Part I. The Stradivarius Mystique

                                      Joseph Nagyvary

Perhaps no other art object can match the ongoing worldwide exposure of the Stradivarius violin–the Strad, as it is called by the cognoscenti.  It is heard daily around the globe in live concerts and on countless recordings of leading artists, sharing credit for thrilling musical experiences.  Advertisers have begun using photographs of the Strad as the ultimate metaphor for perfection attained by consummate skill, talent, and meticulous attention to details.  For the mystically inclined afficionado, its eponymous creator was the possessor of the philosopher's stone who had a prescience of physical-acoustical principles.  There seems to be no limit to the superlatives bestowed upon Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737).  It would be bizarre to find so many sophisticates worshiping someone whose bequest to mankind was twelve hundred units of the same product, if these were not arguably the finest musical instruments ever made.

The 250th anniversary (in 1987) of Stradivari's death has prompted a new wave of literature based on old cliches signaling a need for critical reassessment.  Recent publications have only added to the myths which continue to grow around the pedestal of Stradivari like kudzu on trees in the heart of Dixie.  In his pretentious effort of scholarly interpretation ("Measure for measure; a musical history of science", Simon & Schuster, 1994), television producer Thomas Levenson went over the edge stating: "Stradivari did not merely use Newton's methods, he exhausted them".  This interpretation adds a new image to Stradivari, who has so far been viewed merely as a divinely inspired artist responding to cosmic vibrations.  But was Stradivari  a scientist of the highest level?  Now the plot really thickens.

 My present attempt to reappraise Stradivari's legacy originates from an unlikely environment, an academic science department, and it is  accordingly highly skeptical of myths.  Unbeknownst to many, and unwelcome by most, scientists are viewing the long-standing challenge of the Stradivarius violin as ripe for solution.  What has already been learned from this research can hardly justify the elevation of Stradivari from the level of artisan to the rarified rank of genius.  Rather, it seems that the indisputable superiority of most Italian makers from the "Golden Period" over the violins of other provenance may be due to fortuitous coincidences in wood acquisition and finishing technology, of which the violin maker was just a fortunate beneficiary.  It appears that the fine furniture and the musical instruments of the period rutinely received a chemical treatment against the woodworm and rotting fungi, and these chemicals had an unintended beneficial effect on the sound.  In my opinion, which has been popular on the American Chemical Society lecture circuit, the unsung hero behind the exalted luthiers of Cremona could have been the anonymous drug store chemist, whose potions guaranteed acoustical excellence in all wooden instruments made in the town.  It is plausible that neither the chemist nor the luthiers were aware of the vital role of the chemical treatments in enhancing the brilliance of the musical tone.  This would explain why the “secret of Cremona” has been lost: the luthiers themselves did not know the chemical compositions and their role. 

 What remains to be explained is how Stradivari managed to elevate himself from a level playing field– the origin and development of the Stradivari legend.

Hardly anything is known about Antonio Stradivari's life beyond some mundane census data. Contemporaries did not deem it necessary to eulogize the maestro and chronicle his deeds, as was done for the famous Renaissance artists.  Perhaps there was nothing exciting to write about, although his wealth did generate some respect and envy, as one can judge from the local adage: Ricco come Stradivari.  In a country which delights in erecting monuments to its many heroes, no particular honor was bestowed upon the great son of Cremona by his townsfolk until, very recently, his value in attracting tourism was finally recognized.

The first and still definitive book on Antonio Stradivari by the Hill brothers of London, written at the beginning of the last century, provides much valuable information about the master's work and productivity.  The Hills probably knew most of his six hundred extant instruments (mainly violins, a few violas and cellos); in their estimate an equal number might have been lost.  By the end of the 19th century, Stradivari's legend was firmly established along with the most prominent myth, which concerns his alleged secret and lost varnish recipe.  The Hills were very emphatic in asserting that Stradivari had no personal secrets in the craft of violin making– that he was nothing more than a diligent and gifted artisan.  A similar conclusion was reached by the influential restorer Simone F. Sacconi in his book published in 1972, which also details the methods supposedly used by both Stradivari and all other violin makers in Cremona.  Obviously, exaggerations of Stradivari's merits have not come from professional luthiers who have rarely conceded much, if anything, to the grand old master in terms of know-how.  But they paid him the ultimate compliment, the act of imitation, as witnessed by the millions of copies left by thousands of violin makers.  The large number of mass-produced violins bearing the Stradivarius Cremonensis faciebat anno 1714 label is probably the main reason why Stradivari is a household word, even in small-town America.  If just a tiny fraction of the copies were judged comparable to the real Strads, there would be no Stradivari legend.  However, the 19th and the 20th centuries did not produce any violin maker of such towering prominence.

Experts are frank to admit that not all Strads are great or even average as musical instruments.  While some may always have been mediocre, some may have declined because of misuse and abuse.  Further, there are connoisseurs who find particular violins of his contemporaries, Guarneri 'del Gesu' and Carlo Bergonzi, equal or superior to a fine Strad.  Why is it then that their fame has remained much below the Strad?  In what regard was Antonio Stradivari so superior to his colleagues in the trade that he has become the one and only legend?  These questions beg for a fresh examination.

