In an Indianapolis hotel room in 2010, in an experiment worthy of a heist film, world-class violinists put on welders' goggles so they could not see what they were playing, and were handed a mixture of instruments: violins by Antonio Stradivari worth millions, and modern violins a few years old. Asked which they preferred and which they would take home, the soloists — playing blind — chose the new instruments more often than the old masters. When researchers repeated the exercise in Paris in 2012 and later with audiences in concert halls, the results held. Three centuries of mystique met a blindfold, and the blindfold won on points. The finding delighted headline writers, enraged dealers — and did approximately nothing to the price of a Stradivarius.
Antonio Stradivari worked in Cremona, northern Italy, from the 1660s until his death in 1737, allegedly still making instruments in his nineties. His workshop produced perhaps 1,100 instruments — violins mostly, but also cellos, violas, guitars and mandolins — of which roughly 650 survive. The instruments from his so-called golden period, about 1700 to 1720, are the trophies: violins with names and biographies, like the "Messiah", which sits in Oxford's Ashmolean Museum in almost unplayed condition, and the "Lady Blunt", named for Lord Byron's granddaughter, which sold in 2011 for $15.9 million — a record at the time — in a charity auction for Japanese tsunami relief. Cremona's other dynasties matter too: quiz setters love the Guarneri family, whose greatest member, Guarneri "del Gesù", made the violins some soloists (including, famously, Paganini, who played one called "Il Cannone") prefer to Strads.
The theories
Why should seventeenth-century Cremonese boxes sound supernatural? The theories are a genre of their own. The most romantic is the Little Ice Age hypothesis: Stradivari's spruce grew during the Maunder Minimum, a period of reduced solar activity and long cold European winters, producing slow, even tree-ring growth and unusually dense, stiff wood that modern forests cannot replicate. Rival explanations credit the varnish — endlessly analysed for secret ingredients, from volcanic ash to insect-derived resins — or chemical treatments: one line of research found evidence the wood was treated with mineral preservatives, possibly against woodworm, that altered its acoustics. Others point to simple attrition: the surviving Strads are the good ones, lovingly maintained, while three centuries of mediocre instruments went to firewood. And luthiers note the least mystical factor of all — Stradivari was a supreme craftsman refining a design over seventy years, and geometry, not magic, is most of a violin.
The blind tests suggest a further, humbling possibility: that the Stradivarius premium is substantially a story we tell ourselves. The Paris and Indianapolis studies, led by acoustician Claudia Fritz with violin maker Joseph Curtin, found soloists could not reliably tell old from new, and listeners in halls did not prefer the old Italians either. Critics of the studies objected that hotel rooms and even concert-hall sessions cannot capture how an instrument "opens up" over years of partnership, and that the specific Strads tested may not have been the finest. The argument continues, politely, in acoustics journals — while in the market, the verdict is unanimous and unbothered.
The asset class
Because that is what a Stradivarius now is: an asset. Prices climbed throughout the twentieth century and accelerated in the twenty-first; instruments trade privately for eight-figure sums, are bought by foundations, banks and billionaires, and are loaned to soloists the way racehorses are placed with jockeys. Most concert violinists could no more buy the Strad they play than a curator could buy the Rembrandt. The instruments travel with paperwork, insurers and occasionally police escorts; thefts — like that of the "Gibson ex Huberman", stolen twice from Bronisław Huberman, once from his Carnegie Hall dressing room, and hidden by the thief for half a century — furnish the mythology with crime chapters.
In the end the mystique and the science may simply be answering different questions. The blindfold tests ask whether a Strad sounds measurably better; the market and the concert stage ask what it means to hold one. A violinist playing wood that Stradivari planed while Bach was alive is buying continuity, provenance and nerve as much as decibels. The new violins keep winning the listening tests — and the old ones keep winning everything else.
Quiz nuggets
- Antonio Stradivari worked in Cremona, Italy, dying in 1737; of perhaps 1,100 instruments made, roughly 650 survive.
- His "golden period" is usually dated to about 1700–1720; the pristine "Messiah" Strad is kept in Oxford's Ashmolean Museum.
- The "Lady Blunt" Stradivarius sold for $15.9 million in 2011 in an auction for Japanese tsunami relief.
- Blind tests in Indianapolis (2010) and Paris (2012) found top soloists often preferred new violins to Strads.
- The Little Ice Age theory credits dense spruce grown during the cold Maunder Minimum for the Strad sound; Paganini favoured a Guarneri "del Gesù" called "Il Cannone".