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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...
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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
Everything 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…or what else?A special knot from iconography Do you miss your wolf tone eliminator device? Would you like a bit stiffer string but you cannot get another one right away? Maybe old painting are giving us a suggestion… If you have other ideas about this knot, please share in the comments below this video, there’s
Read MoreThe big political changes occurred between the 19th and 20th century completely changed the physiognomy of string production. Between 19th and 20th century big changes occurred, so much that we can hardly recognize the musical string of the 20th cent as an evolution of the Italian gut string of the 18th century. First of all during
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