The Ring, Part the First (das Rheingold) on gut strings and old winds + @ A = 435
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| Posted on November 21, 2021 at 07:11:42 | ||
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Posts: 7805
Location: Peoples' Democratic Republic of R.I. Joined: April 23, 2000 |
The write-up is on Slipped Disc but it's not by NL; it's by a guest reviewer. If you scroll down in the comments you can see that I totally nerd out on authentic historical violin performance, from a "Material Culture and Technology" standpoint. To spare you the click, here's my comment (I won't just cut and paste the whole review): START Great coverage... except, one of the most important HIP aspects was not specifically mentioned!!! The metal "E" string on modern violins is a 20th-century innovation, and it really defines the sound of modern violins. Not only directly, when played upon. Also indirectly, by influencing the harmonic behavior of the instrument as a whole. In Wagner's era, violin "E" strings were usually silk (and sometimes gut). While steel strings did exist, they were for impoverished street or café fiddlers. Two things put paid to silk "E" strings. First, large naval artillery of the late 19th/early 20th centuries used silk bags to hold the charges of gunpowder (rather than brass shell casings). Therefore, with the outbreak of WWI and the interruption of supply chains, there was a scarcity of silk. All available silk supplies were diverted to the war effort. Furthermore, when violinists, of necessity, began playing on steel strings, it quickly became apparent that steel strings had much more "cut" when making recordings than silk strings were capable of. Pre-electrical recording technology (meaning, pre-1926 or pre-1928 or thereabouts), recordings were made by using a horn acoustically to focus the airborne energy of the instrument (or voice) to move a diaphragm, which vibrated a needle, which inscribed a groove in wax or lacquer. Steel strings were not subtle in tone; but wow could they cut wax. So, one assumes that the HIP orchestra under discussion here had done enough research to use silk violin "E" strings, or at least gut. This subject was covered in an issue of "The Strad," back circa 1978. Back when I fooled around on the viola (mostly to make practicing the violin seem like the easier task), I used a gut "A" string, and I loved its sound as well as its feel. # # # You can click over to thumbs-up me, if you wish. atb, john
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