As a musical instrument, the violin reached the peak of its perfection at the hands of Italian artisans in the 17th and early 18th centuries. The most famous of these was Antonio Stradivari who produced over a thousand violins between 1665 and 1730. Since then, it seems, there have been no significant improvements in the instrument's design.
The exact ingredients for unusual sweetness in a violin have proved to be elusive. Superior tone is generally attributed to special qualities inherent in the wood, the method of assembly, and the quantity and nature of the varnish used. But recent research suggests the weather, too, may be a factor.
Musicians, it seems, are almost unanimous in their view that a violin that is played regularly produces a sweeter sound than one that is seldom used, or a fortiori, an instrument that is new and has not, as yet, been played at all.
Scientists considering this phenomenon decided it must be related to a characteristic of the wood: if the body of the instrument is stiff and taut, it will produce a sweet, well-rounded, longer-lasting sound, but if not, the acoustic oscillations will be damped, and the sound produced will be rather dull in tone. To see what the effect of playing a violin might be, the researchers induced vibrations of 10 cycles per second to a beam of spruce, a wood commonly used for sounding membranes, continuously over a 48 hours period; this simulated, they reckoned, the effect of regular playing. They found that the induced vibration had a significant effect in making the wood stiffer, thus reducing its tendency to damp the sound. More interestingly, they found that the effect of such applied vibration depends on the humidity.
When the humidity was in the region of 45 per cent, typical of a dry summer day, the continuous vibration made little difference to the stiffness of the wood; but when the relative humidity was high, in the region of 90 per cent, the vibrations made the wood noticeably stiffer, and there was a corresponding decrease in what they called its damping coefficient. Moreover, this change induced in the wood seemed to be of a permanent, rather than a transitory, nature.
If all this is to be believed, it seems that the tone of a violin may indeed be improved by its being played in, so to speak, with an extended bout of use. Moreover, the process ought to be particularly effective in Ireland, where the prevailing relative humidity is high.
But more research is obviously needed to fully explain the effect of weather on the reputedly seductive sweetness of a Stradivarius.