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Violin Acoustics
The acoustics of thin-walled shallow boxes – a tale of coupled oscillators.
Postal:
School of Physics and Astronomy University of Birmingham Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT United Kingdom
Email:
profgough@googlemail.com
Colin E. Gough
Introduction
This article describes how sound is excited by the violin and how the quality of its sound is related to the vibrations and acoustic properties of the body shell of the instrument.
The violin and the closely related viola, cello, and double bass are shallow, thin- walled, boxlike shell structures with orthotropic, guitar-shaped, doubly-arched plates, as illustrated in Figure 1. They therefore share very similar acoustical prop- erties reflecting their similar shapes and symmetries. Violin acoustics is just a special example of the acoustics of any shallow boxlike structure.
Figure 1. A 19th century French violin with com- ponent parts labeled.
The earliest known extant violin, now in the National Music Museum in Vermil- lion, was made by Andrea Amati (ca. 1505-1577), widely recognized for introduc- ing the violin in its present largely unchanged form. It was made in Cremona in Northern Italy, which became the home of several generations of famous violin makers including Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737) and Guarneri del Gesù (1698- 1744). Their violins still remain the instruments of choice of almost all top inter- national soloists. They fetch extraordinary high prices; the “Vieuxtemps” 1741 violin by Guarnerius was reputably recently sold for around $18M.
In contrast, the highest auction price for a violin by a living maker was $130K in 2003 for a violin made by the Brooklyn maker Sam Zygmuntowicz, only recently surpassed in 2014 for a violin jointly made by the Ann Arbor, MI, makers Joseph Curtin and Greg Alf, which fetched $134 K. At the other end of the spectrum, a mass-produced student violin can be bought for around $100, with bow, case, and a cake of rosin included!
22 | Acoustics Today | Summer 2016 | volume 12, issue 2 ©2016 Acoustical Society of America. All rights reserved.