Stuff You Should Know - What's the deal with Stradivarius violins?

Episode Date: September 15, 2016

The Strad violin is noted for its tonal qualities and superior craftsmanship. And for its price tag. There are many theories why the Strad sounds so great, from the wood to the lacquer, to the simple fact that Antonio Stradivari was really good at what he did. Rosin up your bow and take a listen. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Rowland.

Yeah. Jerry said right before she pressed record. I'm sleepy, three, two, one. Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't hear. You didn't even notice that, did you? I was just memorizing, or practicing what I was gonna say.

Oh, sorry, we'll go ahead. I just did. Oh. That was successful. You were practicing. Hey, welcome to the podcast. Should we talk fiddles? Yeah, Chuck, fiddle, dd, let's do.

I bought one a few years ago, by the way, and took one lesson. Uh-huh. And you became an expert? Yep. That's just me, man. That's how things go with me. I have a lot of things that I've been like,

I'm gonna do this. Got a lot of balls in the air. Yeah, specifically musically. I bought a steel guitar and didn't learn to play that. I sold it. I bought a keyboard and was gonna learn to play piano. I didn't do that. Okay.

I bought the violin. I'm keeping the violin, though. Okay. So you're stimulating the economy? Pretty much. And I usually keep just like sell that and use that money to buy the next thing I don't play. Yeah.

But I don't know. Like, I know how to play guitar, so I'm kind of realizing at my age, like maybe that's all it's gonna be. You're a guitar man, like Brett said. Yeah, but I used to want to be like, man, by the time I die, I want to be able to play all the stringed instruments.

Gotcha. That was my goal. Yeah. And I've learned one. I mean, that's more than some people. I don't know how to play any stringed instruments. Yeah, but you don't care too, sounds like. No, I mean, well,

so you consider the piano a stringed instrument? It's got strings. So yeah, is it percussion or is it string or is it both? Well, a little hammer hits the string. Right, percussion. Interesting. Whereas a harpsichord is plucked. Yeah.

Talking piano. Yeah. I wish I could play the piano. I'd like to learn that one day. Right. My brother took lessons as a kid and my sister, but I didn't. Oh yeah.

And Scott can still play a little bit today. Of course. Of course. Hey Scott. Super bro. So the fiddle, a little history here before we get into the man, the fiddle or violin, there's no difference by the way.

Is that right? Yep. It's all in high play. It's just one's pronounced one way and the other's pronounced the other way. Yeah, it's a little, and I thought there was a difference when I bought mine. I was like, well, what's the difference?

And it's just in how you play it. They were like, killbillies play fiddles. Yeah. Other people play violins. Exactly. So the fiddle at first was not a well regarded instrument. It was thought of as a sort of a cheap tavern instrument. You know, like you'd get drunk and hop up on the table

at the tavern. Really? And beat out a little Irish jig. Really? Yeah. And it didn't have a good reputation. Wait, when? Well, I mean, this is the 16th century.

Okay. So then initially. Yeah. Okay. I'm with you then. I'm with you. Okay. Hanging on.

And then even in parts of Italy at first, the church ordered the destruction of violins. They were so like looked down upon. And then a lady named Catherine DiMidici got on board and she was like, this thing is wonderful. Sure. I'm going to order 38 of them for my court from this guy named Nicholas Amari,

who was the grandson of the great violin maker, Andrea Amari. Actually, she probably bought them from Andrea if it was the 1500s. Right. And yeah, it was 1564. And that was it. Things started to change.

And that's literally what kind of led the violin down a path of respectability. Yeah. Once you introduce it into court, people tend to follow suit. Yeah. Yeah. So the Amaris lived in a place called Cremona, Italy.

Right. And Cremona, because the Amaris lived there, who were basically the de-factor inventors of the violin, cello, and viola, as we recognize them today. Yeah. Because that's where they were from, Cremona became the center of violin production. Yeah.

String instrument production. Plain and simple. Yeah, which is pretty neat. Like, the idea that that's where violins came from and that they're that recent in origin. Yeah. And of course, it goes further back than that. Like, lutes were obviously around long before the violin.

Sure. But again, if you look at a violin today and say, oh, it's a violin, you can thank the Amaris of Cremona for making that recognizable to you. Yeah, and here's another cool little fact. The fancy, beautiful shape of a violin is not for aesthetics. It is all about the sound that it makes. The violin doesn't give a damn whether you think it looks good.

Well, it turned out to look beautiful. But all those curves allow for equal resonance of all the notes. If it was more basically shaped, certain notes would be sound better than others. Huh. So that allowed the entire fingerboard to sound wonderful. Well, plus also, if you look at a violin face on, if you go down the sides in the middle, it's cut in.

Those are called C-bouts. Those actually have a practical purpose. I'm sure in addition to helping produce sound, but it allows the bow to play the strings on either side without hitting the body of the violin. Pretty clever. It's really hard to play. I can't stress that enough.

It's like, I thought, this is not so different than a guitar. Like, I'm just holding it under my neck and using a bow instead of fingers. That's got to be a pretty big difference. It's a huge difference. Yes. Fingers, bows, totally different. You're born with one, the other you have to buy.

Well, it's a combination of pressure on a string, angle of the bow on the string. Pressure from your parents. Placement of the bow on, as far as how far down it is, up and down the violin, speed. It's like, there's like 10 different things that go into making a sound on a violin that you have to do successfully all at once.

