Lolov - Bent Plates in Violin Construction

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Bent Plates in Violin Construction Author(s): Athanas Lolov Source: The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 37 (Mar., 1984), pp. 10-15Published by: Galpin SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/841136Accessed: 08-09-2015 17:57 UTC

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ATHANAS LOLOV

Bent Plates in Violin Construction

T HE use of bent top plates in the construction of viols was recently discussed by Dietrich Kessler.1 He presented convincing evidence that a viol top by Richard Meares (c. 1660) was formed at least partially of slats bent in the manner of a lute back, and proposed that some method of bending might have been used by other well-known English makers, most importantly Barak Norman. The discovery of what may have been a school of bent-plate viol builders in England is important in itself, but is particularly interesting for the support it offers another, even more controversial, theory: that bending could have been used by some of the Cremona violin makers.

In his article concerning the Meares viol, Kessler rejected any application of the bending method to two-piece tops such as are used for violins, saying only that the bending method does not apply to violins because 'no bending is used in their construction'.2 No support was offered for that statement, it being simply an assumption, and that is a little surprising given the innovative nature of Kessler's article. Most people had assumed no bending to be involved in viol tops either, until he suggested it. The present study deals with a violin belly which was bent from slats Y56" thick using a method very different from that employed by Kessler; the resulting plate has characteristics that could suggest an answer to some of the questions regarding the peculiarities of violins built by the masters of Cremona.

While carving from a thick plank is certainly the most familiar method for making a violin belly, and one with a long history, we actually have no hard evidence that Stradivari's tops, for example, were 'dug from a plank'. We just have assumed that they were. A respect for the scientific method requires at least that this admittedly somewhat outlandish possibility be investigated. Indeed, it is curious that in all the history of the Stradivari mystery, during which innumerable eccentric or preposterous ideas have come forward,3 no one, to my knowledge, has ever proposed that the master's tops might have received their initial form by bending. That the idea is not so unnatural is evident from the way I first heard it: a musically naive visitor looked at a newly completed viol and asked, 'how do you bend the tops ?' What seemed at 10


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PLATE IV Violin top made from bent plates. (a) before and (b) after joining.


first like a humorous error led to the building in 1981 of a large viol, on a Barak Norman pattern, with a top formed by bending. I found it to be an excellent instrument, powerful in tone, quick to speak, and remarkably free of wolves. The bending method I used was one which could be applied to a two-piece top, and it was not long before I began to wonder about the application of bending to violins.

The violins of Stradivari and those of the Guarneri family are alike in that they are regarded as possessing a mysteriously irreproducable beauty and power of tone. They also share some physical peculiarities which are not easy to explain in the context of the traditional method of building:

1) The ribs usually taper from the side blocks to the top. Neither the amount of tapering nor the maximum height are consistent from violin to violin, and the usual explanation for this tapering, that the belly thus offers 'the necessary resistance to the neck',4 is questionable. William Hill said of this feature, 'We entirely fail to perceive any fixed idea or principle guiding Stradivari in determining the relative height of sides . . ..

2) The f-holes almost always show distortion, the lower wing being sunk beneath the plane of the plate. This effect is, of course, most pronounced on the right side, where the sound post helps to support the belly, but it does not appear in violins of later eras except when induced by artificial means. Edward Heron-Allen, in his classic work on violin construction, recommended producing this effect by means of twisting the wood with a small stick, a procedure which smacks of superficial imitation.6

3) The grain of the top often appears to converge slightly at the extremities of the center joint. This phenomenon is largely hidden by the fingerboard and tailpiece, but is still visible in vertical photographs of many master instruments.7 The convergence is most easily observed in instruments with very high arching. As long as the grain at the outer extremes of the instrument remains straight, the curving of grain toward the center could be a sign that the wood was bent upward in the middle (see Fig. 1 for a graphic representation). The effect is, to be sure, very subtle, and easily confused by irregular grain, but in those instruments where it is plainly visible it is hard to explain by any other hypothesis.

Some of the historical evidence also poses questions: 1) Stradivari is reported to have preferred to split his own wood for

tops. This implies that he did not use wood seasoned for many years. Could he have been moved by any reasons other than economy? Could a thick plate dry sufficiently in a short period to be safely employed in

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a violin? If he cut relatively thin slabs from green wood and wedged them immediately, they would dry sufficiently in a single season and retain their curve without further treatment.

2) It has often been suggested, as by Edward Heron-Allen in the nineteenth century, that master builders split wood for violin tops, rather than sawing it, to avoid disturbing the longitudinal fibers.8 Yet how can one avoid disturbing the fibers when carving begins ? If the grain follows the arch rather than being cut to it, more of the longitudinal fibers will remain whole, and the top will be a great deal strengthened.

