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put holes in the ribs to raise the frequency of the enclosed air.16 For the first prototype, Schelleng eventually hit on using aluminum ribs.
The Violin Octet
According to Carleen, four areas of research had made the new violin family possible: the placement of the main wood and air resonances, tap-tone relationships, methods of putting resonances at desired frequencies, and dimensional scaling.17 Carleen: “We did the right thing for the wrong reason, which was luck. We thought we were scaling to the length of the wood of the box and actually we were scaling to the air inside the box.”18
The premiere concert featuring the new violin family took place on May 20, 1965, at the 92nd Street YMHA (New York City) as part of the Music in Our Time series developed and conducted by violinist Max Polikoff. Henry Brant wrote a special piece for the new violin family, featuring each of the eight violins in expressive solo passages as well as in ensemble.
Conductor Leopold Stokowski and “The Monster” Viola
The morning after the May 20, 1965, debut concert of the Hutchins violin octet at the 92nd Street YHMA, Carleen got a phone call from the infamous conductor Leopold Stokowski, who had been in the audience. Stokowski was all excited about the sound of alto violin because it had “the sound he had always wanted from violas in his orchestra.” But because he could not interest violists in playing a vertical violin, he asked Hutchins to design an ergonomically workable viola with the same sound that could be played da braccio (with an outstretched arm).
In 1969, Carleen met up with Stokowski to unveil her “mon- ster,” a cornerless viola. Hutchins turned the strings and the whole playing arrangement sideways so that the left hand could get with ease up to the bridge. But this design resulted in an awkward imbalance that meant that the viola flopped around despite efforts to keep it steady.
On January 27, 1969, Stokowski wrote Hutchins: “We tested three violas today, your ‘monster’ and two made by Coggin,
16 Interview, Schumacher tape D, D.13-D.14.
17 Hutchins, “Acoustical Parameters of Violin Design Applied to the
Development of a Graduated Series of Violin-Type Instruments,” CMH
Lecture Delivered at the ASA Meeting, May 1963.
18 Interview, Notebook 2, 13.12.
all of them extremely fine tone. Your instrument has wonder- ful depth of tone and yet brilliance above deep tone. Musically, it is extremely great.” Carleen recalled: “Stokowski had a good sense of humor. He said that the sound of it was very great, but that it was hard to handle, that the players didn’t like it — and if you can’t suit the players, you are out of luck.”19
Scientific American and the Catgut Acoustical Society
In November 1962, to the great surprise of Hutchins, Scientific
American published “The Physics of Violins,” a groundbreak- ing cover article by Carleen Hutchins that featured extensive illustrations of “The New Violin Family.” In addition, the cover was a stunning original painting by scientific illustrator Walter Tandy Murch depicting one of Carleen’s basement lab- oratory experiments, a violin hanging vertically in a vibration test chamber, certainly not a traditional position for a violin! (Note that a Murch painting is also on the cover of American Luthier, the book from which this article is excerpted.)
Carleen stated her manifesto: “I believe that, without ignoring the precious heritage of centuries, we really ought to learn how to make consistently better instruments than the old masters did.” Not only had Carleen Hutchins sparked the conversation about violin acoustics, she had done so with a bang. Carleen received more than 200 letters from luthiers and physicists from all over the world. This article put Carleen Hutchins on the map in the violin world. As of 1979, Scientific
American had distributed nearly 30,000 reprints.
As a result of such worldwide interest, this article spurred the formal organization of the Catgut Acoustical Society. On Saturday, May 16, 1963, the Catgut Acoustical Society (see catgutacoustical.org) was born when 12 members of the original technical group gathered around the ping-pong table in the side yard at 112 Essex Avenue, talking violin acoustics all day around a jug of wine and lunch.
The Catgut Acoustical Society created an international community devoted to stringed instrument acoustics by producing and mailing newsletters twice yearly to members around the world for the next 30 years.
The Hutchins Consort LIVE
On January 18, 2000, in the Barclay Theater in Irvine, California, Carleen settled into her chair in the second row to hear a concert she had dreamed of for half a century, the inaugural
19 Hutchins Interview, January 22, 2002, Notebook 3, Youth Tape 9, 63-65.
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