Hear the Only Playable Stradivarius Guitar Left in the World “The Sabionari” Made in 1679

[Larry Mal]

Certainly is a non-offset guitar. And no, it's not a NGD for me since it's not a Gibson.

https://www.cmuse.org/stradivarius-guit ... njYkFeszwk

And frankly, the thing sounds incredible.

[windmill]

Doesn't sound too bad tho.

[mackerelmint]

Yep, that thing sounds amazing, no question.

Maybe I'm basic as fuck, but I wanna hear Mason WIlliams play Classical Gas on that dude.

[PorkyPrimeCut]

Not bad. Not bad at all!

[Embenny]

Baroque music, particularly lute and baroque guitar, were my earliest musical passion. Thanks for posting this.

The article does mistakenly refer to Rolf Lislevand as a luthier though...he is infact a lutenist.

[antisymmetric]

Very glad to have seen that, thanks for sharing!

[Flurko]

This sounds great, thanks for sharing !
It reminds me of this Rob Scallon video about really expensive classical guitars, and I'm wondering which factors made the Stradivarius violin the endgame of violins (unless I'm vastly off about what kind of violins professional players use today), when the classical guitar (gut, then nylon-strung) still evolved for a few centuries, then arrived at today's standard around the end of the 19th century.

[jvin248]

... I'm wondering which factors made the Stradivarius violin the endgame of violins ...

Double blind tests between Strads and modern violins have shown, multiple times, that neither players nor specialist audience listeners could tell which was which. Just like in frequent wine comparisons, when drinkers are given no visual cues from a label experts and commoners alike cannot tell which is a $200 wine and which is a $20 wine.

Back in the day, Strads were expensively sold violins, that only the rich could afford. So you'd get boutique vibes of limited availability when they were new. Thus "Rock Stars" played them "on stage" and so mere mortals soon began associating more emotions on those instruments than physics. Just like today a "Rock Star" player can make a three string shovel sound great.

Because those violins are wood and glue and metal .. most have been well curated over the centuries and at times repaired/maintained by experts and likely improved more than they ever were coming directly from 'the factory'.

Same thing happens with guitars. Run a marginal guitar across the bench of a great repair person and the playability of a guitar becomes less about the factory and more about the guitar tech. Have enough years between the factory and a couple of good guitar repairs or fret levels and people ask "why can't they make guitars like the old days? Like this one right here?"; because the factory didn't actually make them that good. Custom Shop level work was done by one or several repair people over the years turning an average guitar into greatness. All the poorly made guitars or good guitars that were wrecked at the hands of poor players/poor guitar techs vanished into partscasters or landfills so the only surviving examples are now awesome. "They don't make them like they used to" because they never did.

.

[Larry Mal]

... I'm wondering which factors made the Stradivarius violin the endgame of violins ...

Double blind tests between Strads and modern violins...

Yes, but I assume what he meant by "endgame" was the end of the violin's evolutionary period. Most modern violins are based on the Stradivarius design to some degree or the other as I understand it. They were expensive and well regarded violins in their day and considered to sound great, so other violin makers used that as a template.

Kind of like how everyone made a Martin style dreadnaught sooner or later, the design became ubiquitous.

[Larry Mal]

Baroque music, particularly lute and baroque guitar, were my earliest musical passion. Thanks for posting this.

I used to do a lot of location recording for school and otherwise, and one day I went to record a period correct ensemble. That just blew me away how good it was- so, it was an Italian composer and they played the music on the instruments of his day and not the newer versions.

There was a theorbo, which I was really happy to see as I'd read about them but never heard one played live, and a harpsichord and some sort of ur-oboe the details of which I forget.

But what really blew me away was the viola d'amore, which I had never heard of. What a beautiful sounding thing that was, and it just pealed out in the church I was recording in. It was loud and haunting and powerful at times... what a thing. I was as touched as I have ever been by any performance I've ever seen.

What a thing we do with music.

[DeathJag]

That swept me away. Thanks for the post. He forgot to compare that guitar with a $100 classical! (I bet it would still be beautiful.)

[Embenny]

I used to do a lot of location recording for school and otherwise, and one day I went to record a period correct ensemble. That just blew me away how good it was- so, it was an Italian composer and they played the music on the instruments of his day and not the newer versions.

There was a theorbo, which I was really happy to see as I'd read about them but never heard one played live, and a harpsichord and some sort of ur-oboe the details of which I forget.

