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| RIN:010 |
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OLD VERSUS NEW IN CELLO
TESTING: |
| 1. It was a dark and stormy night. December 3, 1990.
Blizzards and earthquakes were predicted. So what else could go
wrong? Fifty hearty, undaunted, rugged, spirited, individualists
(i.e. cellists) elevated themselves to the 66th floor of the big
black Sears tower with ears determined to hear and learn the
truth. In a large, beautiful conference room of Schiff, Hardin
& Waite through the courtesy of Larry Block, a law partner in
the firm, the Chicago Cello Society
gathered to repeat the test of celli which was conducted at the
Fourth Cello Congress under the direction of Robert Cauer; our
test however aimed at being a new and improved version of the
test which was reported in the September/October, 1990 issue of Strings Magazine. 2. Testing old instruments against new is probably as old as instrument making. What is the benchmark? At the beginning of this century in 1910, Paul Kaul made a cello under the direction of Dr. Chenantais which won over the "Davidoff" Strad in a sound contest in France. It would be interesting to find that cello and repeat the test today. The "Davidoff" Strad now belongs to Yo-Yo Ma. Paul Kaul's book about this test is La Ouerelle des Anciens et des Modernes, Bretagne, Ch. Marcaud, Nantes, 1927. |
| 3. In this country, in an issue of Overtones
from 1940, a very interesting
comparison of old
and new instruments was published. Moennig made a quartet of instruments to match those
used by the Curtis String Quartet. In a concert tour, after the
quartet gave its performance on their original instruments, they
played behind a screen on both the new and the old quartet of
instruments. They continued this experiment at the remainder of
the concerts on the tour, alternating between beginning the
experiment on the original and then on the new instruments. The
audience voted on which set of instruments they liked best. The audience always chose the second set This little study which set out to test instruments
encountered a new problem: a psychoacoustical
factor. (I wonder how often the person who plays first in an
audition gets the job.) 4. In November, 1989 at the Violin Society of America meeting in Oberlin, there was some discussion on the performance on new and old instruments and bows. However, no test was conducted. 5. The tests in August at the Fourth American Cello Congress and in December by the Chicago Cello Society are the latest attempts to compare old and new instruments. In Chicago, we attempted to improve on the Arizona test by (1) providing guide lines on the ballot for judging the instruments, (2) having two cellists doing the playing to show that different players can make an instrument sound different, and (3) adding passages to extend the playing to the outside limits of the instrument. In Arizona, a scale was played in first position on the three lower stings and continued up the A string. In Chicago, a two octave scale was played on each string. In addition, passages which included all different playing requirements were selected. |
| 6. Loren Brown, Charlotte Lehnhoff, David Sanders, Kim Scholes and I worked for hours to improve on the Arizona test. Pages and pages of test ballots were reduced to one page. Passages to be played were discussed. It was decided that two players would be better than one. This was probably the best improvement to the Arizona test in that the player's score of the instruments gave an interesting result: the combined scores washed each other out. Loren Brown played the first round, and Kim Scholes played the second. (There was a bias here, because each of the players owned one of the old instruments being used in the test.) In the second round, the order of instruments was changed. The first round played one to eleven. The second round was played even then odd: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11. The modern celli were all from Chicago area makers: Carl Becker, Gary Garavaglia, Bernard Gutterman, August Olshovy, Günther Reuter, and T. Lynn Spiegel. Bravo and thanks to the Chicago makers for such good instruments. The old instruments were by Grancino, Kennedy, Mantegazza, Montagnana, and Rugeri. The results were: 1 (best instrument)-old; 2-new; 3-new; 4-old; 5-new; 6-old; 7-new; 8-old; 9-old; 10-new; 11-new. Everyone was to remember their ballot number. The ballots were handed back after the voting. The identity of the instruments has been kept secret to protect their value. |
| 7. In attempting to improve the test we
encountered different problems than in the original test. (I, for
one, would not buy an instrument based on this type of test.)
Some of the problems with the test became obvious during the
evening. The number of instruments being tested was too large.
The audience became sleepy after such long attentive listening.
The whole program lasted three hours, including the counting of
the ballots. Letting the voting audience in on the playing order
for the second round was a mistake. (I found myself listening and
being guided by my earlier vote in order to be consistent.) 8. There were too many variables; string length, endpin length and tonal focal point, for example. Not meeting standard string length can diminish the value of an old instrument. A player may not be able to play the instrument in tune on the first try. To find the best tonal focal point of an instrument takes a while and is certainly impossible on the first try while blindfolded. (Loren and Kim were blindfolded so they wouldn't be able to tell which instrument they were playing. They even had trouble identifying their own instruments. Try it yourself some time, but be careful!!) 9. In talking with Robert Cauer after the Chicago test, he thought that an interesting aspect of the test would be the number of consistent voters in a test where the voter didn't know that the instruments were played in a different order in the second round. Cauer stated that he thought the test was useful in showing students and young professionals who are auditioning for orchestras that they do not have to have outrageously expensive instruments. A well made modern instrument can serve just as well. |
| 10. With many scientific experiments, what one
sets out to prove and what is finally proven is not always the
same. With most scientific experiments
done with string instruments, the problem of unwanted variables
has never been adequately solved. It could be argued that the
same bad test produced the same bad results. 11. The size of the sample determines the precision of the test. What was the sample in our test? Two overly long passages played 22 times is not a very large sample. In a recent article in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, concert halls were compared for their acoustic excellence. Machines were used to listen and excessive math was used to compute the results. I wonder if this study is any more valid than the Chicago Cello Society's test. 12. Instead of throwing away the mother of canned worms, perhaps a different test could be devised. A test of one on one over a period of days in which the lesser instruments were eliminated is how most people select an instrument. The Chicago Cello Society's test had some good results. We learned something and it made us all more humble but not as humble as the goof who predicted the earthquake. |
| 13. Editor's note: There are
several other points that I think need to be mentioned in the
summing up of this test. The
sound of an instrument is very subjective. Some cellists like a bright, brilliant sound, some
like a dark, warmer sound. The room an instrument is played in
can drastically change the sound of the instrument. Some
instruments sound great in a large hall with a lot of wood. Put
the same instrument into a small room with a carpet, and it
closes up. An instrument not in proper adjustment can't be judged
properly. (One of the new instruments at the test had a bridge
that was too low so when either of the players tried to play very
loud, the string would hit the fingerboard, causing a raspy
sound. With a higher bridge, this instrument obviously would have
sounded better.) A different bow can make a very big difference
in the sound of an instrument. These are all things that cannot
be computed in a test. 14. While there are many new instruments that sound better than many old instruments, and vice versa, it is the individual instrument that sounds better or worse, not all of them as a group. We can't automatically say that all Strad cellos will sound better than all modem instruments. Each instrument has to be judged on its own merits, and should be judged at the place where the player doss most of his or her work on the instrument, as well as most of his or her practicing. I've taken instruments from a large room where they sounded fantastic, then played them in my carpeted living room and been unable to tolerate the sound under my ear. 15. The list goes on and on. It was an extremely interesting night and my thanks to all who participated and attended. |
