I like your tone: research suggests why older violins sound so good
Violinists love to play on antique instruments, with some, such as Stradivari violins, costing millions of pounds. Now, scientists have discovered that certain older instruments really do produce a special sound; namely, stronger and more audible combination tones – bell-like “phantom” tones that not everyone can hear, but which are produced when two musical notes are played simultaneously.
The most famous of these tones are Tartini tones. Named after the Italian composer and violinist, Giuseppe Tartini, who discovered them in 1714, these
terzo suono or third sounds had, until recently, been considered pure auditory illusions – generated through the distortion of various frequencies within the inner ear.
“It’s a very soft, kind of bell-like vibration, and a key point is that it always sounds the same note depending on the chord that you play,” said Christian Lloyd, the managing editor of The Strad magazine. “They are of interest to musicians because you can only hear them if you’re playing exactly in tune.”
Giovanni Cecchi at the University of Florence, Italy, and colleagues recently discovered that the vibrations responsible for generating combination tones can be detected and recorded outside the ear – but only if the two notes are simultaneously played by the same violin. Now, further investigations have revealed that they are far more discernible on some violins than others.
The team recruited a professional violinist to play a series of two-note combinations, known as dyads, on five different violins: a Tononi violin dating from 1700, an anonymous 18th-century Italian violin; a 19th-century instrument manufactured by Henry Lockey Hill of London; a handcrafted violin dating from 1971; and a modern, factory-made instrument.
The research, published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, found that combination tones were much stronger and easily perceptible in higher-quality older instruments, compared with newer, lower quality ones. “The strongest one was found in an old Italian violin, made in Bologna in 1700 by the famous luthier Carlo Annibale Tononi,” said Cecchi. “Combination tones were negligibly small in violins of poor quality.”
Until now, combination tones generated by violins were considered too small to be heard, and therefore of little importance. “Our results change this view by showing that combination tones generated by violins of good quality can be easily heard, affecting the perception of the intervals,” said Cecchi, adding that combination tones from good violins could play an important role in people’s musical experience: “The harmonic content of the dyad is
enriched by them and this is positively perceived by the listeners.”
Lloyd said the discovery that these tones could be detected outside the ear was significant – although he disputed the idea that only older violins would be capable of making them. “With the advances in technology and the availability of premium quality wood, today’s best makers are producing instruments on a par with those of Stradivari and Guarneri,” he said.
Future work will focus on analysing a greater number and variety of violins to identify the precise physical components responsible for generating these tones, Cecchi said.