What Joshua Bell's experiment tells us

[Pluto Vermin]

2 hours ago, The Violin Beautiful said:

They have found a huge amount of success.

Their singer even out sung and out slung The San Saba Songbird.

[Don Noon]

3 hours ago, GeorgeH said:

... well-made new violins can be just as good as old violins.

That is often debatable.  I would rather say that new violins can be made as well as the old violins.  Whether there is a good or bad difference in sound due to changes in the wood over time... that's different.

From what I have seen, I believe there IS an effect (or possibly several different effects) which makes some old violins sound in a way that new ones do not.  Then it's personal taste as to whether that sound is better or worse.  For me, a good new violin and a good old violin can sound equally nice... but not in the same way.  I believe I see those differences often in objective spectra plots too.

[GeorgeH]

1 hour ago, Don Noon said:

From what I have seen, I believe there IS an effect (or possibly several different effects) which makes some old violins sound in a way that new ones do not.  Then it's personal taste as to whether that sound is better or worse.  For me, a good new violin and a good old violin can sound equally nice... but not in the same way.  I believe I see those differences often in objective spectra plots too.

The fact is that your belief is simply that—a belief. It is not, and cannot be, based on any objective reproducible evidence, including spectral data. You and I both know that the sample sets are too small, the selection is non-random, and there is no way to show that the sound has universally changed in a manner that could be confidently traced to age-related changes in the wood. It doesn't even matter whether the tone is subjectively better or worse.

You would also need to show that the spectral signatures are exclusive to old violins and cannot be found in any modern violins. 

[Don Noon]

2 hours ago, GeorgeH said:

The fact is that your belief is simply that—a belief. 

Well, yeah.  That's what I said it was... based on what I think I hear, and what I think I see in spectral measurements, and what seems logical to me.  There are indeed insurmountable issues trying to prove anything in this field.

[Rue]

FWIW; "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" (or ear !), and you have to be in the right mindset to be open to appreciate the beauty.

I think bats are beautiful. Form, function, grace, seeing them fly at dusk, wow. But, I have to be looking up at the sky in order to see them, and I have to have a moment of time, to appreciate that beauty.

If my job was to shovel guano at the local bat cave, my opinion might change.

If I was a different person, like my husband for example, I'd be more likely to screech the minute I saw one, cover my head with my hands, and run for cover...

[GeorgeH]

2 hours ago, Don Noon said:

based on what I think I hear, and what I think I see in spectral measurements, and what seems logical to me.

There is a cognitive bias called “What You See Is All There Is” (WYSIATI) that was coined in the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

It describes the human being tendency to “make judgments based only on the information immediately available, while ignoring missing, unknown, or unseen information.”

We all have it and the violin world is full of people espousing WYSIATI beliefs as facts when they are neither proven facts nor provable facts. 

[Yoshiharu Ito]

5 hours ago, Rue said:

FWIW; "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" (or ear !), and you have to be in the right mindset to be open to appreciate the beauty.

I think bats are beautiful. Form, function, grace, seeing them fly at dusk, wow. But, I have to be looking up at the sky in order to see them, and I have to have a moment of time, to appreciate that beauty.

If my job was to shovel guano at the local bat cave, my opinion might change.

If I was a different person, like my husband for example, I'd be more likely to screech the minute I saw one, cover my head with my hands, and run for cover...

In other words , memory, process, emotion, personal taste. All of that context.

Perhaps what a maker can do is not create beauty, but create the conditions in which the brain can complete it.

[martin swan]

8 hours ago, GeorgeH said:

There is a cognitive bias called “What You See Is All There Is” (WYSIATI) that was coined in the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

It describes the human being tendency to “make judgments based only on the information immediately available, while ignoring missing, unknown, or unseen information.”

We all have it and the violin world is full of people espousing WYSIATI beliefs as facts when they are neither proven facts nor provable facts. 

Forming judgments on evidence and experience is a pretty fundamental thought process, and we are all always in a state of WYSIATI.

The problems seem to come when there are conflicts of authority (who is more likely to be right) or valuation (which is worth more).

In the context of violins, personal taste plays an important part and can't really be dismissed as right or wrong. Consequently this debate, which plays out endlessly amongst our peers, always comes down to what we believe a particular instrument or type of instrument is worth.

On this issue there will never be agreement since the agendas are so loaded.

