has long been discounted as a sole reason for the fine sound quality (although, of course, the skills of Antonio Stradivari are indubitably key in making it such a fine instrument). Similarly, attempts to blame the sound quality of a Stradivarius or other Cremonese instrument on surface finishes or soaking in water during transit have been ruled out over the years. Attempts to do more in-depth compositional analyses were stymied by the unwillingness of researchers to pulverize one of the instruments in an attempt to learn why it used to work so well.
In Mineral Preservatives in the Wood of Stradivari and Guarneri, Nagyvary, Guillemette, and Spiegelman apply very modern analytical methods to very tiny samples from Stradivari and Guarneri instruments in an attempt to answer the question of whether or not chemical preservatives were applied to the wood used in the instruments. I direct you to the paper itself for a full discussion of their methods, but I'll sample this bit to give you an idea of what that means, as well as the conclusions the study reached:
We have employed the methods of backscattered electron (BSE) imaging, X-ray qualitative analysis by energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray quantitative analysis by wavelength dispersive spectroscopy (WDS), and WDS X-ray element distribution imaging. The results suggest that the wood used by Stradivari and Guarneri was indeed treated by mineral preservatives. Such a process could have caused extensive chemical changes in the organic matrix and, therefore, could have impacted the acoustical properties of the wood. These findings have far-reaching consequences for the art of violin-making if the goal is indeed the reproduction of the great Cremonese standards.
I'm looking forward to a new attempt to replicate a Stradivarius violin, mating fine craftsmanship with an attempt to replicate the chemical preservatives Antonio and his family appear to have relied on in their work. Will it sound the same, or are we still missing one or more key pieces required to puzzle together a Stradivarius?