Such supremacy by one person in the history of any particular endeavor is intriguing to historians of science and technology who are concerned with issues of priorities and merits.  The classical model of the violin was presumably invented by Andrea Amati around 1560 when he was commissioned by the court of Charles IX of France.  Attempts by the sons and grandson of Andrea to improve on the original were unsuccessful.  Stradivari himself, who apprenticed with the Amatis, tried to modify the design throughout his long creative life as he sought to assert his independence and originality.  He made it a little longer, made it a little shorter, and made it generally flatter in the arching and broader in the waist, but he, too, discovered the limits to artistic freedom in violin making which are measured in a couple of millimeters.  While all innovations and idiosyncrasies of Stradivari have been extensively copied by his imitators, some of these features are becoming distinctly unpopular with the more aggressive players.  For example, the protruding corners of the Strads which may be artistically beautiful are viewed impractical by some virtuosos who prefer the slimmer waistline created by Joseph Guarneri and Carlo Bergonzi.

In the art of coloring and applying varnish, Stradivari has been  considered good but not spectacular.  The myth of his superior and secret varnish formula still persists among laymen in spite of some evidence that all violin makers of Cremona were supplied with the same choice of varnish made by the local apothecary.  Some of his most famous violins, known by monikers such as "the Betts", "the Soil" and "the Cessol", still have plenty of a rich purple-brown plum colored varnish on them.  However, some of his varnishes were rather opaque and might have been deliberately rubbed away by restorers.  Suffice it to say, he did not become a legend because of his varnish.

Most people would say the sound has made the Stradivarius the gem that it is.  Undeniably, the very essence of the violin is its sound, but this ethereal commodity is too difficult to grasp.  Dealers can tell you it never enters into the arcane formula that determines the market value of fine old instruments.  Musicians, audiences and critics often profess their preference for a certain tone quality–a late period Amati, a mid-period Strad, or a late 'del Gesu'–but anecdotes abound on how easily they can be misled.  I have personally witnessed several amusing cases, one of them involving a concert of a famous string quartet whose players had just a year before switched from the customary mix of antique instruments to a matched set of four Strads.  Alerted to this rare occasion by the press and the program notes, many afficionados entered a state of nirvana induced by what they believed to be the most homogeneous fabric of string voices.  The intermission was buzzing with variations of oohs and aahs, and the newspaper critic also found it to be a once in a lifetime experience.  In reality, there was no matched set in play; two of the four Strads had been left at home for maintenance and replaced with other instruments.  Probably, only a few gifted listeners have the discernment to recognize individual string voices.  The ranking of fine violins is even more difficult, and it requires time for a consensus of expert opinions to develop.

Actually, scientific tools to describe and identify the intimate sound of a particular fine violin do exist, but, ironically, they are used more often to hearken for the messages of advanced civilizations from outer space, and to measure engine noise.  Despite the available technology, there is no rush from the price setters of the antique business to adopt such high-tech methods which would remove the evaluation of tone quality from the murky waters of subjective opinion.  Neither is there any demand by the clientele for changing the present practices.  Musical genius lives in the parallel universe of the intuitive right hemisphere of the brain, and it has understandably little need for a mass of objective information.  In a field where technical/scientific prowess is proudly eschewed, the advocacy of computer programs for appraising the quality of musical sound will be slow in catching on.  This generally conservative attitude favors the maintenance of the status-quo as much as the significant financial stakes involved.

The ability of Stradivari to maintain control over the defining aspect of his product, the tone quality, guaranteed his popularity with the leading violinists of all generations.  However, one can argue that Guarneri 'del Gesu' was even more focused on tone, and the more penetrating sound of his violins was actually favored by Paganini, the greatest 19th century virtuoso.  Perception of beauty in violin sound is very much in the ear of the beholder.  Beautiful sound alone does not explain the Stradivari supremacy.  It must be a combination of several factors, two of which come from the obvious dichotomy of the violin, as a visually pleasing object of art and a mechanical sounding device.  No other violin maker achieved such high level in both aspects as Stradivari.  His chief tonal rival, Joseph Guarneri, a. k. a. “del Gesu”, was a downright sloppy craftsman.

 It is also reasonable to assume that Stradivari had several advantages of a non-artistic nature which could have raised him into a dominant position even during his lifetime.  Being the heir to the great Amati tradition, as the best-ever student of Master Niccolo Amati, was a good beginning.  Setting a longevity record among violin makers was a good follow-up.  And there are the following factors to consider in the general area of production and business skills.

Stradivari was probably obsessed with his work and totally committed to the goal of becoming the most prolific maker of violins in history.  The numbers speak for themselves.  While the lifetime output of most violin makers remained under two hundred, and many of them had to practice an auxiliary trade, Stradivari flooded the market with twelve hundred new instruments.  This effectively eliminated the need for fine violin making for two generations during which time much know-how was lost.  In addition to being remarkably diligent, Stradivari was almost certainly a good organizer and innovator in several practical aspects of the violin business.  Relegating the trivial chores to others, spending his money on the best materials, and cultivating his relationships with clients and potential customers could have helped him outperform the typically introverted violin maker who insisted on a one-man operation.

The fact that Stradivari seemed to have maintained a substantial inventory of more or less finished violins also could have played a role.  The tone of brand new violins is never impressive, but if Stradivari took time to age his for a while, this could have given him an advantage when a critical buyer came to town to make his selection among all the shops of Cremona.  Stradivari could have offered the customers a choice in tone quality, power and color.  With a large stock, he was also in a position to satisfy the big buyers who were looking for the many instruments needed to equip whole string orchestras.  The Hills mention in their book that when the emissary of the Polish court arrived in Cremona to buy twelve new violins as soon as possible, Stradivari delivered them within ten weeks–next to no time as violin making goes.

