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Period gut strings versus modern gut strings. Which is the difference?
What do I mean exactly when I speak about modern gut?
Period wind instruments have very different tones for each note, due to construction limits, resulting in the very different sound of every key.
Today Cmajor can sound exactly like B major, or Ebemoll major, in the past they sounded very different.
This difference was the colour palette of composers.
During the ages, music moved to find more evenness from note to note, and also in the bowed family, we can notice that early bows gave a very different articulation from the modern one.
Period strings, being so different in gauges in the same set, from extremely thin to “as big as can still move” in the same instrument, resulting in a more colourful palette, more dynamics, and a different sound of each string, due to the different reaction of a certain gauge under the bow.
Modern strings are more even, they tend to be of the same gauge in one set, their goal is homogeneity.
So with modern instruments, the responsibility for a colourful performance is entirely on the musician.
Good or bad I cannot tell, I love both, your choice it's up to you!
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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
1/8 violin, seen by chance in a workshop in Italy. 1/8 violin, seen by chance in a workshop in Italy. What can we see from this? Same gauges as big violins, so violin strings. 1st missing. The 4th has as a core a 1st string. So, strings from the 20th century. 2nd and 3rd medium twist angle, 4th
Read MoreSavarez in strings history. From the castle of Savaresse Sarra, in Musellaro (a village just close to Salle), to Paris: a family of string makers who set one of the largest string factories in 18th and 19th century (the largest outside Italy), with more than 400 hired workers, all coming from Salle, Musellaro and Bolognano
Read MoreJames Hill, Great ukulele virtuoso from Canada, playing a romantic song on my uke strung with gut strings… can’t you feel the sound of the 30s?
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