New makers get a bit indignant at the value attributed to historic instruments - I guess they would like a value system more like the fine art market, where a Basquiat or a Jackson Pollock can almost rival a Leonardo in value. But taste in the art market is easier to curate, as you don't have to get up on stage with a painting and make a beautiful noise in front of a huge orchestra. There is no practical function that needs to be addressed, other than the size of your wall and your pocket.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for new makers in relation to the value question is the very nature of classical music, and the importance of historical lines of teaching and performing as expressed by ownership. Violins become most valuable through historic association - it's hard to argue against the Kreisler, the Kubelik or the Huberman ...

The physical effects of age on the instrument seem to me to be a minor point. 

 

[Yoshiharu Ito]

1 hour ago, martin swan said:

Forming judgments on evidence and experience is a pretty fundamental thought process, and we are all always in a state of WYSIATI.

The problems seem to come when there are conflicts of authority (who is more likely to be right) or valuation (which is worth more).

In the context of violins, personal taste plays an important part and can't really be dismissed as right or wrong. Consequently this debate, which plays out endlessly amongst our peers, always comes down to what we believe a particular instrument or type of instrument is worth.

On this issue there will never be agreement since the agendas are so loaded.

New makers get a bit indignant at the value attributed to historic instruments - I guess they would like a value system more like the fine art market, where a Basquiat or a Jackson Pollock can almost rival a Leonardo in value. But taste in the art market is easier to curate, as you don't have to get up on stage with a painting and make a beautiful noise in front of a huge orchestra. There is no practical function that needs to be addressed, other than the size of your wall and your pocket.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for new makers in relation to the value question is the very nature of classical music, and the importance of historical lines of teaching and performing as expressed by ownership. Violins become most valuable through historic association - it's hard to argue against the Kreisler, the Kubelik or the Huberman ...

The physical effects of age on the instrument seem to me to be a minor point. 

 

In other words ,WYSIATI applied to the authority of history itself?

We are not in awe of Stradivari because he is great. We are in awe of Stradivari because we have been told he is great  and that framing has become inseparable from the instrument itself.

Which leads me to wonder, for a new maker, is the goal to transcend history  or simply to make an instrument that genuinely serves what the finest players actually need?

Perhaps it is the more honest competition, isn't it?

[martin swan]

3 minutes ago, Yoshiharu Ito said:

 

Which leads me to wonder, for a new maker, is the goal to transcend history  or simply to make an instrument that genuinely serves what the finest players actually need?

 

I agree with you up to a point. The problem is that many of "the finest players" actually want to be connected through their instrument to a line of previous finest players ....

There will always be some who prefer the reliability of a new instrument and/or who wish to be in control of the process of its manufacture. 

Ultimately this "debate" seems more like a battle for hearts and minds waged by new makers against what they see as some organized orthodoxy supporting older instruments. In fact this organized orthodoxy doesn't exist, it's just the weight of history, which canot be transcended. A new violin can be a wonderful thing, but it can never be old. Nor can it ever have provenance stretching back to the time when most repertoire was composed.

To take the thing to extremes, a plywood office desk from IKEA works every bit as well as a Louis VX gilded bureau once owned by Madame de Pompadour - in fact for many people it works rather better since you don't need to be a responsible custodian. For others, a 1970s Danish rosewood desk might be more aesthetically appealing than the Louis XV monstrosity, but they are still both entirely functional objects that you could sit and work at ...

But you can't tell the owner of Madame de Pompadour's desk that they would be just as well off with something modern.

 

[martin swan]

22 minutes ago, Yoshiharu Ito said:

We are not in awe of Stradivari because he is great. We are in awe of Stradivari because we have been told he is great  and that framing has become inseparable from the instrument itself.

No, he really is great 

 

[Yoshiharu Ito]

29 minutes ago, martin swan said:

No, he really is great 

 

I should clarify  my earlier reference to Stradivari was intended as a metaphor for WYSIATI, and was something of an extreme position:⁠-⁠)

I also want to be clear about where this thread was intended to go. The discussion has shifted toward new versus old instruments, but that was not my intention.

The original question was about where beauty comes from , for Amati, for Stradivari, and for us. Whether the makers of the past were pursuing something through authority and historical conformity, or whether they were reaching toward something closer to the liberal arts. And what we value today  and what we may have lost.

[martin swan]

12 minutes ago, Yoshiharu Ito said:

I should clarify  my earlier reference to Stradivari was intended as a metaphor for WYSIATI, and was something of an extreme position:⁠-⁠)

I was being humorous!

13 minutes ago, Yoshiharu Ito said:

 

I also want to be clear about where this thread was intended to go. The discussion has shifted toward new versus old instruments, but that was not my intention.

