For almost three centuries their sound has been the pinnacle of classical music.
But now the violins created by Antonio Saradivari and Gionvanni Battista Guadgnini are giving up the “Cremonese secret” - the mystery of quite why their sound is so exquisite.
Scientists have used cutting-edge technology to discover the most unlikely answer, concluding that it is the tiny imperfections in the instruments which create their sound.
Stradivari and Guadgnini violins were created by the Italian master craftsmen at their workshops in Cremona in the 17th and 18th century and ever since have been known for their “perfect” sound.
The violins are prized for the rich and powerful sound they produce, often being given to the world’s most gifted musicians to play.
Earlier this year Nicola Benedetti, 24, revealed she has been playing a ￡6.3 million Stradivarius violin after being lent it by London based banker Jonathan Moulds.
For the first time that have been examined at the most microscopic level possible, using high energy beams of light from a particle accelerator - a smaller version of the large hadron collider which scientists are using to uncover the secrets of atoms - to look beneath varnish and paint to the wood beneath.
Dr Franco Zanini, a physicist and amateur violinist at the Elettra synchrotron laboratory in Trieste, in Italy, developed the technique to compare a rare violin built in 1753 by Guadagnini, which is valued at ￡1 million, with less expensive violins and discovered that the host of tiny imperfections helped create the sound.
He said: “We found that there had been a lot of modifications and restorations that had been made in the past. The f-hole openings had at some point had their shape modified.
"It could not be seen with a visual inspection as they had been so well covered.
“The top plate had also been restored with wood and paper patches added. They were of extremely high quality and had been made in such a way that even the rings in the wood were perfectly aligned. That was incredible.
“We noticed there were a lot of asymmetries in the instruments. In principle they have no reason to be there, but it is possible these imperfections were made to remove the unpleasant harmonics that you get in symmetrical instruments.”
In the Guadagnini violin he studied, he found two patches on the top plate of the violin while part of the bass bar had been removed and glued onto another patch. Two small insect holes was also seen on the top plate while a crack was visible on the underside.
He believes that produces imbalances in the construction and thickness of the wood helped to produce an effect known as harmonic rejection – where harsh unwanted harmonics that can make note sound unpleasant are removed by the resonance of the wood.
“If you make an instrument that is not perfectly symmetric you can in principal remove those unpleasant harmonics,” said Dr Zanini.
“Doing this is beyond a computer, so perhaps they were doing this by chance or trial and error, but it is not impossible that these imperfections have been made on purpose to remove this imperfect sound.”
Dr Zanini and his team had to construct a special air-conditioned container to ensure the temperature and humidity the violin was exposed to did not change through the experiment for fear of damaging it.
He added: “After the scan, Peter Herresthal, the Norwegian violinist who owns the violin, played it and did not notice any difference.
“These violins are very sensitive and their performance can change immediately if their environment changes. It is why violinists are so cautious about taking their instruments on long air journeys.
“We wanted to find a technique that allowed us to look at the violins in a non-destructive way. In the past small samples had to be taken from violins and this obviously can affect them.”
Dr Zanini is now planning to use the technique on other Cremonese violins by other master luthiers such as Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesù to confirm his theory.
The research adds to the theories of what might be the Cremonese secret, which also include whether unusually prolonged cold weather in Europe at the time led to the trees in the area growing slowly and producing particularly dense timber.
Others have pointed to special recipes for the varnish used on the instruments and recent research even suggested the famed resonance of the violins may have been caused by a fungal infection of the wood.
Columnist Thomas Friedman described a Minnesota welding shop that sought to hire 10 high-quality, nationally certified welders for a government contract to affix armor onto military Humvees.
Plenty of applicants wanted the $20-an-hour work -- but they had learned to weld in neighborhood garages or high school training classes and lacked top-grade expertise. Shop owner Traci Tapani explained:
"They did not know the science behind welding.... They could make beautiful welds, but they did not understand metallurgy, modern cleaning and brushing techniques.... You have to have science and math. I can't think of any job in my sheet metal fabricating company where math is not important. If you work in a manufacturing facility, you use math every day: You need to compute angles and understand what happens to a piece of metal when it's bent to a certain angle."
Tapani finally trained a local female welder intensely enough to pass a national certified welding inspector test -- and the woman subsequently trained other welders for the Minnesota shop.
The moral of this tale is that many 21st century U.S. jobs require well-honed skills and credentials, often including STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Millions of young Americans aren't prepared for the new era. Their test scores lag behind.
Last year, a survey of 65 nations ranked U.S. students 23rd, equal with Poland. Worse, West Virginia trails America. The national Institute of Physics lists the Mountain state as 49th in "science and engineering readiness." One-fourth of teens drop out of high school, and many wreck themselves with dope -- so they have little chance for today's careers.
During the summer, two industrial experts wrote: "Today's manufacturers often rely on precision machinery, computer modeling and high-tech tooling far removed from the traditional assembly line, and too few American students are prepared for these skilled, internationally competitive jobs."
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