0 comments
How many truths in this short clip?
1. For sure, when you learn to master gut strings you will have a good sound with any instrument or strings, you will earn your personal sound
2. The gestures, are the one of a truth string maker (or of a butcher). I can assure you, it’s like when you see an actor pretending he is playing cello, or a true cello player (so, they were more accurate in the string maker gesture than in the musician’s).
3. Ok, we do not use cat guts nor humans... but anyway it is a strong reference to some historical facts related to string makers:
The patron of string makers is Saint Erasmus, who was one of the first martyrs and was killed by pulling the intestines out of him
Salle, in the Abruzzi Italian region, is the hometown of all the Italian stringmakers (D’Addario, Galli, D’Orazio, Pirastro, Savarez...). Its patron is Beato Roberto from Salle, who was killed in the same way and was found singing odes to God accompanying himself with the sound of his intestines drying on a tree nearby, as they were harp strings.
Salle was at the center of the fights for Italian unification, in the second half of the 19th century. The people was exasperated by poverty and being under a central (and far) law, so many men and women turned themselves into robbers to fight the Italian soldiers. A common way to celebrate their triumph returning to the village was waving high the intestines of the soldiers they killed...
Tags
baroque music, double-bass strings, early music, gut strings, gut strings history, gut strings maintenance, gut strings manufacture, viol strings, viola da gamba strings, viola strings, violin strings, violoncello strings
Thomastick-Infeld in strings history. Two of the greatest innovations of the 20th century come from Thomastick-Infeld, a company based in Wien: in 1914 they patented a machine to use the flat wire for the winding of a string, before of that the winding wire was always round, sometimes polished by hand after the winding process just before
Read More1978, Salle, Italy:There was still one company selling pure gut strings sets following the old Italian tradition. Enrico D’Orazio produced music gut strings until his premature death in 1985.Let’s find out what type of strings are offered in his 1978 catalogue: History is sometimes filled with lucky and wonderful coincidences, but sometimes what could be
Read MoreEverything it’s said in this great video is valid also for gut wound strings. Really clearly explained. We had round or ground wound (hand polished) until…. 1910 when Thomastick patented a machine to wound with flat wire.
Read More