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When I suggest roughly polished strings instead of smooth heavily polished ones, I often receive a squint like I am interfering with personal choices on musical taste, or with technical issues of an instrument which I have never seen, let alone played. It’s always been difficult for me to explain why I am firm on this
Procession for the translation of the body of beatus Roberto da Salle, its 200th anniversary ( July 2007) Who is following me since the beginning of my Facebook page already saw this several times I’m afraid, sorry… But I simply love this video. I love this music, the mysterious beginning, the explosion of joy, this big
Mari strings, by Daniel Mari (formerly La Bella) Daniel Mari, born in 1927, now Mari strings, previously La Bella.When he was a boy, in Salle and in Sulmona, in the 40s, he helped in the gut strings factory and also in making bells, a particular production in which a branch of his family was specialized,
Savarez 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
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
The innovative concept at D’Addario strings The biggest innovation in strings concept coming from D’Addario was the Helicore set, in which, using a heavier metal in each string, they achieved a full set with the same gauge and same reaction under the bow. A big step in the direction of homogeneous sound in the full range
1978, 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
Carl Flesch witnesses an age of profound changes in string settings. Actually, he wrote right at the time of the first notable changes since the renaissance… Carl Flesch in 1920 was praising the long life of the new steel “e” strings: even more than one week! So comfortable and relaxing for a pro… Watch this video till
…and the creation of the first wound violin A In this video I will read for you a correspondence between Roberto Salerni, an Italian string maker from the 50s, and the famous maker Pietro Sgarabotto.At first, Sgarabotto was anxious to try the wound A, being the A the only pure gut string remaining in a
Why most of the strings factories gave up gut production in the mid of the 20th century? I think there were two reasons for this. Not the advent of metal strings, or modern music, these were consequences. 1. The working conditions were not sustainable any more 2. The factories had to invest huge amount of money for disposal
The oldest certified violin String in the World…from Freiberger Dome. It was far 2005 when Mimmo Peruffo received a call to go to Leipzig Museum and of course, I took the occasion to follow him: there they had found a string certified from 1594, the lower of a three strings piccolo violin… Let’s make a step
An autobiographical letter from Astro Di Russo – part 2 Due to the strong emigration, in 1960 I was forced to leave my village to settle in Naples. In Acerra, a nearby town with about 50,000 inhabitants, I started the production with 140 employees and later, in the 70s, I also opened a manufactury in
