Accidental Blogger

Here is another one of those science/art stories which will raise my co-blogger Dean’s hackles.

"A starter violin costs about $200. A finely crafted modern instrument can run as much as $20,000. But even that’s loose change when compared with a violin made three centuries ago by Antonio Stradivari.  His 600 or so surviving violins can cost upward of $3.5 million.

For more than a century, artists, craftsmen and scientists have sought the secret to the prized instruments’ distinct sound. Dozens have claimed to have solved the mystery, but none has been proved right.

Now, a Texas biochemist, Joseph Nagyvary, says he has scientific proof the long-sought secret is chemistry, not craftsmanship. Specifically, he says, Stradivari treated his violins with chemicals to protect them from wood-eating worms common in northern Italy. Unknowingly, Nagyvary says, the master craftsman gave his violins a chemical noise filter that provided a unique, pleasing sound.

"We now have the solution beyond a doubt," Nagyvary said. "The wood was chemically treated, brutally so. An unintended consequence from these chemicals was a sound like no other."

Nagyvary, a professor emeritus at Texas A&M University, has pursued an answer to the Stradivarius mystery for more than 30 years. He is no stranger to controversy: Many violin makers question his conclusions, which were published last month in Nature, a prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal.

"I consider this to be an important discovery," said Attila Pavlath, a past president of the American Chemical Society and a chemist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "From a scientific standpoint, his research methods and results are sound."

Some nonscientists remain unconvinced, however.

Violin makers generally take a dim view of those who claim to have discovered Stradivari’s secret, said Christopher Germain, president of the American Federation of Violin and Bow Makers.

That’s because there’s not one single secret behind a Stradivari violin, Germain says, but hundreds. Consider, he says, the scientist who discovers the exact chemical formulation of the paints used by Michelangelo. Does that mean, therefore, that the scientist now can re-create the Sistine Chapel?

"The reason that Stradivari’s violins are so revered is that he was a genius," says Germain, a Philadelphia-based violin maker. "Science can help us with some questions, but science and art do not always overlap."

Another violin maker, Joseph Regh of Wappingers Falls, N.Y., was more blunt in his assessment of Nagyvary.

"He’s a self-appointed entrepreneur who uses headlines to his own personal advantage," said Regh, vice president of the Violin Society of America. "He just doesn’t have a very good reputation in the circles of violin makers. I would say that the probability he is right is about 1 percent."

Regh said Nagyvary stands to profit by promoting his science. In his retirement the biochemist also runs a business that manufactures violins that he says produce Stradivarius-like sound.

Nagyvary acknowledges the controversy between himself and some violin makers, but said his molecular research has allowed him to craft instruments that equal the sound quality of Stradivarius violins.

In August, 2003, a German company making a documentary on Antonio Stradivari, MiraMedia, organized a concert at which 600 people judged one of Nagyvary’s violins against that of a 1725 Stradivarius nicknamed "Da Vinci." Navygary’s violin edged the Stradivarius in the minds and votes of the audience members.

Most theories about the Stradivarius secret have focused on the wood. Nagyvary, who arrived in 1968 at Texas A&M as an associate professor, brought a chemist’s eye to the question. He first theorized that chemical treatment might be involved more than three decades ago, experimenting with different brines, chemicals and varnishes in an attempt to reproduce the distinct sound of a Stradivarius.

Only recently, he says, did he obtain the means to scientifically test his theories using rigorous scientific tools to probe the organic material in wood shavings from the special violins.  Though the wood samples were small, they contained enough material to perform an analysis using a technique called solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance, which found the chemicals used to prevent wood worm infestations. It proved to be the first hard evidence of special chemical treatment to protect the wood.

The treatment, Nagyvary says, acts as a sort of noise filter. The combination of these chemicals with a unique varnish used by Stradivari, which guarantees a stiff material and a brilliant sound, explain the instrument’s unique sound, Nagyvary said.

Pavlath, the chemist familiar with Nagyvary’s work, thinks he knows why violin makers refuse to accept the scientist’s results.

"It’s simply business," Pavlath says. "They don’t like someone coming in saying, ‘Hey, what you’re making can never be like a real Stradivarius, and here’s why.’ "