The advertizing for the upcoming Cremona violin making competition, ouch!

[Whittler]

 Comments within quote below:

 

On 6/25/2024 at 2:34 PM, Davide Sora said:

If this were the case (only the sound counts), why let the luthiers judge the workmanship? Musicians would be enough.

Appreciate your thoughts on this, Davide. I wouldn't want to give the impression that I meant this per se, and recognize that the Triennale is specifically oriented toward a continued classic tradition, which very much includes the fine workmanship in all its details. In expertly refined iterations, viol instruments certainly may be appreciated as exquisite works of sculptural art, irrespective of their music producing function. Workmanship absolutely ought to be, and rightly is, given substantial weight in the judging. It would seem that ideally, winning instruments at the most prestigious international competition for their type should have all of the elements together at a very high level. 

 Unfortunately, the sound is quite problematic to judge objectively, especially when you have to judge 300 instruments in a couple of days.

I don't see how they could possibly do their best judging (as owed to the competitors) given that schedule, which would appear to be a significant overload.  

An objective judgment is impossible, we tend to give too much value to competition, which in my opinion leaves the time they find.

Certainly appreciate your perspective, and agree- lutherie is a science, but not necessarily an entirely quantifiable one, and also an art- and art is not in essence a competition but rather, an expression, the appreciation of which will always be subjective. It will be noticed that human perception of sound can be quite variable. Though generally there is some overlapping range of agreement, in finer points each person literally has different ears- sometimes with very significant differences in sensitivity, insensitivity, or even aural "blindness" to sound spectra. It is the same with taste buds- their size, relative sensitivity, prevalence and distribution in different areas of the tongue responsible for differing portions of our overall sensation of taste varies considerably. I have seen, to me, surprising, images in a book on physiology demonstrating this variability. This is physiological, not just psycho-acoustical, which of course also plays a part. 

The real value for a luthier would be the possibility of comparison that they offer beyond the judgment of a few people (the jury), to see what other makers are doing, and a bit of advertisement for those who take home the medals.

 

PS After all these criticisms of the Cremona Triennale, I expect the same analysis and criticism of the regulations of all the other competitions, just to be fair and to not advertise only and always Cremona.

Proactive, constructive criticism, though (or at least genuinely good faith attempts at such). Actually, I intended to lay low here, get my 10 posts so the search functions well, and just try and sniff out info pertinent to making a quality Forma B cello if possible, but this post caught my eye. At the top of the mountain one expects to be scrutinized from every angle. I certainly don't know much at all about organizing such an event, and recognize that I don't know much, but I expect that I will always feel that prize-winning talent and accomplishment at this level deserves substantially improved recompense. Looking at what a top hotdog shark gets, and how he gets it.

 I'm an equal-opportunity complainer- it's a deal. If wanted (I might be hoping not as much as anyone here), I promise to (constructively) criticize assiduously if there's a post discussing another competition's rules which might appear to be improvable. 

Your highly specialized knowledge, smiley emoji, and gentlemanly expressions are greatly appreciated, Davide.

 

[Whittler]

On 6/23/2024 at 8:26 PM, Dr. Mark said:

Vince Neil is a stage name.

With little enough information we can imagine just about anything we want to. 

In the top rank of modern violin makers there appear to be many violins with, it seems (see previous sentence) little enough to consistently differentiate among them, in quality of tone or workmanship.  Most everyone seems to build the same way, and although varnishes differ there are enough formulations of 'good' varnish that differences are sort of lost in the noise. Color is pretty much standardized - bright red or blue violins aren't taken seriously.  Everyone knows what their options are because the world has shrunk and news travels fast.

It seems in the Brescia-Cremona glory days there were marked regional differences in construction and materials.  The best players played the best instruments they could find that they could afford, and played them hard.  What were considered best were violins from cities or provinces, not necessarily from makers.  Once a reputation was gained, which could take decades, it could be more years or decades before makers from elsewhere become aware of it, and even longer to acquire an example and work out what was different about it.  Then they would still have a collection of their own instruments that they needed to sell.  On top of that, any reputation could be misleading because knowledge and information exchange was comparatively primitive and a musical style that showcases certain tonal characteristics may not have caught on locally.  Peter of Mantua built high-arch instruments despite Stradivari and his own nephew's work.  There wasn't much in the way of market analysis.  Imagine playing the Cannon in an orchestra full of Stainers.

In time players decided there was something about Cremona and it topped out in reputation.  Stradivari's were beautifully constructed, owned by nobility, and had wonderful tone and playability.  But there was also something special about Barty Guarneri. And Carlo Bergonzi although he seems to have been a bit short of product.  All the best players played on Cremonas, adding to their reputation and history.  You heard them live or didn't hear them, and once Viotti, Rode, Spohr, Paganini, ... produced beautiful tone, the onus to create tone pretty much shifted to the player of these Cremonese violins.

Those days, and that opportunity, are gone and gone for good.  That's my story, but I'm not sticking to it necessarily.