The example shown in Pl. IV b was bent by a simple process. The wood used was two book-matched slabs of Sitka spruce, each /16" thick. They were thoroughly soaked in water, and then clamped together along three sides. (It is worth noting that the soaking in water could have been skipped if freshly-cut green wood were available.) A pair of wedges was then driven into the areas corresponding to the upper and lower bouts, the tips of the wedges being directed toward the center of the curve of each bout. There are choices possible here; both the orientation and the shape of the wedges could be altered with possibly significant results. The wedging easily produced a recognizable approximation of the flat-topped curve characteristic of Stradivari's violins.

The wood, being thin, dried quickly, and retained its new shape well. Beforejoining, the bent slabs presented the appearance of having grown apart at the center of their joint (see Plate IV a), a consequence of bending which necessitated spot-gluing each to a plank in order to plane the joint straight. This is a step requiring some skill and practice, owing to the curving of grain introduced by the bend. Once glued, the grain at the tail end of the joint can be seen to converge slightly, though irregularity in the grain has made this effect invisible at the upper end.

The plate does not lie flat; the edges are warped upwards in the middle as a consequence of stresses induced by the bending process. As with the viol plates described by Kessler, some pressure is required to force it down to meet the ribs. This provides a plausible motive for tapering the ribs slightly, as less pressure would then be required to make the joint. Even with this partial match of ribs to belly, however, some pressure is still required; this pressure causes a small distortion of the wings of the sound holes, resembling that which Heron-Allen imitated by use of a stick.

The amount of distortion in the plate is unpredictable, being different for each piece of wood. This could explain not only the

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variations in the distortion of f-holes, but also the seemingly random variation in the rib height of Stradivari's works, assuming an attempt was made to shape the ribs to at least partially conform to the top. Carving was minimal, and was guided by the roughly defined shape already present in the wood. An added benefit was the ability to follow the fibers with the plane: because the grain was rarely interrupted by the face of a curve, the plane glided easily, even travelling 'uphill' without digging in. The relative lack of exposed fiber ends should also make finishing easier.

It is clear that the labor saved by this method is considerable, but that might not have been the only motive for a maker to bend tops. In the seventeenth century the cost of materials made a much more significant proportion of the cost of any manufactured item, and that could have caused a craftsman to consider ways by which he might double the number of instruments obtainable from a given amount of wood. Whether the method was adopted from economic motives or from an understanding of the benefits in structural strength is, however, of little importance. If it was indeed used by the Cremona makers it was used because it worked, and perhaps was kept as a trade secret for the same reason, a feat which would not be difficult since the bulk of the labor in violin manufacture was concerned with the other parts of the instrument. Kessler's discovery of a (probably not unique) viol belly made by bending in seventeenth-century England is proof that even such a large trade secret as this one can be both kept and forgotten.

Further research should focus on an examination of the center joints of a wide range of master violins, and, if possible, on a microscopic examination of the fibers in a section of the arch, should a fragment of one of these instruments ever be available. Convergence of grain at the top and bottom of the joint is an unavoidable artifact of the bending process but is not always apparent to the eye, as is evidenced by the plate described above. Yet, even in this plate careful use of a straightedge with the photograph will reveal a slight convexity of grain on both sides of the joint; instruments displaying this characteristic may justly be suspected of having been bent. Fig. 1 provides a clearer image of the effect of bending on grain. The drawing was made by photographing ruled paper bent to roughly the curve of a violin belly; the lack of irregularity in the 'grain' makes the convergence at the center joint more obvious, though if the center joint were not visible the curve of even these ruled lines would not be strikingly apparent. Stradivari's last instruments were somewhat flatter than this model and any curving of grain will consequently be still more subtle.

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FIG. 1. Simulation of bent plate top.

It is unfortunate that close examination of a master instrument is very difficult to arrange, as a much higher degree of certainty could be obtained merely by looking under the tailpiece and fingerboard with an illuminated mirror. The superficial examinations already made, without the opportunity to look beneath tailpieces and fingerboards, indicate that many of the violins thought to be from Cremonese masters have signs consistent with what would be expected from a bent top, while instruments from other schools and later eras generally do not. This suggests an interesting possibility, that if the bent-plate theory is proved a fact, the violin trade will be provided with a powerful tool with which to judge the authenticity of supposed Cremonese violins. 'Le Messie', the most famous of the violins attributed to Stradivari, for example, is alone among the instruments examined superficially in that it displays none of the characteristics described above. A careful reading of the story of 'Le Messie' shows that its history before its possession by Vuillaume rests entirely on the veracity of that maker, who was famed for his accurate copies of master instruments. Is it possible that 'Le Messie' is one of them ?

