This
is
one of the
most
important aspects of violin set-up. As any violinist of any age will
agree,
choosing the right strings can be a matter of much agonising,
experimenting and
misunderstanding, and there is no greater satisfaction than that of
finding the
perfect stringing for one’s instrument. It has a profound impact on the
sound,
articulation, feel, balance and blending capacity of the violin, and it
is
worth investing considerable effort in getting the stringing right.
For a full
account, both
scholarly and practical, of baroque stringing,
Oliver Webber's Rethinking Gut
Strings: a Guide for Players of Baroque Instruments is available
from King's Music
In
the early years of
experimenting with Baroque instruments, it was deemed sufficient simply
to
replace metal strings with gut in order to approach the 17th
and 18th
century sound-world. Recent research has shown that there is a good
deal more
to it than that. (You can find a selected reading
list here
if you’d like to pursue this fascinating and tricky topic.) George
Stoppani and
Oliver Webber have been at the forefront of this research, and, at Real Guts
they
have pioneered the practical applications of this research. They have
been
responsible for the historical stringing of hundreds of instruments
world-wide,
and a number of entire orchestras, including the Gabrieli Players.
Differences
between “standard” and
historical Baroque
stringing
What
this research has shown
is that the standard stringing used on most Baroque violins today has
been
based on a number of misunderstandings, and consequently does little to
imitate
the true Baroque sound. There are several aspects in which true
historical
stringing differs from this “standard” stringing:
Equal
tension
This is
the most fundamental
and far-reaching difference. The modern system of stringing, which was
developed towards the end of the 18th century and has remained in
place until today, has the highest tension on the E string and the
lowest on
the G. This system is ideally suited to other aspects of the modern
set-up
which developed around the same time: higher bridge and angled neck,
larger bass bar etc.
The
system in place before
the middle of the 18th century was equal tension: each string had
the same tension. Note that the tension is the horizontal stretching
force in
the string – this is not to be confused with the vertical force acting
through
the bridge onto the belly of the instrument.
In
practice, equal tension
means much thicker strings at the lower end of the instrument, as the
following
table shows:
Comparative gauges of modern and
historical Baroque
violin strings:
Comparative tensions
of
modern and historical Baroque violin strings: 
Another
way of imagining the
difference is in terms of pitch: the standard system of tension is
roughly
equivalent to tuning the A string down to G, the D down to B and the G
down to
Eb! So this is by no means a subtle refinement, but rather a radical
re-think
of the sound and balance of the instrument.
click
on image
Equal
tension stringing on the bass violin by
Stoppani, used in the Vespers recording.
Note the colour, translucency
and thickness of the
lower strings.
Photo: James Gilham
Wound
strings
Wound
strings were invented in the 1650s for use on the lowest strings of
bass
instruments - “the basses of viols, violins and lutes” according to
Playford in
1664:
John
Playford’s advertisement in “An
Introduction to the Skill of Music”, 4th edition, London 1664
They were
an attempt to solve
the problem of resonance often associated
with very thick bass strings, especially those of lesser quality. This
is
perhaps best illustrated by the bass violin, the largest instrument in
the
regular violin band, often tuned like the modern cello but also
sometimes
(especially in France
and England)
a tone
lower. There are two approaches to getting sufficient string tension to
achieve
a good bass sound on this instrument: you can have a large instrument
with a
long string-length, or a smaller instrument with thicker strings. The
larger
instrument succeeds better tonally, but is awkward to play, especially
in fast
passages; the smaller instrument gains agility but loses resonance in
the bass.
It was not possible to achieve a ringing bass tone and
a truly manageable size. Winding a gut string with metal
increases the density, which means a thinner and/or shorter string can
do the
same job: this means it is possible to have a manageably-sized
instrument with
a good rich bass tone. It has been convincingly argued by Stephen Bonta [1]
that such an
instrument became known as the violoncello.
While
there is much to be said about the development and use of wound strings
(they
were by no means universally taken up), our decision for the Monteverdi
violins
was relatively uncontroversial, as our target period was some 40-50
years
before the invention of this technique!
|
|
|
| Viola
with all-gut
stringing |
Wound
C string by Real
Guts
in
historical proportions |
Commercial wound C
string
Note the relative
thickness of the C strings.
Viola
after Guarneri (1676) by Robin Aitchison. |
Level
of
tension
It
is a commonly repeated myth that Baroque stringing was generally at a
lower
tension than modern. This is probably caused by a confusion between
string
tension and the force acting vertically through the bridge: this latter
force
was indeed lower in early set-ups, because the lower bridge and
straighter neck
mean that the strings pass over the bridge at a shallower angle:
String
tension (ST) and Bridge Force (BF) in one
of the Stoppani violins (1) and a classical violin
after Stradivarius,
late 18th century
set-up, by Robin Aitchison. In the early baroque set-up (1), BF is
about 35% of
ST; in the classical set-up (2), BF is about 45% of ST.
This
confusion, combined with ignorance of equal tension, is what had led to
the
typical “Baroque” stringing we so often find today, in which a graded
tension
stringing with very light strings is used. This has ironically created
a system
of stringing almost certainly never known before the second
half of the
20th century!
[1]
“From
violone to violoncello: a
question of
strings”, Journal of the American
Musical Instrument Society, iii
(1977),
64-99. Many of Bonta’s other writings will be of interest to
visitors
to this
site: highly recommended is his collection “Studies in Italian Sacred
and Instrumental
Music in the 17th Century”, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Aldershot, 2003.
|