But what really blew me away was the viola d'amore, which I had never heard of. What a beautiful sounding thing that was, and it just pealed out in the church I was recording in. It was loud and haunting and powerful at times... what a thing. I was as touched as I have ever been by any performance I've ever seen.

What a thing we do with music.

Could it have been an oboe d'amore? Those can be just haunting. And I agree about the viola d'amore, it's an incredible instrument.

Hearing the music of the great composers of the baroque and classical instruments, played by masters on period instruments, is one of those things that truly inspires awe. Studying classical guitar in my early years, I was limited to transcriptions for modern guitar, but I dreamt of someday owning a lute so that I could explore Bach's lute suites in their original form, with their original tonality.

Speaking of incredible baroque instruments, are you familiar with the viola da gamba? If you took a viola d'amore, stretched it to cello size and put gut frets down half the fretboard, you're basically there (it's also played with a "backwards" grip on the bow, with the fingers of the right hand applying tension to the hairs). The crispness of the fretted notes makes it really stand out from a modern cello, and all those extra strings allow for more polyphony than you get in cello music (plus some lower notes you'd only get on a double bass these days).

[Larry Mal]

I am a little familiar with the viola da gamba and have read up on the viol family to some mild extent- I didn't think that the viola d'amore was part of the viols, though, is it? I thought it was kind of its own branch on the family tree but I could be wrong.

I actually looked into having a viola da gamba made for me at some point- I guess I could just buy one now. It never went anywhere but it seemed like a fun idea at the time.

And it may have been an oboe d'amore that I saw that day, truthfully I forget. It was some time ago.

I do remember that I was surprised at the theorbo, you might not have been, but I thought that it would be a much more powerful and commanding instrument but it was very soft and gentle. It did make me realize how hard it has been historically for instrument makers to produce bass sounds and how hard they had to work at it.

I would like a lute, there was actually one for sale here recently on Craigslist of all places. I might skip it and go directly to its ancestor the oud for now, however. That would sure be a lot of fun, wouldn't it?

[shadowplay]

Speaking of incredible baroque instruments, are you familiar with the viola da gamba? If you took a viola d'amore, stretched it to cello size and put gut frets down half the fretboard, you're basically there (it's also played with a "backwards" grip on the bow, with the fingers of the right hand applying tension to the hairs). The crispness of the fretted notes makes it really stand out from a modern cello, and all those extra strings allow for more polyphony than you get in cello music (plus some lower notes you'd only get on a double bass these days).

Do you know Colleen? She uses bass and treble viola de gamba, she talks about it here when discussing the recording of her absolutely wonderful records. You can see her using it live here.

D

[Embenny]

I am a little familiar with the viola da gamba and have read up on the viol family to some mild extent- I didn't think that the viola d'amore was part of the viols, though, is it? I thought it was kind of its own branch on the family tree but I could be wrong.

....
I do remember that I was surprised at the theorbo, you might not have been, but I thought that it would be a much more powerful and commanding instrument but it was very soft and gentle. It did make me realize how hard it has been historically for instrument makers to produce bass sounds and how hard they had to work at it.

No, you're right - the viola da gamba is from a distinct lineage, they just have some similarities (violin style body, nearly double the strings of a violin or cello).

And your point about the Theorbo is well taken. It took time for luthiers to figure out how to get low frequencies out of plucked stringed instruments at a meaningful volume.

Someone asked earlier why the violin seemed to stop evolving so much earlier than the guitar did. If you look at the baroque guitar, its soundbox has less than half the volume (the physical kind) of the "modern" Torres/Hauser design that popped up in the mid-19th century. The lowest note in any of the common baroque guitar tunings was A (a fourth higher than standard guitar tuning) and they were quite quiet and delicate-sounding. Lutes had a similar issue.

The shape/size/bracing developed in the mid-late 19th century was a game-changer and allowed the classical guitar to become the solo instrument we know it as today, where a single player can fill a moderate sized hall with sound.

The violin, however, reached a form much earlier which allowed it to project over an entire orchestra, so the pressure to evolve the design relented at that point (much as it did in the late 1800s for guitar, where we are just in the last couple of decades seeing things like nomex double-tops elevating the design in a meaningful way).

Do you know Colleen? She uses bass and treble viola de gamba, she talks about it here when discussing the recording of her absolutely wonderful records. You can see her using it live here.

D

No, I wasn't familiar with her. I admit I haven't listen to anyone play modern, original music on a viola da gamba before. Thanks for that, lots to explore there.