 

Good point - it always seems to gravitate in that direction here - I suspect it's an itch that just has to be scratched ...

 

14 minutes ago, Yoshiharu Ito said:

The original question was about where beauty comes from , for Amati, for Stradivari, and for us. Whether the makers of the past were pursuing something through authority and historical conformity, or whether they were reaching toward something closer to the liberal arts. And what we value today  and what we may have lost.

Perhaps we could refer this to principles of architecture in the Renaissance and after. It's hard for us to fully understand now, but there wasn't a division between form/proportion and moral purpose or sacred practice. In this sense I suspect that everyone who was working with dimensions was to some extent building places of worship. A violin in Stradivari's time was surely a kind of mini-cathedral ...

Very difficult to recreate this mindset in a post-Christian society. I would be very interested to know if you think that Japanese craftspeople still adhere more to this concept than their Western counterparts?

[Yoshiharu Ito]

1 hour ago, martin swan said:

I was being humorous!

Good point - it always seems to gravitate in that direction here - I suspect it's an itch that just has to be scratched ...

 

Perhaps we could refer this to principles of architecture in the Renaissance and after. It's hard for us to fully understand now, but there wasn't a division between form/proportion and moral purpose or sacred practice. In this sense I suspect that everyone who was working with dimensions was to some extent building places of worship. A violin in Stradivari's time was surely a kind of mini-cathedral ...

Very difficult to recreate this mindset in a post-Christian society. I would be very interested to know if you think that Japanese craftspeople still adhere more to this concept than their Western counterparts?

Thank you for the great reply.

It will be a bit lengthy, but I would like to share my thoughts on Japanese crafts.

 

 

In Japan too, form and spirit are now clearly separated. That separation happened most explicitly after the Second World War.
But something remains.
Over the past several years, I have had relationships with Buddhist sculptors, ceramicists, practitioners of tea ceremony and Zen, and a researcher in neuroaesthetics. What I have come to see is this…
The ancient Buddhist sculptures of Japan, and the ceramics known as Raku-yaki （ which date to roughly the same period as Stradivari ） were made in accordance with Shinto, a nature-based spirituality. And within that, there is a Zen-Confucian understanding: that to have nothing is to have everything.
To strip away decoration. To pare down the self. What remains is everything.
The expressionless face of a Buddhist statue is not emptiness … it is the result of removing everything unnecessary, until only the essential remains. The simplicity of Raku-yaki was a message to those in power: what is needed is to follow nature, and to pass time in harmony with eternity.
Japanese spirituality finds beauty in the cycle of birth and dissolution. Just as no two things in nature are identical, art too is fleeting — like a bubble rising from darkness. This is called In Praise of Shadows.
What I find particularly interesting is that many old craftspeople did not sign their work. There was a cultural motivation  to be one continuation in the flow of tradition, one pair of hands passing something ancient forward.
In Japan, to make form was to continue connecting the ancient sense of nature across time. The vector is different from the Western tradition of construction and assembly. And yet I find it profoundly close to the liberal arts flowing from Greek philosophy, and to the thought of Plato.
And now, that culture is being destroyed. A different current has become the mainstream.

[Don Noon]

2 hours ago, Yoshiharu Ito said:

I also want to be clear about where this thread was intended to go. The discussion has shifted toward new versus old instruments, but that was not my intention.

2 hours ago, martin swan said:

Good point - it always seems to gravitate in that direction here - I suspect it's an itch that just has to be scratched ...

... and has been scratched so much that it is now a sore that can never heal 

 

5 hours ago, martin swan said:

The physical effects of age on the instrument seem to me to be a minor point. 

Agreed, especially in light of the intent of the thread.  Minor point, but perhaps non-zero, and the only physical/factual aspect of beauty old aerospace engineers can latch onto.  Sorry.

Carry on.

[martin swan]

2 minutes ago, Don Noon said:

Agreed, especially in light of the intent of the thread.  Minor point, but perhaps non-zero, and the only physical/factual aspect of beauty old aerospace engineers can latch onto.  Sorry.

But I agree with you and find it an intriguing phenomenon - there is a difference, not necessarily good or bad.

And if enough people shared our opinion, we would not be accused of WYSIATI, we would simply be right 

[Marty Kasprzyk]

1 hour ago, Yoshiharu Ito said:

Thank you for the great reply.

It will be a bit lengthy, but I would like to share my thoughts on Japanese crafts.

