Chemical Distinctions Between Stradivari's Maple and Modern
Chemical distinctions between Stradivari’s maple and modern tonewood Hwan-Ching Taia,1,2, Guo-Chian Lia,1, Shing-Jong Huangb, Chang-Ruei Jhua, Jen-Hsuan Chunga, Bo Y. Wanga, Chia-Shuo Hsua, Brigitte Brandmairc, Dai-Ting Chungd, Hao Ming Chena, and Jerry Chun Chung Chana aDepartment of Chemistry, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan; bInstrumentation Center, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan; cPrivate address, 86567 Hilgertshausen-Tandern, Germany; and dChimei Museum, Tainan 71755, Taiwan Edited by Jerrold Meinwald, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and approved November 21, 2016 (received for review July 10, 2016) Violins made by Antonio Stradivari are renowned for having been the wood supply or deforestation, or that Stradivari preferred denser preferred instruments of many leading violinists for over two woods that grew slowly during the Maunder Minimum (5). centuries. There have been long-standing questions about whether Elemental analyses of AS and DG maple specimens conducted wood used by Stradivari possessed unique properties compared with by Nagyvary et al. (6) detected unusual minerals, which implicated modern tonewood for violin making. Analyses of maple samples chemical treatments. They also reported severe degradation of the removed from four Stradivari and a Guarneri instrument revealed lignocellulose−hemicellulose matrix in violins through hydrolysis highly distinct organic and inorganic compositions compared with and oxidation, which was attributed to chemical manipulation (7). modern maples. By solid-state 13C NMR spectroscopy, we observed However, the conventional belief held by some violin restorers was that about one-third of hemicellulose had decomposed after three that Cremonese maple plates appeared stiffer or more elastic than centuries, accompanied by signs of lignin oxidation.
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