Page 13 - Spring2020

Pancake Viola
In the first series of Saunders-Hutchins experiments, Hutchins made a flat-top viola as a way to experiment with certain elements, e.g., bass bar placement; f-hole size, shape and location; different bridges; and different kinds of wood — without having to take the instrument apart each time. Hutchins made bridges from 35 different woods.
Their goal was to attempt to begin to define what a player means by “violin tone”: loudness, ease of playing, tone color or timbre, even the way a tone starts. “We did more than a hundred experiments on this box itself — that’s what got me excited and got me into acoustics.”3
Variegated Violas
Hutchins and Saunders completed a long series of experi- ments with violas of different sizes, from 17 inches to just under 13 inches, whereby each viola was adjusted to have a good loudness curve. By the fall of 1953, Carleen had made 17 violas in all, including 10 “very weird looking” instruments. One reporter described the curious results emerging from the Hutchins-Saunders experiments: “One looks like a child’s violin that has been sat on and another has a deep sound box that makes it look almost like a guitar, and still another looks like a stringed cigar box. Yet all sound like violas.”4
Graphite Epoxy Violin
In the early 1970s, Carleen collaborated with Dr. Daniel Haines at the University of South Carolina (Columbia) in developing an alternative material to replace the spruce top plates in violins and guitars by laminating a piece of fiber- board between two layers of graphite-epoxy.
Acoustically, Hutchins and Haines pronounced their experi- ments a success because modal analysis showed that the graphite-epoxy “sandwich” displayed similar characteristics to traditional violin tops.
Most important, the graphite-epoxy guitar and violin passed musical muster. “Both the guitar and violin have been received very favorably by musicians and listeners. Numerous judg- ments established their sound to be indistinguishable from that of fine instruments made with conventional materials.”5
3 New Violin Family Association (NVFA) Newsletter 2, Winter 2004, p. 13. 4 “Violas Product of Montclair,” Newark News, November 8, 1953.
5 Catgut Acoustical Society Newsletter 75, November 1, 1975, p. 26.
“Swiss Cheese” Violin
The last experimental violin that Carleen Hutchins created wasthemostdramaticandmemorable.Sometimeintheearly 1980s, inspired by consultations with acousticians Edgar A. G. Shaw and Arthur H. Benade, Hutchins built the “Swiss cheese” violin. Carleen drilled 65 holes 5 mm apart in the ribs around the entire perimeter of a Stradivari-model violin. She then plugged the holes with corks to test the air resonance inside the cavity of the violin. Experiments with this violin spanned 18 years.
“Le Gruyere” made quite a sensation at the 11th Annual Confer- ence on Acoustics in Paris when Hutchins persuaded German physicist Jurgen Meyer, a fine violinist, to play the violin as she removed the corks one by one. But soon Meyer’s skepti- cism turned to amazement as the sound changed. Hutchins explained: “The relationship of the body cavity resonances to the openings of the f-holes is so sensitive that removing just one or two corks makes the violin sound thin and scratchy. When all the holes are plugged, which loads the ribs with the mass of 65 corks, the violin still has a good sound.”6
A Feminine Stradivari? Breast Cancer and Viola
SUS 23
“What is the feminine of Stradivari? He had pupils and great fame; you will too!”7 Such praise from Saunders in March of 1953 was both exciting and unsettling for Carleen because she was increasingly torn in too many directions, trying to balance fiddle making with Berger and Saunders alongside a
complicated home life.
Hundreds of conflicting air currents swirl inside the violin. The rush of air escaping through the f-holes amounts to a 10 mph wind, most of which escapes as heat rather than sound. But there would be no sound without the escape hatch of the sound holes. By 1956, Carleen Hutchins had so much going
on in her life, she felt overwhelmed. With no escape hatch, something had to give.
On December 2, 1956, Carleen sat in room 756 at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center (New York City), the day before surgery, having stowed viola SUS 23 in her closet.8
6 NVFA Newsletter 2, Winter 2004, p. 13.
7 Frederick A. Saunders, Personal Letter to Carleen M. Hutchins,
March 9, 1953.
8 Family Log, II-103.
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