However, the single most important factor assuring the lasting reputation for Antonio Stradivari may have been his marketing decision to cater to the very rich: the royal courts, dukes and counts, marquis and earls, archdukes and archbishops.  In a way, he reinvented the violin as an investment property.  The high price of his violins guaranteed that the owners would handle them carefully and maintain their investment in good condition.  His violins were rebuilt, modernized and probably improved by the greatest French masters, whose own acoustical concept has become an important ingredient in all of the present Strads.  The cheap fiddles bought and played by the itinerant fiddlers at county fairs got unavoidably abused, and many of these violins must have perished with time.  Certainly, an insufficient number of Carlo Bergonzi violins remained to spread his reputation beyond a small circle.  But given the starting position of the best possible pedigree for twelve hundred instruments, Stradivari had the critical number of advertising labels in the right hands to go around on their historical journey, from Milan to Paris, then from Paris to London, from London to New York, and more recently, of course, to the Far East.

Perhaps it was not just the money but rather a better life expectancy why Stradivari preferred the ownership of collectors over the professional players.  He must have noticed that some professional musicians consumed their violins faster than the hungriest woodworm in Milan.  Although the profile of Strad owners changed considerably after the heyday of royalty and aristocracy, the prestige of previous owners remained a lasting influence even as the bourgeois amateur player/collector made his presence known, followed by the ascent of the professional violin virtuoso.  Many famous virtuosi and violin pedagogues were also collectors and active participants in the trade of fine violins, a tradition which remains widespread in our day.  The Who's Who of the past great masters of the violin–Viotti, Ernst, Joachim, Sarasate, Elman, Szigeti, Oistrach and Milstein–reads like a list of endorsements for the Stradivarius violin whose aristocratic pedigree gained an added luster by their names.  The elegant playing style of these artists was better served by a Strad than by any other violin.  In this artistic symbiosis, the glory of these violinists also became the glory of the Strad and of Cremona.  The great stars  must take the lion's share of the credit for creating the Stradivarius mystique.  They were the ones who helped place Stradivari on a pedestal, provided much of the vocabulary of superlatives in his praise, and sent prices on their escalating track.

It is fitting that the Stradivarius was eventually discovered in the 1970's by business journals and recommended for investment purposes.  Since then, the prices have risen dramatically as the Strads have become a hot investment property for a new generation of collectors with no musical expertise.  The winning combination of visual perfection and tonal beauty is easy to sell, and the trade of the best antiques has become brisk and expansive.  One of the most skillful dealers, Bein & Fushi of Chicago, reported a volume of $17 million in 1992.  If the appraised values of Strads would indeed correspond to their commercial values, they may soon compete with French impressionist paintings.  A set of string quartet instruments decorated with inlayed designs, which have been donated to the Simthsonian by Dr. Herbert Axelrod, was appraised in London for $50 million. It was not surprising that Dr. Axelrod and his distingushed British and German appraisers had legal issues with the U.S. government.  Many Strads are donated, some are purchased for museums where they are placed in display cases, out of harm's way, and they are played only by a trusted few.  The survival and visibility and a limited audibility of the Strad will be secured for future generations.

With the interminable chain reaction of success, the legend also keeps growing: novels and poems are written and anecdotes are told.  The first big-impact story was that of Tarisio, one of the first violin collectors, who died as a poor man alone in a room crowded with dozens of the best Strads and many other Cremonas.  The oldest violin trade journal is even named The Strad, and seems to be dedicated to fostering a reverence for the master and his violins.  In our time and culture, the winner's share is disproportionally large, and the victory of this violin maker from Cremona is complete.  In a way, it is also a victory for the common man who works hard with his hands, well past his retirement age, to accomplish his goal.  Stradivari does not need to be compared to Newton and Einstein to be one of the most influential man in history. Even if we could prove that all his activities were ordinary, devoid of unusual intellectual accomplishment, no one can deny the effect of his legacy on our culture.  By becoming so dominant, he was responsible for setting the standard for the ideal violin tone, one with a certain oboe-like quality, which has been the favorite of all great orchestra conductors.  If Eugene Ormandy could have had his way, every violinist in the Philadelphia Orchestra would have played a Strad.

Unfortunately for them, musicians could not prevent the Strad from becoming an investment commodity, and classical violinists cannot normally compete with investment bankers and plastic surgeons at auctions.  Many of the great Strads, after being the trusty soul mates of noted artists for generations, have now re-asserted the meretricious dark side of their nature: a preference for a fancy display case over the skillful hands of a poor lover.

We are not there yet, but it can be anticipated: classical music without the Stradivarius.  As I watch superstar Itzhak Perlman on the Tonight Show or a PBS special playing his treasure, "The Soil" Strad (which was passed on to him by Menuhin in a welcome version of insider trading), I cannot help thinking that his lively spiccato is bouncing off a $5,000,000 property!  He is surely cognizant of this, and it is fortunate that, having reached such consummate mastery, he no longer needs grueling practice time. Can he afford to knock of a corner with his bow while being carried away by the passion of performance?  He and his few peers will always have a Stradivarius at their disposal, but they will have to control their artistic temper.

The gradual withdrawal of the Strads is definitely a welcome change to all the successors of Stradivari's trade who have lived in a love-hate relationship with the legend.  Without Stradivari, the violin making profession may have had a social prestige just a little above the shoemaker, as it was once in Venice where Gobetti, a contemporary competitor of Stradivari, also dabbled in shoemaking. 