 

 

>
To strip away decoration. To pare down the self. What remains is everything.
The expressionless face of a Buddhist statue is not emptiness … it is the result of removing everything unnecessary, until only the essential remains. 

>

The violin's scroll and corner points are nonessential decorations.

[Dr. Mark]

Beauty is the object of Love.  What then, is Love?  (Lute and Viol begin to play...)

What then is love but mourning?  What desire but a self-burning?

'Till she who hates doth love return, thus will I mourn, thus will I burn,

Come away, come away, my darling!

Beauty is but a blooming, youth it's own glory consuming,

Time hath awhile that none can stay, so come away, come while while I sing,

Come away, come away, my darling!

Summer into winter fadeth, deepest night heavenly light shadeth,

Lost to the morn' are Venus' flowers, such are her hours, thus do I sing,

Come away, come away, my darling.

So Love is all you need (Trumpets and tuba begin to play, while familiar characters strut through a Peter Max landscape)

 

[Don Noon]

18 minutes ago, Marty Kasprzyk said:

The violin's scroll and corner points are nonessential decorations.

Although maybe not essential for having a functional instrument, they ARE items that factor into visual beauty and they affect some aspects of sound and playability.  Then you can argue whether they are good or bad factors, if you wish.

[Yoshiharu Ito]

1 hour ago, Don Noon said:

57 minutes ago, martin swan said:

And if enough people shared our opinion, we would not be accused of WYSIATI, we would simply be right 

Agreed, especially in light of the intent of the thread.  Minor point, but perhaps non-zero, and the only physical/factual aspect of beauty old aerospace engineers can latch onto.  Sorry.

Carry on.

I am very interested in hearing the perspective of such a engineer. If you are willing, I would love to hear more.

 

41 minutes ago, Marty Kasprzyk said:

The violin's scroll and corner points are nonessential decorations.

I apologize for being too long-winded. I was not criticizing the violin ,  I was trying to use Japanese craftsmanship as an example of what has been lost, as an answer to the question of "what we have lost."

 

The scroll is exactly what I want to understand. In da Vinci's paintings, Michelangelo's sculptures, and throughout church architecture, spirals appear everywhere. Why do they recur so persistently?

[Dr. Mark]

4 minutes ago, Yoshiharu Ito said:

The spiral is exactly what I want to understand. In da Vinci's paintings, Michelangelo's sculptures, and throughout church architecture, spirals appear everywhere. Why do they recur so persistently?

I expect that you mean to ask why artists use the spiral so often...?

[martin swan]

1 hour ago, Marty Kasprzyk said:

The violin's scroll and corner points are nonessential decorations.

 

36 minutes ago, Yoshiharu Ito said:

The scroll is exactly what I want to understand. In da Vinci's paintings, Michelangelo's sculptures, and throughout church architecture, spirals appear everywhere. Why do they recur so persistently?

Perhaps we could interpret spirals as an expression of nature in man-made objects.

Spirals are generated in nature according to the Fibonacci series. We see them everywhere, shells, plants, snakes ...

Incorporating a natural form or rhythm into a musical instrument which expresses many other natural sequences (harmonic) is pointless to Marty but it could be essential to a Renaissance craftsman.

Corner points are a resolution of the problem of corners, which are a direct result of the need for c-bouts, which are a direct result of the passage of the bow.

Of course other things were tried but they haven't caught on even after 300 years ...

 

 

[Yoshiharu Ito]

7 minutes ago, Dr. Mark said:

I expect that you mean to ask why artists use the spiral so often...?

Actually, what I'm beginning to wonder, following this line of discussion, is why the spiral motif was so ubiquitous in Renaissance Italy in the first place.

[Yoshiharu Ito]

6 minutes ago, martin swan said:

 

Perhaps we could interpret spirals as an expression of nature in man-made objects.

Spirals are generated in nature according to the Fibonacci series. We see them everywhere, shells, plants, snakes ...

Incorporating a natural form or rhythm into a musical instrument which expresses many other natural sequences (harmonic) is pointless to Marty but it could be essential to a Renaissance craftsman.

 

Thanks!

I’m curious about the scientific side as well. Does the scroll significantly affect the instrument’s resonance or the harmonic balance of the acoustic spectrum? I’d love to hear how it’s viewed in terms of pure acoustics.

[Don Noon]

12 minutes ago, Yoshiharu Ito said:

I’m curious about the scientific side as well. Does the scroll significantly affect the instrument’s resonance or the harmonic balance of the acoustic spectrum? I’d love to hear how it’s viewed in terms of pure acoustics.