QI: The Book of General Ignorance by John Lloyd

Author:John Lloyd [Lloyd, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Reference, Humor, Curiosities & Wonders, Questions & Answers
ISBN: 9780571273782
Publisher: Faber & Faber, Limited
Published: 2010-10-07T08:55:14+00:00

What are violin strings made from?

Violin strings are not made of catgut, and never have been.

This is a myth started by medieval Italian violin-makers who had discovered that sheep intestines made good strings for their instruments. Killing a cat brought terribly bad luck, so they protected their invention by telling everyone else their strings were made from the intestines of cats.

The legend was that a saddle-maker called Erasmo, in the Abruzzi mountain village of Salle, near Pescara, heard the wind blowing through the strands of drying sheep’s gut one day and thought that they might make a good string for the early violin known as the renaissance fiddle.

Salle became the centre of violin string production for 600 years and Erasmo was canonised as the patron saint of string-makers.

Bad earthquakes in 1905 and 1933 brought an end to the industry in Salle itself, but two of the world’s leading string makers – D’Addario and Mari – are still run by Sallese families.

Until 1750 all violins used sheep’s-gut strings. The gut must be removed from the animal when warm, stripped of fat and waste and soaked in cold water. The best sections are then cut into ribbons and twisted and scraped until a string of the required thickness is made.

Today a combination of gut, nylon and steel are used, although most aficionados still believe that gut produces the warmest tone.

Richard Wagner circulated a terrible story to discredit Brahms, whom he loathed. He claimed Brahms had received a gift from Czech composer Antonín Dvořák of a ‘Bohemian sparrow-slaying bow’. With this he allegedly took pot-shots at passing cats from his Viennese apartment window.

Wagner went on: ‘After spearing the poor brutes, he reeled them in to his room after the manner of a trout-fisher. Then he eagerly listened to the expiring groans of his victims and carefully jotted down in his notebook their ante mortem remarks.’

Wagner had never visited Brahms or seen his apartment; there seems to be no record of such a ‘sparrow bow’ existing, let alone being sent by Dvořák.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.