In the afterglow of the Great Master's trail and basking in his glory, modern violin makers look at his achievement with awe and envy, fully realizing that craftsmen of our age will never reach the same global recognition.  The makers who wish for their masterpieces to survive into the 22nd century will remember that creating the finest violins at a low price is contrary to Stradivari's chief legacy.  Also, it is better to sell violins to collectors with soft-ware fortunes, like Dr. Robert Fulton, than to players who wear them down.  For the time being, the best fakes and the authentic looking copies are the ones which attract the investors and amateurs who pay the highest prices and hope for the immature sound to ripen in a few generations.  The makers of the finest sounding new violins will also have a new kind of satisfaction.  With the genuine antique instruments rapidly disappearing into bank vaults, after centuries of rejection, the best makers of new violins have begun to appear in the concert halls and on recordings of a few elite players.  One can empathize with them and wish them success in convincing the musical community that the best new violins can be as admirable as fine Strads.  At least a few of them are on the right track now by recognizing that establishing a close collaboration with a good chemistry laboratory and material science is essential to their ultimate success. As of now the search for the Holy Grail and the magic potion still goes on.

Part II. The Intrigue begets intrigues and controversies

The above detailed iconoclastic views of a scientist are clearly contrary to the orthodoxy of the violin tradition and bound to rankle the people who consider themselves experts in the field. Scientists are a cheeky and irreverent breed, and their mission is to challenge the old dogmas whenever they find them poorly supported. Scientific truth is not a product of democracy; someone is right, and everyone else can be wrong. A case in point is Albert Einstein, who brought on himself the wrath of the establishment for his grave insult to the Newtonian worldview. There is an axiom, wonderfully expressed by Jonathan Swift, about what an iconoclast can expect: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." Of course I do not put myself in that category, but the extent and uniformity of the attacks on my theories, the actual research and my person are surprising. If there has been any violin maker who appreciated that finally a qualified scientist joined the quest for the Holy Grail of the Cremonese, I am not aware of it. I first got wind that something was wrong in the early 80's when several potential customers notified me that they were warned not to touch my instruments, which had been made by unsanitary means, lest they may contract Legionair's Disease! Owners of Strads who were generally more than happy to see me began to turn me down, and one of them confided to me that he was warned not to let me close because I may deftly and surreptitiously cut off a sample for analysis. With the advent of the internet and the blogosphere, the attacks have become more open, ad hominem and unqualified, in stark contrast to the support given to me by the American Chemical Society at its highest level.  

As a scientist, I am accustomed to examine the merits of arguments and objections, and hope my readers will do the same. Admittedly, in expressing my personal opinions on the antique violins I left the solid ground of experimental science and entered an arena of opinions and conjectures. Since the persuasiveness of opinions depends much on the expertise of those who pronounce them, at this point it is necessary to consider briefly the expertise of the people whose activities are connected to the making and trading of the top level violins, and juxtapose it with own qualifications.

Let's begin with the appraisers and authenticators of the antique violins who are affiliated with the main auction houses and dealerships. They can recognize visually not only all Strads and Guarneris but also a couple of thousands of other antique instruments. This is an essential and impressive knowledge and skill, but all this is not germaine to my arguments which concern the actual methods and materials of construction.

Restorers know much more than most others in the violin business. They have gained the best insight by examining many Strads both inside and outside; they repaired the cracks by meticulous efforts. They shave off some old wood, and glue on new patch-wood. They have a chance to observe the tonal changes before and after such manipulations. S.F. Sacconi who was for long associated with the firm of Wurlitzer was one of the most respected restorers, and his opinions carry more weight than others. He was the best of a very small club of the elite few who were privileged to undertake surgical operations on such precious objects.

Then we have thousands of violinmakers of the present and the past who have put to use all the ingenuity they acquired during the years of long and arduous training. In the past, they learned from older masters during years of apprenticeships, but more recently the sources of standard knowledge were the schools of violinmaking. The best of them know an impressive mass of information, and are able to make fine violins that are well balanced and often louder than the old Cremona violins. Most of them make better looking violins than the celebrated late instruments of Guarneri del Gesu. However, their violins still lack the refinement of the old ones which is perceived by the player but not necessarily by the audience. In my opinion, modern makers know almost as much as Stradivari, but they haven't got the materials right. They are trying to make apple pies using the wrong spices.

There is another type of traditional expert whom good players hold in high regard, the person who can adjust their violins to their best potential. Rene Morel of New York is a prime example of this kind of expertise that requires an exceptional understanding of how the violin works in addition to a great refinement of hearing. However, Mr. Morel is not known as a maker of new violins.

Finally, one should not ignore the many scholars of the various acoustical societies who have done research on various aspects of the violin. Many of them have chosen the respectable reductionist method of science which is not known for expediency. For example, after 200 years of tuning of the free plates, there is still no agreement as to the best method. I was not interested in their type of scholarly work that progressed at a snail's pace. I concluded more than 40 years ago that the only missing expertise in the area of violin research is the knowledge of a good chemist.

Few people realize that there was once an important relationship between a successful violinmaker and a chemist's laboratory because the contribution of the chemist remained unacknowledged. Considering the lack of respect he could have been a forebear of Rodney Dangerfield. The same issue arose again when the most significant work pertaining to Stradivari was published by the above mentioned Italian violinmaker and Stradivari violin restorer S.F. Sacconi in 1972.

Sacconi's book, translated to English six years later by Andrew Dipper, had the title The 'Secrets' of Stradivari. As suggested by its title, it was dedicated to the proposition that Stradivari himself had no personal secrets in his violinmaking, and all the methodology was communal property among the craftsmen of the city, Cremona. This may be indeed true, but it does not mean that the makers of the following ages have also become the repositories of the ancient Cremona knowledge. What makes Sacconi's ghost-written book, at least in my opinion, the most pivotal publication in the history of violin literature was the discovery concerning the ground, a.k.a. the wood-fillers, in the instruments of Stradivari and his colleagues. Earlier researchers, like J. Michelman in the late 1940s, reported the presence of small amonts of mineral elements in the Italian varnish, but these were still considered minor contaminants by Robert Fryxell, the Catgut Acoustical Society expert. Sacconi claimed that the ground was made up of massive amounts of minerals.