There are many factors involved in the making of a fine violin, and the manner of shaping the top cannot, by itself, necessarily be decisive for the outcome. However, the bent-top theory is the first to provide a plausible explanation for the unbroken string of failures which marks the record of modern attempts to reproduce with consistency the tonal qualities of Cremona violins. The varnishes have been examined with x-ray spectroscopy; every dimension has been measured with all the exactitude of which our technology is capable; the woods have been matched so closely that variation between any two violins of one of the old masters far exceeds the difference between a modern copy and its original. And yet all the master violins, regardless of their variation in

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shape, dimensions, and finish, share tonal qualities which set them far above any of the copies. Even age cannot wholly account for the difference, since the violins of Stradivari were famous even when he was alive. Conversely, Villaume's copies are now close to two hundred years old, and show no signs of beginning to sound like their models. A basic structural difference between the fiber arrangement of the old violins and that of the new would provide a rational explanation of the phenomenon, though it would deprive us of the romantic hope, cherished by many, that Stradivari and his peers were simply possessed of magical powers, an idea which certainly would have amused those superb craftsmen.

The author thanks Jeffrey Evans for his many suggestions during the preparation of this paper.

NOTES iDietrich Kessler, 'Viol Construction in 17th-century England', Early Music

10, No. 3 (July 1982), 340-345. 2 ibid., p. 345. 3 For example, it has been suggested that Stradivari's varnish contained

powdered diamonds, and that the wood for his instruments was cured by being soaked six months in urine.

4See August Riechers, 'The Violin and Its Construction', in Violin Iconography of Antonio Stradivari, 1644-1737, by Herbert K. Goodkind (Larchmont, New York: Privately printed, 1972), p. 128.

5 William Hill, Antonio Stradivari, His Life and Work 1644-1737 (New York: Dover, 1963), p. 55.

6 Edward Heron-Allen, Violin-Making as It Was and Is, 2nd Ed. (New York: Carl Fischer, 1885), p. 258, fig. 155.

7 For examples, see Karel Jalovec, Italian Violin Makers (London: Paul Hamlyn, 1964), Plates 62, 148, 156, 171, 186, 192, 197, 231, 244, 256, 362, 369. Also Walter Hamma, Meister italienischer Geigenbaukunst (Stuttgart: Schuler, 1964), plates 603, 604, 615, 622, 630, 640, 642, 653, 654, 656, 659.

8 Heron-Allen, p. 133.

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Article Contentsp. 10[unnumbered]p. 11p. 12p. 13p. 14p. 15

Issue Table of ContentsThe Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 37 (Mar., 1984), pp. 1-140Front Matter [pp. 1-1]The Berkswell Cello [pp. 2-5]A Three-Piece Flute in Assisi [pp. 6-9]Bent Plates in Violin Construction [pp. 10-15]Clarinet Fingering Charts, 1732-1816 [pp. 16-41]J. C. Bach and the Basset-Horn [pp. 42-47]C. C. Hornung and the Single-Cast Iron Frame: An Early Break-Through in the Danish Piano Industry [pp. 48-56]Notes on the Ballad Horn [pp. 57-61]Flemish Transposing Harpsichords - An Explanation [pp. 62-71]A Brief Survey of the Late Spanish Bajn [pp. 72-79]The Earlier History of the Shawm in India [pp. 80-98]Reed Makers [pp. 99-101]More on Bressan [pp. 102-111]Notes and QueriesThe Cornutum [pp. 112-113]The L. C. Denner Clarinet at Berkeley [p. 114]An Unusual Harpsichord [pp. 115-116]Turton's Ophicleide [pp. 116-117]The Flentrop Organcase [pp. 117-118]The Flutahachi [pp. 118-119]Archives in the Bate Collection [p. 119]Woodwind Instruments from Kilravock Castle [pp. 119-121]Left-Handed Recorders by Bressan [p. 121]On Crumhorn Bores [p. 122]Instrumentalists and the London Stage [pp. 122-124]

ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 125-126]Review: untitled [pp. 126-128]Review: untitled [pp. 128-129]Review: untitled [pp. 129-130]Review: untitled [p. 130]Review: untitled [pp. 131-132]Review: untitled [pp. 132-134]

Back Matter [pp. 135-140]

Lolov - Bent Plates in Violin Construction

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