Tuesday, March 2, 1999 at 2:00 p.m. in the H.J.E. Reid Auditorium.
The violin makers of the 16th, 17th, and early 18th Centuries such as the Amatis, Stradivari, and Guarneri del Jesu must have used the age-old intuitive science of instrument making to create their amazingly effective violins left to us today. The first actual measurements of violin vibrating properties apparently were done by the physicist Felix Savart working with the famous French violin maker J. B. Vuillaume in the early 19th Century. This work was followed by the contributions of Helmholtz, Lord Rayley, and others later in the 1800s. Then, with the development of the vacuum tube and the beginnings of electronic testing in the 1920s, considerable violin research was done in Italy by Pasqualini and in Germany by Backhaus and Meinel, with F. A. Saunders of Harvard University getting into the act in the 1930s.
The developments in solid-state test equipment and computers since the 1960s and 1970s as well as optical technologies have created a spate of violin research at all levels. Investigators are probing deeply into the interactive physical and acoustical properties of violins by using circuit theory, holographic interferometry, modal analysis, finite element analysis, electron microscopy, surface intensity measurements, aero and fluid dynamics, and even CT scans.
Dr. Hutchins will discuss and illustrate how the research of the last two centuries has contributed to four important developments today in the application of acoustics to the construction and adjustment of superior violins today: (1.) Free plate tuning; (2.) mode tuning of finished instruments; (3.) duplication of the tonal qualities of fine instruments; and (4.) the Violin Octet family of instruments, which will be discussed and demonstrated as far as time permits in the lecture.
Carleen Maley Hutchins (1911 - ) is the cofounder and driving force behind the Catgut Acoustical Society, creator-in-chief of the Violin Octet family of instruments, a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, a Life Member of the Audio Engineering Society, and a trained violin maker who has been working on the interface of violin making and science for more than 50 years.
She has received numerous awards, including two Guggenheim Fellowships, four grants from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, the Silver Medal of the Acoustical Society of America, and the first recipient of the Carleen Maley Hutchins medal of the Catgut Acoustical Society. She received an Honorary Fellowship from the Acoustical Society of America (the Society's highest award, bestowed only 14 times, the first of which was to Thomas Alva Edison). She has received four honorary doctorates: Doctor of Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology; Doctor of Fine Arts, Hamilton College; Doctor of Science, St. Andrews Presbyterian College; and Doctor of Laws, Concordia University, Montreal.
In addition to constructing over 100 instruments of the new Violin Octet family, she has constructed 75 violins, 165 violas, and 12 cellos. By studying the acoustical properties of each instrument during construction and assembly (as related to its final tonal characteristics), her work has resulted in a test that violin makers worldwide are using to produce consistently fine sounding instruments (Scientific American, October 1981).
She has published over 100 technical papers, taught violin making to over 50 students, and given over 200 lecture-demonstrations with the Violin Octet. She has twice written the violin acoustics section of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians and edited two sets of volumes of Collected Papers in Violin Acoustics covering the seminal work from 1800 to 1993.
At the present Dr. Hutchins continues the construction of new instruments and her research into the acoustical properties of stringed instruments, lectures occasionally, and serves as the permanent secretary of the Catgut Acoustical Society and the director of the Octet Development Center.