Stradivari v. The Moderns

This survey itself is not that interesting, but there are two minor points that caught my eye.

A less respectful view of Dr. Fritz’s study is offered by the violinist Earl Carlyss, a longtime member of the Juilliard String Quartet. “It’s a totally inappropriate way of finding out the quality of these instruments,” he said. The auditions, he noted, took place in a hotel room, but violinists always need to assess how an instrument will project in a concert hall. He likened the test to trying to compare a Ford and a Ferrari in a Walmart parking lot. 
“The modern instruments are very easy to play and sound good to your ear, but what made the old instruments great was their power in a hall,” he said.
The anti-Walmart snobbery aside, that's a good point. However, I am reminded of Eric Blair's remarks that it is recording -- and not concert halls -- that offer us the real power of music in our current age. Just in the last two weeks, we've listened to recordings of songs that we might not ever have heard before the internet age; now, they're free for exploration. Thus, the "power in a hall" standard may need to be rethought, even by concert musicians. The question may become "How optimized is it for our best current recording and playback techniques?" The other remark that I found amusing was this defense by the study's author:
Dr. Fritz acknowledged that her study used few violins. But it is quite difficult, she noted, to get owners to lend out their million-dollar instruments to be played by blindfolded strangers.
That surely must be true. It must be doubly true that it is hard to get such loans when the purpose of the study is to undermine the legend on which the value of their million-dollar investment is based!

13 comments:

DL Sly said...

"I am reminded of Eric Blair's remarks that it is recording -- and not concert halls -- that offer us the real power of music in our current age".

I'm afraid I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. I have always considered myself an audiophile and while I have probably bent the budget more times than I should have to buy the best electronic equipment I could afford, nothing can compare with the cocoon of rich, full sound that encompasses you when sitting in the great halls.
Nothing.
0>;~}

DL Sly said...

That's not to disrespect the quality that one can find in today's best electronic equipment. It's just that, IM(NS)HO, it's really not an honest comparison.
0>;~}

Grim said...

I'm not sure, Sly.

I don't deny the power of the experience of live music, and certainly recorded music (at least for now) pales in comparison. It will probably always pale, because there is a certain energy to being present for a live performance: when it is done well, the audience becomes engaged in it in a way that recorded music does not capture.

Yet consider: at least 90%, and maybe 99%, of the music I love I've never heard live. You can't go see the Clancy Brothers live anymore; or Elvis, rumors to the contrary aside. Even in terms of a performance of a piece they wrote, I'm far more likely to hear it on a recording than in an theater, or a grand hall, or even a pub.

Thus, if I were a musician with a limited budget, I might well be more concerned with how my music records than how it sounds live. If 99% of my listeners will never see me live, it may be the reasonable concern.

bthun said...

Howdy SLY!

"I have always considered myself an audiophile and while I have probably bent the budget more times than I should have to buy the best electronic equipment I could afford, nothing can compare with the cocoon of rich, full sound that encompasses you when sitting in the great halls."

Been there, spent that, --still have an old pair of Klipsch speakers, and Crown amps in the basement-- then we started having children... Along about that time I discovered that properly selected audio components installed in an old pickup's cab were quite sufficient for anything that's been recorded, from early Grand Ole Opry radio recordings through Deutsche Grammophon releases. For that reason I would never presume to judge the merits of one fiddle against another, either recorded or in a music/concert hall.

IMHO, it's all good, as long as no one tries to sing or hum along.

Now judging American iron such as a 2012 Shelby Mustang or a 2012 Corvette ZR1's performance against a prancing, over-priced, delicate, and demanding Italian example of automotive frou-frou, yeah, I'll jump into that one with both feet and a stop-watch*.

*HillWilliam Reports®... Your source for views and opinions as seen through the bottom of a Mason jar out, in the sticks.

MikeD said...

I preface this with the admission I am no violinist, nor great lover of violins in general. However, in the objections of Earl Carlyss, I see the same kind of blind rejection of anything that challenges his worldview that I see when discussing super expensive audio cables with "audiophiles". They swear up, down, left, right, and center that they can hear the difference between coated copper wire and their $50/ft gold plated, electromagnetically shielded speaker wire. Never mind that physics says they're wrong. Never mind that if put to a blind test they can't tell (assuming they'll submit to one). They just KNOW that there's a difference. They're CONVINCED that electrons flow differently through their wires than through copper.

E Hines said...

I don't deny the power of the experience of live music....

Yet consider: at least 90%, and maybe 99%, of the music I love I've never heard live.


But these are separate powers of music, and the musician is addressing different audiences with those powers.

It's certainly true that hearing the music live in a quality hall--and in the presence of fellow audience members has a power of its own. But that power comes from the real nature of the music.

On the other hand, there is a power in being able to reach a far broader audience than is available even with fully packed halls year-round. But that power stems from the breadth of audience reached and the promptness of that reaching, once a minimum level of quality has been reached; it has little to do with the power of the music itself, which in its recorded form cannot be strong as live in good acoustics. The variability of quality in the music we've posted here demonstrates the distinction. Indeed, that variability always will be with us. The standard of "minimum level of quality" is itself variable. When 78s first came out, they were the cat's meow, but today we sneer at such poor quality reproduction.

I agree with Carlyss that the comparison is invalid, not because one can't hear important differences, as MikeD describes, but because what was being measured was invalid. Better to see which instrument performs well in its design milieu and in front of its design audience.

Eric Hines

Anonymous said...

Another consideration is how much of classical music's dynamics gets clipped by digital recordings and can be affected by the physical arrangement of the orchestra. Anecdote - I've listened to Vaughn Williams' "Variations on a theme by Thomas Tallis" for years and love it. The regional symphony orchestra performed the piece last year and wow! All of a sudden I'm hearing the echo effects and the imitations of double-choir liturgical music that Vaughn Williams had in mind when he composed the piece. It was a totally different experience.

I agree with Grim that recordings are how a lot of us hear most of our music now. So who knows; we may be reaching the point where certain instrumentalists have "recording instruments" and "concert instruments" in their collections.

MAB

bthun said...

"Never mind that physics says they're wrong."

Objectively, yeah. The oscilloscope nor the waveform analysis of A vs. B in an anechoic chamber does not lie.

However, the perception of music/sound, never mind the prototypical audiophile's off the edge of the map, there be monsters conviction of the superiority of oxygen-free, 6 gauge, copper cable with 24K gold plated connectors versus 16 gauge, zip-cord, speaker cable, or Class A versus Class AB amplifiers, or even vacuum tube versus transistor amplification circuitry, only goes to show how, ahhh, subjective any given persons appreciation of music can be.

I stand by my if you like what you're hearing, it's all good position. Any other judgment is, IMHO, an argument with, at best, an agree to disagree end point.

Grim said...

You make a good point, MAB.

Texan99 said...

I don't believe any of this stuff without a blind audio test.

Eric said...

DL misunderstands my point.

It isn't that recordings are better than live; it's that recordings make the music infinitely more accessible than it ever was before. I don't think I ever actually spoke to quality of sound.

douglas said...

While I don't think it matters to the listener (whether or not the extreme audiophile stuff makes a difference), I do think the player of an instrument might play better on a million dollar Stradivarius than on a cheaper, supposedly lesser instrument. The placebo effect is real.

I was also going to suggest musicians have two instruments for different settings, but in light of this thought, I'm reconsidering.

bthun said...

"The placebo effect is real."

Now that can be proved.