The main merit of Sacconi–who as a restorer of Strads had at his disposal a considerable amount of material specimens–was his wisdom of submitting such samples to chemical analysis. Unfortunately, he did not appreciate the fact that the value and credibility of the obtained results would be greatly reduced by not identifying the professional chemist, the laboratory and the methods of the analysis. So we have only Sacconi's word for it that the ground was made up of compounds of the elements potassium, silica and calcium. He and his followers then came up with the interpretation of the analytical results assuming that the makers of Cremona used potassium silicate as wood-filler, a highly caustic material, the use of which in subsequent years sent many instruments to their doom. To his eternal credit, Sacconi set the wheels of progress in motion, but his claims begged for verification.

I first became intrigued by the art of Italian violinmaking while I was a graduate student of the Swiss chemistry Nobel Laureate Paul Karrer in Zurich. My neighbor in Zurich was Amos Segesser, a violinmaker who believed intuitively that the distinction of the great masters work was due to material differences, something being in their wood and varnishes. Parts of my summer vacations in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Northern Italy were spent looking for historical information pertaining to wood treatment. Having heard anecdotal accounts of woodworm damage in Milan but much less in Venice and Cremona, I came back with the conclusion that the historical wood preservatives could be the key Segesser was looking for. Herr Segesser then commenced a wild series of daring experimentations in wood treatment and varnish studies that were destined to remain inconclusive due to his tragic death in an accident. I always felt that I should take up his mantle and the cause he left unfinished.

My opportunity to do research on violins arose in 1973 when Texas A&M University promoted me to full professorship with tenure. Such an appointment carried with itself the liberty of being able to pursue any subject without being fired, the academic freedom we cherish highly. I started taking on research projects that had something to do with human health and nutrition but also related to wood treatment. The ideal material was chitosan, which was prepared from shrimp shells and insect chitin, the strongest biological fiber. It lowered cholestrol in animals, reduced jaundice (I even have a patent for that), but also added stiffness to the wood.

I began soaking wood first following the customs of Swiss wood sculptors, using a variety of biological solutions, like fermenting grape juice and wine-mud. I hired a number of very talented craftsmen to carve my wood into violins, some of them well established makers like Stefano Conia and Marcello Villa of Cremona, some still students of Peter Prier in Salt Lake City. No violin-making school at that time had any routine involving such pretreatments of wood, and Peter Prier was interested in the outcome. He certainly signaled this by assigning some of his best students to craft the violins for my program. Among these I remember the names Benjamin Ruth and Sam Zygmuntowitz who later rose to the top of their profession. We also used a large number of machine-made violins. The first five years of this research yielded one remarkable insight: the skill and reputation of the maker played no role if the dimensions and archings of the violin were kept constant; the type of wood treatment and the quality of the fillers played the primary, most redeeming role. Some of the violins carved by a milling machine (CAD-CAM operation) turned out to be among the best.

Of course, I was aware of the activities and voluminous publications of the Catgut Acoustical Society, which I considered meritorious if you wanted to understand how the violin vibrates but only of marginal value towards the goal of finding the Holy Grail every maker was looking for. The CAS authors spent too much time with elaborating the elementary problems, like plate tuning and positioning the air-resonance. Smarter people than Stradivari have been carving and  tuning plates for over two hundred years to no avail. I became aware of Sacconi's book only in 1978, and struggled for years to understand the Italian text, but  once I got it done, it was a revelation. It fit well into my chemical paradigm of manufacturing priorities.

What I needed was authentic samples and funds to carry out research to determine what was different in the old wood and varnish. Common academic experience has taught me well how to initiate research programs and acquire research grants. For my work on cancer drugs I applied to the National Cancer Institute, or American Cancer Society, for the origin of life project I applied to NASA, for nucleic acids work I went to the National Science Foundation, for cholesterol studies I applied to The Egg Board. So it was logical that I should reach out to the constituencies of the violin world, describe my promising theories and offer my expertise to do research on their behalf. I gave three lectures to the Violin Society of America conventions in 1978, 1980, and 1982, which appeared in printed form in their Journal with my pleas. However, the response of the makers, dealers and restorers was nothing but negative: there were no samples and no funds forthcoming. Over the years, the initial benign neglect of the traditional violin business has turned into downright hostility once my results kept coming in and the message has sunk in. The slow progress in elucidating the methodologies underlying the production of the old Cremona violins must be viewed against the fact that all entities of the Byzantine violin business are unwelcoming to those who disturb their turf.

Since receiving due credits is important to both artists and scientists, let me reiterate the fact that I was not the first person to assign the excellence of the Stradivarius to material properties. Beside many unidentified earlier makers, the Hill brothers who saw more Strads and Guarneris than anyone else wrote in their book that the key was to be found in the finish. I was only the first to provide a more compelling scientific explanation why wood treatment and a very hard filler could be important. My chemical paradigm proved to be a rewarding working hypothesis. Theories can be powerful; they can stimulate new research approaches.

