Page 10 - Spring2020

Quincy Whitney
Email:
quincy@quincywhitney.com
American Luthier: The Art and Science of Carleen Hutchins
Carleen Hutchins taught herself acoustical physics, applied it to making a better violin, and then invented a new family of violins.
Editor’s Note: Carleen Hutchins won the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) Silver Medal in Acoustics in 1998 for her brilliant contributions to the design and con- struction of violins. The idea for this article arose during a concert using Hutchins’ instruments at the 2019 ASA meeting in San Diego (CA). Subsequently, the editor invited Quincy Whitney, author of a recent award-winning biography of Hutchins (see doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3468) to submit an author-condensed excerpt of the book as an article for Acoustics Today. The book, American Luthier: Carleen Hutchins — the
Art and Science of the Violin (ForeEdge 2016; see quincywhitney.com), was shortlisted by PEN America as one of the 10 best biographies of 2017 and was awarded the 2019 Science Communication Award from the ASA.
A New Family of Fiddles?
Sometimes the only thing between opportunity and achievement is the missing question arriving at just the right time.
“Can you create a family of violins across the tonal range of the piano?”
That was the question that greeted Carleen Hutchins (Figure 1) in the summer of 1958 when Henry Brant and Sterling Hunkins called at 112 Essex Avenue in Mont- clair, New Jersey. Brant was a composer from Bennington, Vermont, who learned
of Hutchins through Hunkins, an accomplished cellist.
Many years hence, Carleen recalled the moment: “Brant asked if I was the ‘violin- maker crazy enough’ to try an idea he had. He wanted a set of seven graduated-in-size
‘violins,’ one at each half octave over the range of written music that would carry the sound of the violin with its clarity, bril- liance, and power evenly on all four strings. After a half hour discussion, I agreed to try and do what Brant wanted—but it took me ten years.”
Figure 1. Hutchins measuring the thickness of a violin plate, circa 1960. Courtesy of the Hutchins Estate.
10 | Acoustics Today | Spring 2020 | volume 16, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2019.15.4.10