 

 

Well, if you believe that your poetry is more on-topic and interesting than someone else's post or another, it's certainly your prerogative to read or not as suits you. By way of rebuttal, certainly not riposte:

"Vince Neil is a stage name"

Yes, and much closer to his given name than most- e.g., Marilyn Monroe (Norma Jean Baker), Carey Grant (Archibald Leach), etc. Nothing unusual about that. Then there's "Bono", "Slash", etc., etc. Don't see how this delegitimizes anything that these people of diverse and substantial talents do. Hollywood itself is a stage name of sorts- actually a synecdoche for a place where TV shows and movies are produced; the majority of this actually occurs in Culver City, Burbank (e.g., From "Hollywood", it's The Tonight Show, with Johnny Carson), and other locales. Even Gesu / Jesus are in fact stage names, for that matter. *Sort of, though not derived through assent, but rather, broad stroke and significantly divergent transliteration- much like "Confucius": actually Kong Fuzi.

[Andreas Preuss]

On 6/25/2024 at 11:34 PM, Davide Sora said:

PS After all these criticisms of the Cremona Triennale, I expect the same analysis and criticism of the regulations of all the other competitions, just to be fair and to not advertise only and always Cremona.

Joining a little bit late to this discussion, nevertheless it’s interesting to read different stand points.

It’s a pretty ‘old’ problem in competitions how to design rules for judgement on a balance sheet of sound and workmanship. Looking at different competitions in the world it is very simple: Each competition has to create its own criteria whatever they might look like and participants have to decide if they want to be judged on this scheme. There is and can not be any hundred percent objective way of judgement for both, sound and workmanship. And I would think this is perfectly ok. Or to put it in drastic way: it would be absurd if a Competition in Cremona would make rules against its own tradition. By this I mean that all changes which have been made were (presumably) made on the background of Cremonese violin making tradition and how to encourage to follow this tradition.

(I have to add here that there were gold medalists in Cremona which clearly didn’t follow this tradition. This could be taken as a measure of fairness and openness to ‘non Cremonese’ makers.)

I am convinced that each competition accepting 300 instruments must sort out instruments in the first round. Therefore minimum requirements for workmanship are absolutely necessary. How much weight tonal aspects can be taken in account is mostly a question of ‚taste‘.
 

When still in Japan, a group of violin makers was trying to set a competition. The whole organization is pretty hard work and this includes also creating rules for the competition. I put myself into charge to create rules. What I always though to be ‘unfair’ (if you call it like this) is the fact that the maker who got on a scheme of 100 points (for example) just 1 point more than the next and is nominated the ‘winner’ while the second gets only the silver medal. This gave me the idea to create levels for the final ranking. This would mean that any maker reaching a very high point level would get the ‘gold medal level’. And there I would set the level rigorously high at a minimum of 97 of 100 possible points. This would also free judges from the painful choice of naming ONE winner. There would be eventually two maybe three winners, or just none. This can be also applied to the tone judgement. I also thought that the stimulus of participating should not the prize money, but rather the judgement by highly respected makers. 
 

Otherwise I would think that competitions should give the chance of a learning experience for younger makers. As far as I know this has started already in some or most competitions because some judges talk to participants over the instruments after the competition. 

Then I had also the idea to make participants their own judges as a sort of learning experience. So they would receive the same schematic judging sheets to judge their own work. At the end they get the chance to compare it to the scheme of the jurors to see how correctly they were able to place themselves in the competition. In the end I believe that self criticism is the best motor to improve your own work. 
 
 

@David BurgessSorry to stroll away from the original topic here. 

 

 

[David Burgess]

On 6/28/2024 at 7:22 AM, Andreas Preuss said:

@David BurgessSorry to stroll away from the original topic here. 

Hey, no problem. I have never been one who assiduously insisted that  every post in a thread fall obediently in line with the original post. To me, some of the tangents have been the most interesting and informative parts.

[Whittler]

Some very fine comments; glad nobody's overly annoyed. Exigencies here- would like to post a little further when I can give proper attention. Regards

[Whittler]

Clearly it would be neither simple nor easy arranging such a competition and designing a rules / ratings system to optimize fairness where there can never, as you've noted, Andreas, be 100% exactitude. It's a credit to your right-heartedness and intelligence that you and others work so hard towards genuine goals in this regard. World-class chess tournaments often have a points system (and Elo rating system, adopted by some other disciplines, to winnow-down to top qualifiers) somewhat like the one you describe, where there can be a tie with multiple first- and other-place winners. Other times they continue until just one champion remains. On a different day - no less before different judges - the winners could be different. As the OP, David, notes, there can be overt bias- a dismal thing to experience, or even witness. I can remember watching the Olympic Games on TV as a child (during the "Cold War" 1970s), and there were instances where all of the judges conferred marks of 9.0 or higher to an outstanding competitor, and one or a few judges from countries with an opposing political ideology would give 7.5 or something like that. Then there's Polgar vs. Kasparov at Linares in 1994, viewable on Youtube. Regardless of whether or not Kaspaov's actions were unconscious, the arbiter / referee certainly observed the foul- pathetic. On a better note, Andreas, during my freshman year at college I shared an apartment with a young married couple from Osaka, also students, and had some introductions to Japanese culture- largely very admirable. I'm currently enjoying a book entitled Masterworks of Ukiyo-e ["pictures of the floating world"]: Harunobu. I found it in a free give-away box on the street, same as the aforementioned anatomy book.