My first highly effective filler was chitosan, which as mentioned above was prepared from shrimp shell chitin, and it was used in many violins from 1976 till 1984. I lectured widely about it on lecture tours for the American Chemical Society, and also published a paper in the J. Violin Society. I clearly specified it as my own invention, which was viewed as a patentable invention. Why writers then began to write sensational stories published worldwide about a Texas scientist claiming that chitin was the secret of Stradivari is beyond my comprehension. One must assume that writers cannot understand even the watered down popular science presentations.

The first authentic precious sample was contributed  to our cause in 1980 by Paul Katz whose Andrea Guarneri cello, like many 17th century celli, had been reduced in size. He is the only person I could give acknowledgment for his generous contribution; the others prefer to remain anonymous for fear of undesirable repercussions. The first results of the Guarneri analysis were reported at the 1982 convention of the Violin Soc. America. By employing for the first time the state-of-the art method of EDX analysis, we could show that the wood filler consisted mainly of potassium, silica and calcium, like Sacconi's samples. However, we could not see any potassium silicate compound in the wood or varnish.

In the mid 1980s my persistent pleas for samples finally brought some fruits: we received wood and varnish from instruments of F. Ruggeri, Stradivari, and Domenico Busan of Venice; also wood of Guarneri del Gesu and J.B. Guadagnini. What was once only suspected has become now clear: the low layers of the finish both in Cremona and Venice were microcomposites:  mineral particles in tight packing with an organic binder between them. In addition to this, the middle layers of the glorious Stradivari varnish also had the appearance of a nanocomposite. This was a truly sensational finding, since nanocomposites were believed to be space-age inventions. Their use 300 years ago in a provincial city by craftsmen was mind-boggling. We put our hearts and minds into analyzing these precious samples with my colleague Jim Ehrman. We separated painstakingly over 200 individual particles and identified them first  by their elements via fluorescence (EDX) and then by visual morphology in the scanning electron microscope. We identified 22 major and minor constituents of the microcomposite low layer–a major milestone in the history of scholarly violin research.

Who was responsible for producing the extremely fine particles seen in the classical violins? The manufacturing of nanoparticles is not easy even with modern means; it almost certainly called for the specialized expertise of a local chemist in Cremona. Historical evidence attributed to Victor Grivel in France is in full accord with my assumption: all violinmakers of Cremona, including Stradivari had their varnishes prepared for them by the local drug store.

How and where do you publish a discovery of such broad interest? Like any scientist who has made a major discovery we had two urgent concerns: to place it as soon as possible into the public domain, and to secure full scientific credit for the discovery. The first concern would be best served by a call to the New York Times, and the news would then go around the world in one day. Going to the New York Times is safe if the intention is merely establishing the claim of priority, while publishing in a leading science journal like Nature is more prestigeous for an academic. However, attempts to publish in scientific journals is not without pitfalls. Scientific journals screen the submitted manuscripts by means of peer review that relies on anonymous referees, and the system works well most of the time. In the case of major discoveries, there is always the danger that an unscrupulous reviewer would block the publication and pass on the confidential information to his acquaintances who may then claim independent discoveries.  We weighed our options, and we decided to take the risk. After making a preliminary inquiry to the office of Nature on Jan. 20, 1987, we received the invitation by an editor to go ahead.  So on April 9, 1987 we submitted a manuscript on the wood and varnish of Cremona instruments. Writers on esoteric topics are told to nominate suitable expert referees. Since Nature had no past experience with the violin, we suggested J. Woodhouse and M.E. McIntyre of Cambridge University as referees concerning the significance of our discoveries. This Cambridge duo was known as authors of several theoretical acoustical papers on the violin. They never did any material analysis before and were thus considered no competitors.

The manuscript was reviewed in due course by a technical referee and a violin expert for scientific merits, novelty and significance. The real expert of the methodology found nothing objectionable but would have liked to see more violins analyzed–a very natural expectation. Surprisingly, it was the violin expert who gave a list of objections–a few of them justified– and recommendations to do more work. What was most disappointing that he rated our work to be of marginal significance. The editor suggested that we do some of the improvements and resubmit a new version in the future. This caused a delay of three months.

Eventually, we submitted the updated version which omitted the less well supported claims on the wood, the main subjects of criticism by the referee, and contained the bare minimum of unassailable results on the microcomposite and nanocomposite analysis. We received only one review of this second version by the violin expert, whom we assumed to be indeed Dr. J. Woodhouse based on his idiosyncratic style of writing. The editor of Nature obviously acceded to our request to have him as one of the referees. (It is doubtful that Woodhouse was aware of our request.) He  found the work "unexceptionable" but not important enough for Nature.

I was gasping in disbelief on reading the critique of my self-chosen and trusted reviewer. The discovery of microcomposites, the first ever report on a historical nanocomposite, the first identification of specific mineral components in old Italian violins–who would not recognize their significance and why? This was about the strangest review I have ever seen in my life as a published author. In an attempt to reduce the significance of our work, the referee alluded to ongoing similar work being currently done elsewhere by Fulton in the USA, by White in London, an unidentified violinmaker and material scientists in Cambridge, and he berated us for being unaware of them. In fact, authors have never been made responsible to quote the incomplete and unpublished work of others. One should recall the most important letter ever published by Nature in 1953, the one by Watson and Crick on the structure of DNA, who gave no reference to Roslind Franklin, although they had a chance to examine her confidential data, nor to Linus Pauling who was working on the same subject. It was difficult for me not to assume that sinister forces wished to delay our publication indefinitely. We asked for a new referee, but the appeal was to no avail. Not only did we lose more than one year in the futile process, we could expect a publication on the same topic to come out any time.

