The Secrets of Stradivari

His Biography

Let me share with you a brief biography of Antonio Stradivari.

He was born in about 1644 in Cremona, a small city in Italy. He married in July 1667 to a young widow, Francesca Feraboschim, and they had six children.





Two of their sons followed their father's footsteps as violin makers. After Feraboschim died in 1698, he remarried in 1699 to Antonia Maria Zambelli, and had five more kids with her.

In the early 1660s, he was probably the apprentice of Niccolo Amati, and under Amati's tutelage, mastered the art of violin making.

Under his master's guidance, he designed his finest works, most notably the violins that set the benchmark for excellence in the music world. His violins are commonly known as the Strad, which cost thousands to millions today.

In 1680s, he established his own violin making style, shifting away from Amati's design to develop a more concrete violin using improved materials and finishes.

His new instruments attained a more beautiful and impressive sound that attracted musicians from outside Cremona. When Amati died in 1684, he was regarded the town's greatest violin maker.

His statue in his hometown Monteverdi, Cremona, showing him
passing down his violin making skills to further generations.

Other than violins, he also made guitars, violas, cellos, harps, lutes and mandolins. It is estimated that 650 of his instruments still survive today.

The Stradivarius Violin

The Strads are considered the finest and most exquisite stringed instruments ever made in history. They are valued highly by musicians and violin lovers all over the world.

His violins have been played by many celebrated violinists and have also fetched millions of dollars at public auctions, and multiple times more at private transactions. Only Guarneri, another violin maker, earned similar admiration among violinists.

Many of his magnificent works were made during his 'golden period', from 1700 to 1720. It was during this period that he perfected his violin models and crafted out his best instruments.

This Strad has never been played before, and is one of the most valuable of all his instruments.

His unique violin-making methods remained mysterious to many violin makers who yearn to discover the secrets behind these Stradivarius violins.

Here are some of his million-dollar Strads.

His Secrets?

Scientists around the world have been trying to unveil the secrets of making the Strads. While many attempts had failed to reproduce the unique sound of the centuries-old violins, some had made outstanding discoveries of the materials and methods used in crafting these violins.

It has been researched that the maple used by the famous luthier then could have been chemically processed to maintain the quality, warmth, and dynamism of the instrument.

Cremonese craftsmen treated the wood before being used, but this was not practiced in Paris and London during similar period, nor in the modern times.

Researchers believed it is this regional method of wood preservation, such as oxidising minerals, that influenced the mechanical and acoustical aspects of the violin.

Understanding this chemical process allows advancement in creation of modern instruments, to sound as great as famous antique violins, and gives music conservationists a better way to preserve their antique instruments.

Through detailed and thorough research and tests on the violins, it is also believed that Stradivari had used wood that floated downriver and soaked in water for long periods of time.

The varnishes and fillers used on the instruments made in Cremona and Venice were found to contain more than 20 minerals. This suggested the involvement of the skills and expertise of chemists there.

Through this discovery, it was understood that it was the varnish, structured at the level of a nanometre(one millionth of a millimetre), that allowed the creation of the most elegant violins 300 years ago.

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