The Glorious Stradivari Revolution
Antonio Stradivari, a man known by many as on of the greatest luthiers of all time. The question at hand is why? From as early as the early 1700’s Stradivari was well known in the music world and still is. His instruments are reproduced in order to fool consumers into buying an instrument that has the same design as a Strad. There are also luthiers that try to replicate Stradivari’s beautiful design for their own satisfaction. Antonio Stradivari’s instruments have become socially and technically popular over time due to his superior craftsmanship, and for others, its large price tag. Stradivari’s life, affecting how his instruments were made, changed the perception of his instruments technically and socially.
Antonio Stradivari was born in Bergamo Italy 1644. In his youth he lived in Cremona Italy, where he became the apprentice of Nicolo Amati. He had married twice, once in 1667 with a woman named Francesca, whom he had six children with. His first son only lived for six days. The rest later became priests, and apprentices of their father. Francesca then died in 1698. Soon after Stradivari remarried in 1699 to a woman named Antonia. Antonia and Stradivari had four children. Two of which had died. Stradivari bought a home in Piazza Roma; this is where Stradivari carried out his work as a luthier, with his sons at his side as apprentices. In 1737 Stradivari had died and was buried in the church of San Domenico in Cremona where his family had originated.
A luthier is defined as a creator and maker of stringed instruments. Stradivari’s main focus was perfecting violins, but would often branch into violas and cellos which are much more rare to find today. Through his life ...
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... The shaping of the instrument was done in much finer detail unparalleled to any maker at the time. Stradivari’s varnish was always a question of mystery that for the longest time was un-answered. “…Stradivarius owes much of his reputation for genius to the ness of the Northern Italian town of Cremona were he worked” (Stradivari and the Bees, Henley 11). A German engineer was the one who discovered this mystery, soon after he tried to mass-produce this varnish but failed.
There are many ways scientists have experimented on Stradivari’s instruments. One way and the most common is through CT scans and resonance tests. The purpose of CT scans is to determine all of the shaping that Stradivari had done. CT scans measure density, thickness, shape, etc. Resonance tests are performed on the Strads to test the spectrum capacities between his violins and others.
Antonio Stradivari, the most famous violin-maker in all the human world, was a favorite of both the god of Delos, the fair Apollo, and of the trickster god, Hermes. His creations sang with the lilt of dance and with the song of birds; many of the Olympians would stop their affairs to listen for even a hint of Stradivari's sound. In short time, it came to be that both Apollo and Hermes would covet a violin from the luthier and both came down in their human forms one day to make their request of him.
Michelangelo was born in Caprese, Italy on March 6th 1475. His family was politically prominent as his family had large land property. His father was a banker and was looking to his son to engage in his businesses. As a young boy, he has ambitions of becoming a sculptor, but his father was very discouraging of this. He wanted his son to live up to the family name and take up his father’s businesses. Michelangelo became friends with Francesco Granacci, who introduced him to Domenico Ghirlandio(biography.com). Michelangelo and his father got into a series of arguments until eventually they arranged for him to study under Ghirlandaio at the age of thirteen. Ghirlandaio watched Michelangelo work and recognized his talent for the art and recommended him into an apprenticeship for the Medici family palace studio after only one year of at the workshop. The Medici’s were very rich from making the finest cloths. Lorenzo, which was one of the most famous of the family had a soft side for art and is credited for helping the Italian Renaissance become a time of illustrious art and sculpting. At ...
Smith, Douglas Alton. A History of the Lute from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Massechusetts: The Lute Society of America, Inc., 2002.
Michelangelo Di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born on March 6, 1475, in Caprese, Italy. He was born to a family of moderate meaning the banking business, his family had for several generation been small – scale bankers in Florence however his father, Lodovico Di Leonardo Di Buonarroti Di Simoni, failed to maintain its status, and held occasional government jobs. Although Michelangelo always considered himself a Florentine, Michelangelo lived most of his life in Rome, where he died in February 18, 1564, Papal States, at age 88.
Since Beethoven was seen as such an influential composer, many sought to compose music similar to that of Beethoven and the other masters who had set the stage for classical music. Yet they could not be too similar to Beethoven and had to have uniqueness in their compositions. As Burkholder explains, composers that followed the musical canon, “...distinguished from their lesser contemporaries by their level of craftsmanship, by the strength of their musical personality, and by an ineffable quality of ‘inspiration,’ ‘beauty,’ or ‘truth’.(Burkholder 120). The craftsmanship can be interpreted as the way they created their compositions in a great way such as the main inspirers of these young composers did. The craftsmanship had to of course to make it an impact, like pieces in any museum, they have to show skill and express the quality of their design. Their strength in musical personality had to show their uniqueness and style they imposed when composing music, to the point where they could be distinguished through their compositions. This strength in personality had to pop out while still following and showing their inspiration, which was the most important quality, to that of the masters of classical music. The inspiration was a key factor that lead to the rise of the musical
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Antonio Vivaldi was born on March 4th, 1678, in Venice, Italy, and died on July 28, 1741, in Vienna, Austria. His father, a barber and a talented violinist at Saint Mark's Cathedral himself, had helped him in trying a career in music and made him enter the Cappella di San Marco orchestra, where he was an appreciated violinist.
To start, Léon Theremin, originally known as, Lev Sergeyevich Termen, was a very influential Russian inventor throughout human history. He is most popular for his invention of the Theremin, one of the very first electronic musical instruments ever made. In addition, Léon Theremin is the inventor of a plethora of other inventions, some including the burglar alarm, the Great Seal bug, and the Terpsitone. There are innumerable interesting things that can be said about this innovative person. Without him, society wouldn’t experience, or enjoy the things we have, the same. This research will discuss Léon Theremin’s biography, his contributions to music, and his countless inventions that benefited, and improved society on a global scale.
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was a favourite of the French audience and his work La Serva padrona placed the composer at the heart of this dispute (Walker, 2013). Pergolesi’s favouritism is su...
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It is clear that Beethoven’s stands as being significant in development of the string quartet to a massive extent in creativity and innovation. His early quartets show great influence of those from the Classical period and with his own, has influenced his contemporaries and later composers. The quartets published later in his life show even greater imagination and use of expression. It is also through similar uses of texture, harmony, rhythm and counterpoint that composers of the Romantic period and the 20th century wrote their own string quartets. Beethoven’s however prove a huge advancement in how string quartets are written and the intensity of emotions that they portray.
Stradivarius violins in their time were unique compared to other violins with Stradivari presenting his originality in their construction, through more exact mea...
A violin can be compared to a puzzle. Each piece of the puzzle has a unique role in the outcome of the picture, or in this case, the overall sound. The pieces are brought together by both the violin's maker and its player. Just like a puzzle, different persons, when given the same pieces probably will not put them in the same order. This fact accounts for the differences in the designs of master violinmakers and the tonal differences between players. To quote Joseph Wechsberg, " The tone is of course created by the violinist . . . the same violin played by several violinists sounds different in the hands of each player," (45). In spite of the different interpretations of where the pieces should go, if any piece of the puzzle is missing or deformed, the puzzle won't fit together correctly. In order to determine whether or not the pieces are correctly assembled, it is necessary to understand the pieces and their functions.
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