The first shoe dropped in February 1988 when a one-page report appeared in Nature (Vol. 332, p.313) by C.Y. Barlow, P.P. Edwards, G.R. Millward, R.A. Raphael and D.J. Rubio. It contained data of only one Stradivarius cello: elemental analysis by EDX of varnish and the ground, which was compared to one sample of Pozzolana ash. The declared aim of the report was to verify or refute the hypothesis of J. Chipura made four years earlier that for the ground (wood filler) of his instruments Stradivari could have used pozzolana cement. It took five authors to produce a minor effort, which would take only one day to carry out. They did not identify the actual minerals; only offered EDX spectra of the elements contained in the mixture. They concluded that Chipura was wrong, but the results were compatible with the presence of Pozzolana ash itself.  This conclusion remained tenuous and unconvincing since Pozzolana ash varies a great deal according to location. Naturally, I had to ask the editor of Nature why a smaller work than ours was deemed good enough to appear in Nature. The surprising response was that the letter of Barlow et al. was an unrefereed priviledged communication. So it got in through the backdoor somehow via special connections of the numerous coauthors.

Needless to say I was dismayed, nay, nonplussed by these developments that our worst fears have come true. I went with a complaint to the American Chemical Society, my own association whose past president Dr. Ellis K. Fields was a great supporter of our work. He was fully aware of the significance of our discovery. Colleagues of mine also pointed out that the dates and letters of submission of our manuscripts to Nature would serve to establish our claim of priority. Soon I received the offer to get a review article published promptly in the Chemical & Engineering News, the membership journal of the American Chemical Society, where it appeared on May 23, 1988. Simultaneously, the German science journal Die Naturwissenschaften also offered an accelerated reviewing process for publishing the identification of 22 minerals in the Italian composites. We also took advantage of this opportunity, and our work appeared in the same year.

My protestations and rumors of foul play must have eventually reached Cambridge causing some discomfort there. The most distinguished of the five authors, Professor Ralph A. Raphael, even took the extraordinary trouble of journeying to College Station, Texas to clear the air over dinner and red wine. He insisted that their project was independently conceived earlier. I don't doubt this, knowing well that scientists conceive many projects, but then also fail to act on them for awhile. I am a great believer in miracles and coincidences but not in this context. Our work and results were only known to very few confidants besides the reviewers of our rejected manuscripts. It was therefore an unavoidable supposition that those in the know in Cambridge tipped off an eager team of competitors and spurred them into action to put out something very quickly on the subject matter of the old Cremona ground. The timing was most revealing. My acquaintences in Cambridge, among them a postdoctoral fellow of engineering at that time, informed me of a sudden activity on the analysis of Italian varnishes during the fall of 1987. 

The second shoe dropped later but it came as no surprise. C. Y. Barlow and now J. Woodhouse himself in collaboration began publishing  more work on Italian varnish samples, but in journals of no scientific prestige and real peer scrutiny. Being a partner in this research has further solidified my opinion that J. Woodhouse should have not accepted the task of reviewing our manuscript. Normally, a person of integrity would recuse himself from being on the jury if there is the slightest conflict of interest. It is interesting to note that Fulton and White, who according to Woodhouse's review were also conducting similar research, have not published any relevant material. There was a regrettable conclusion to this entire affair: I have learned my lesson and for the following 18 years would not submit anything to journals who relied on peer review by anonymous referees.

I continued with my annual lecture tours which took me in all continental states, and presented new data from my research to scientists from chemistry and physics departments. Magazines, among them The Smithsonian, also continued publishing sensational distortions of my own accounts, often putting fighting words in my mouth. In the early 1990s, we obtained again some spectacular results in  analyzing the 12 layers of a glorious Stradivari varnish sample. On one occasion following a lecture, a violinmaker suggested that I should present this material also to the Violin Society convention. It made sense, and I wrote an offer to the president of the VSA, Hans Thusig. A few weeks later I received a curt letter of rejection from a certain Philip Kass, pointing out that they have a waiting line of good speakers. To use a Wimbledon metaphor, my good service was slapped back with a resolute backhand to the body. That was about the last time I had the urge to tell anything to violinmakers.

After I retired from Texas A&M University in 2003, I became mainly concerned with the production of top-quality violins, but there was one more great research project to complete that would aaaanswer the question: was Stradivari's wood chemically treated? For the best possible scientific analysis of Stradivari and Guarneri maple wood samples I managed to assemble a world-class team. A colleague from my Cambridge postdoctoral years, Dr. Noel Owen of Brigham Young University joined me to perform the FTIR analysis of the wood, an area where he is the leading authority. Dr. Joseph DiVerdi of Colorado State University took on the task of performing the solid-state NMR studies in the department that pioneered this method for wood analysis. Dennis Tolley, the statistics professor of BYU applied his most sophisticated methods to analyzing our data. The results were dramatic and undisputable, but where would we publish this important work? Its significance called once again for Nature. Would lightning strike twice? I had to find out. So we submitted our brief communication to Nature, but with the request to exclude all violin experts, and specifically those in Cambridge. The response was gratifying, and our paper appeared towards the end of 2006.

Other violinmakers often expressed their displeasure by the amount of publicity garnered by our research, which was supposedly engineered by myself. The truth is, if you make a shocking discovery like the one we reported in Nature, you can't keep the press and all media away from your door or telephone. We showed that the wood of a Stradivari violin and a Guarneri del Gesu, both superior instruments, but not a French and an English contemporary instrument, were brutally treated with chemicals causing extensive damage. This contradicts everything assumed by everybody in the field that the wood had to be the stiffest possible. (We did not publish our interpretation of what could have caused the observed changes because it would have caused protracted arguments with the referees. I have only my own educated guesses which I prefer to keep to myself until I can get more samples to analyze, i.e., I would find the community of violinmakers and dealers more cooperative.)

