At 9:28 PM +0000 2/23/08, Owain Sutton wrote:
That's nothing ;) I've played a piece where all four strings are
gradually detuned by two assistants, over the course of several minutes,
to the point where the bridge falls down. And when discussing this
piece, many other players have said they would never do this, the
soundpost would fall, or the shifting pressures on the body would be
prone to causing cracking (yeah right, like they keep it at a constant
humiditiy, too), or the universe would implode, etc. None of these has
happened yet.
You mean the sky really isn't falling? Whew! I was afraid I missed it!!
(Actually they do their darndest to maintain constant humidity, both
with those wormy things stuck in the F-holes and with very
scientific-looking gizmos in their cases. Instruments built in and
for European climates react quite badly to the wild extremes found in
various parts of North America.)
But I would definitely draw the line (despite my advocacy of
following the composer's wishes) at anything that would cause the
bridge or soundpost to either fall or get misplaced. It costs MONEY
to get a good luthier to restore the proper setup, and it has to be
done in the dark of the moon with newt's eye and some other weird
stuff. I'd expect the composer to rent me a fiddle and take full
responsibility for it if s/he wanted something that close to being
destructive.
John
--
John R. Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
