It may have been a day off for the audience at the 11th Banff International String Quartet Competition, but the quartets were hard at work. Besides practice time, they also were invited to a workshop by three highly respected people who make, fix and sell stringed instruments in order to separate truth from fiction.
It’s one of the world’s golden rules that where there’s money, there are going to be shenanigans. Music may be, to quote a Schubert song, a holy art, but the business side is as full of crooked people as any other walk of life. And with Old Master instruments selling in the millions of dollars, young musicians need to know as much as they can about what makes their violin or viola or cello good, bad or indifferent.
The most fascinating and most obvious — and most quickly ignored — truth to surface in today’s discussion was that if an instrument looks old, people will automatically think it sounds better. If its a Stradivarius, it’s got to be amazing.
According to Banff competition director Barry Shiffman, Montreal luthier Tom Wilder, Brooklyn, NY luthier Samuel Zygmuntowicz and Quebec bow maker François Malo, even the finest violinists or cellists or violists are fooled by an instrument’s looks.
Schiffman told the young musicians in the room that one should never assume that the particular sound one is getting from an instrument or bow is the product of a particular label, or wood, or varnish. It may be entirely psychological. “What matters ultimately is what you hear,” said the violinist.
Wilder, who has written the definitive modern guide to the maintenance and repair of stringed instruments, explained how an instrument’s sound can be changed extensively. Zygmuntowicz added that the “adjustment” period after he delivers a new violin to a customer is as important as the months he spent making the instrument in the first place.
Our culture of label-worship and of disposable (and often well-made) mass-produced instruments has created a belief that in order to play better or to get a better sound, one needs to upgrade, like moving from a Toyota to a BMW for a better driving experience.
Before opening up hands-on time for a set of violins and bows to the room, Shiffman picked up three different instruments and then two different bows to demonstrate how striking the differences in sound can be.
Sometimes the real difference comes from changing bows — which is why the Banff competition is offering a set of four new sticks made by Malo as part of its first-prize package on Sunday.
After the workshop, I asked Wilder about the specific things that can make a significant difference to the sound of even an ordinary violin. He described changing strings, moving the sound post by a millimetre, and changing the shape of the bridge.
“No two instruments are the same — and no two violin players are the same,” said Wilder.
In speaking to the players, Wilder and Zygmuntowicz stressed how each musician needs to learn how to communicate their musical needs to a luthier in order for them to be able to make satisfactory adjustments. “There’s nothing harder than finding the right words for sound,” said the New Yorker.
Wilder has just returned from a year at Cambridge University, where he has begun work on a doctoral thesis about the history of the business of stringed instruments — specifically, of how they went from being the means to make sound to becoming what he calls “fetish objects” in our times.
The Montrealer’s finished thesis — which should be a fascinating read — is still at least a couple of years off, because he has to return to his business. But he did mention something very interesting about the fetishization of instruments and music critics in our chat.
“As the music critics start writing about the violin, at one point in the 19th century, the discussion turns from the beauty of sound to the instrument itself, to its dimensions, to its label, to who owned it,” Wilder explained.
The fetishization is as real for new instruments as old ones. Shiffman picked up one of Zygmuntowicz’s violins saying, “this violin is worth $50,000. If Maxim Vengerov plays it, it is worth $100,000.” Same violin, anointed with star sweat along its chin rest and fingerboard.
Nonetheless, Wilder hopes that the current generation of master luthiers and performers will collectively be able to reframe our standards so that the discussion is about the ability to make the right sound, not about labels or star-associations.
After all, competitions are not won or lost based on instrument labels, but on the quality of musicianship.
John Terauds