My long involvement with the exploration of the old Italian violins produced a few breakthrough results which give me a sense of satisfaction. When I began my studies, only a very few people believed that the treatment of the wood and composition of the varnish would be worthwhile subjects for serious studies. We were first to prove that the old Italian varnish had a sophisticated layered structure of microcomposites and nanocomposites, whose discovery was rewarded by a gold medal of the Japanese Physics Society in 2005 on the stage of the Einstein Centennial celebration of World Year of Physics. The last discovery of 2006 was of equal significance, and it should stimulate even more work by others both in the lab and in the workshop. Any good theoretician would understand that the two distinctions of Stradivari's wood and varnish must have acoustical consequences.

My readers should easily understand why my conclusions represent such an affront to the hubris of the violinmaking professionals, and why they react so negatively. I was forewarned by several colleagues to expect a response predicted by Jonathan Swift from "the confederacy of dunces".  Having immensely enjoyed the Pulitzer-winning novel of John Kennedy Toole, "A Confederacy of Dunces", I was certainly aware of the consequences if someone rubs the misoneists of the violin world the wrong way. However, there is no pleasing way of stating it. The violins of all those makers whose wood was not properly treated and had not been filled with the microcomposite filler will never turn out to sound like a Stradivarius. Such treatments are a sine-qua-non of the ancient methodology.

The complications of the Cremona finish and the alterations of the wood also lead to a corollary, the assumption of a shadowy person behind the oversized stature of Stradivari. Those great violins are the depositories of very sophisticated chemical methods which were well above the level what violinmakers would normally do. They are unique monuments to both the intended outcome of beautiful music and to the tricky chemical operations of a chemist/druggist. It is reasonable to assume that luthiers 300 years ago were as far from state-of the-art chemistry as they are in our days. It always took a long time investment and dedication to become an authority in chemistry.(How many violinmakers now would pass a freshman course in chemistry?) To the extent that the wood treatment, obviously done for reasons of preservation, and the composite technology of the 17th-18th century had acoustical benefits, some of the credit for those magnificent musical instruments should be properly attributed to the local chemist in Cremona.  This explanation is consistent with the fact that almost everyone in Cremona made great violins. The best Bergonzi can compete with the best Stradivaris in acoustical merits. The ugliest late del Gesu has the best tone of them all. I say there is still a secret in their chemistry.

Based on these considerations of preservative technologies, I have also provided an appealing theory why the art of violinmaking, more specifically, the fruits of its labor declined after the death of the great threesome (I included Guadagnini, who moved away from Cremona to better markets). Perhaps neither the chemist nor the violinmakers were aware of the acoustical role played by the peculiar local practice of wood preservation. It was not among the lessons they would pass on to the following generation of violinmakers. Then changes happened, and many changes happen to be for the worse. Rivers were dammed, the wood was no longer soaked and preserved. Violins were made ever faster as expendable products. Ironically, we are the first generation with a real chance to finally understand what makes the Strad great. Even if he were alive today, Stradivari could not tell us. But he would acknowledge a close and friendly business relationship with his local drug store, whose personnel was the last source of the required knowledge. This is of course only a theory, but a more consistent one than those based on divine inspiration, a cosmic zeitgeist, or even the little ice-age effect. (The latter one fails to explain why the Germans and the French luthiers using the same wood as the Cremonese made inferior products.) The romantics of the musical community would find my theory understandably sacrilegious, but we are united in one thing, the admiration for those true treasures of musical instruments.

I am second to none in my admiration of all violins by Antonio Stradivari, as they shine like gemstones, with the patina of many seasons. I like the early ones, all made by his own two hands. I like the late ones whose imperfections betrayed not only the failing eyesight of Antonio, but even those of his aging sons. I wish I could owe just one of those, which I perhaps could have, have I not wasted my time unwisely chasing their mysteries instead of developing best-selling softwares, like Dr. Robert Fulton, the famous collector. I love them for the same reasons others do, but this beholder of their beauty also sees in them the highest monuments of renaissance chemistry. I regret not being able to afford their ever steeper price tag, but I am not a critic of the antique violin business. If anything, I am one of the culprits who contributed to driving up the prices by generating waves of Stradivari related publicity. The sure sign of my devotion to the Great Masters is that I don't try to trump their achievement by developing other materials. This was the reason I abondonned the use of chitosan, and concentrated only on historical materials. I  consider the recent efforts of focusing on new materials nothing but a cop-out by those who tried and failed in reaching the standards of excellence set by Stradivari and Guarneri.

Soon all those who care will realize that modern material science is the key to understanding the most coveted sound ever created by man,  however unwittingly, a golden period Strad and the late del Gesu sound. The best violinmakers of course already know this. The dramatic improvement of violins made in the last 25 years was possible due to the silent adoptation of the methods recommended by scientists who, unlike the anonymous chemist of Cremona, expect a fair share of the credit. The intrigue of the Stradivarius has morphed into more intrigues, but the future of violinmaking looks bright.

Yet it is doubtful that any contemporary craftsman will ever achieve the exalted status of Stradivari and Guarneri, no matter how good is his product.  No new instrument, however perfect, can transmit the sense of history, the perceived magic imbued in the Strad by the touch, sweat and tears of Paganini and others, which can be so electrifying to the present performer and collector.  The physical and material aspects may be reproduced, but as long as classical music survives–and perhaps beyond–there will always remain something intangible: the mystique of the Stradivarius.