It's really, really hard. Like, I was intimidated and went in the closet you go. Maybe my daughter will play one day and then we'll be waiting for her. Nice. So we'll see. But should we go over the parts? I know you mentioned the C-Bout.

Sure. C-Bout's my favorite, so you take it from there. Well, if you look at a violin, you got the very above those little tuning pegs, which are contained in the peg box. You've got the scroll, which is that kind of a curvy, lovely, fancy piece at the top. Then you have the neck and the fingerboard.

The neck goes from basically down to the body of the violin, but the fingerboard continues on through it. The upper bout, the lower bout, and then that C-Bout you mentioned, which is also called the waist. Then you have your two F-holes cut on either side. Yeah, the fancy holes. Yeah, they look like Fs. Then you have your bridge, which is the very thin piece

of wood that keeps the strings off of the violin body itself and taut. Then you have your tailpiece at the bottom where the strings end, and then the all-important chin rest. And that's a violin. Bam. Go make one now. I'm leaving.

So again, that was the Amati's that came up with the violin you just described. That's right. And one of the Amati's, the grandson of Andrea Amati, who I think is credited with inventing the violin, basically. But his grandson, Nicola, taught a young man by the name of Antonio, Antonio Stradivari. Ooh, that name sounds familiar.

Yeah, Antonio Stradivari was born in Cremona. They're not sure when. They think probably about 1644. Life is a bit of a mystery, his young life, at least. Not a lot of great records on it. You know what, this just jogged my memory. We never explained why Alexander Hamilton would shave two years off of his age, even though we specifically

said we were going to. Well, that's awesome. Should we follow up now? Probably not. OK, I think people would get mad. Yeah, if you want to know, write in, and we'll tell you. Or maybe we'll post it on social media. I think that's better.

But who cares? We're talking Stradivari now. Yeah, we've moved on. All right, so Stradivari, there's not very good records about his youth, I think, as you said. But he pops up in 1666 at the very latest. That's right. A violin pops up in 1666, I should say.

It has an inscription on it, a label, actually. And if you translate it to English, it says, made by Antonio Stradivari of Cremona, pupil of Nicola Amati, in 1666. Well done. Year of Satan. And that means he was either a pupil, which it clearly says. Sure.

Or a bit of a stretch of the truth, and a bit of a ruse, and a career move. Really? Yeah, there are some people that say, and that's why I was wondering, it says, people believe, some people believe he was a pupil. Yeah, I didn't get what the. Well, it says he was a pupil on the inscription.

Right. But the other thought is that maybe it was a bit of a career move to say, I was taught by the great Amati. Right. Who's dead now and can't say otherwise. Maybe. But who knows? I bet he was probably a pupil.

Actually, he wasn't dead. So that would have been pretty gutsy to have done that, because Amati didn't die for many years, many more years after 1666. So I think the common consensus is that he was a pupil of Amati. He would have said, are you stealing on my business? So what up with that?

Right. Man, this thing is going to be lousy with that. All right, so 1666, you are correct. He builds his very first violin on his own. He continues to build violins on his own in his attic, which was apparently the tradition, attic violin building. Was it? That's what it said.

I guess that was just like where you would put your workshop. OK. Who knows? Maybe it, I don't know. Have you ever seen the movie, The Red Violin? Yes. Great movie. Agreed.

Like, stick with it. I think I might have seen that on your recommendation years ago. Probably. If I'm not mistaken. Yeah, really good movie, though. Yeah. So he's making violins.

He moves into a home in 1680. And he started to get some recognition as a great builder and maker of violins, a great craftsman. He did. And he was still kind of living in the shadow of the Amati's. But when Nicola Amati died in 1684, by this time, everyone said this guy is Cremona's best maker of violins.

Yeah. Which, since Cremona was the world capital of violin making, they were made elsewhere. But Cremona was like the place where the best were made. The creme of the Cremona. Right. That made him the world's best violin maker. And he hadn't even entered his golden period yet.

Yeah. And he was making more than violins. He's making cellos and guitars and mandolins and harps. Pretty much anything with strings. Except harpsichords. Who knows? He might have made a harpsichord. No, but that'd be worth a lot.

Probably so. All right, should we take a break here? Yes. All right, we'll get into more craftsmanship right after this. MUSIC On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point. But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends,

and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice

would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there

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Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

All right, so Strativari is following in Amati's footsteps. But he's also like, you know what, I'm going to start tweaking this thing and craft my own brand of violin. And he does so. He said, I'm going to use some new materials, maybe, some new finishes. I'm going to make that C-Bout little straighter than you're used to.

Yeah, make the Fs a little straighter, the F-holes. Oh, is it straighter? Was that the deal? I think so. And then we altered the F-holes some. And something with a scroll, too. Is that right? He made it more amazing.

And he made the scroll larger. Big scrolls. The F-holes, not only straighter, but longer. Right. Larger scroll and a straighter and stronger C-Bout. That was like, mechanically, those were the biggest differences. Right, but he also crucially came up

with his own formula for a varnish. It's a very easily recognized deep, deep red, brown varnish. That's right. That his violins have. It's very handsome. But a lot of people, as we'll see later, believe that it's possibly the varnish that makes Strativarius violins.

So great. Because when he made these changes, not only was he making these changes to the shape and appearance of the violin, he was also like a master wooden layer. Like the craftsmanship that his violins had were just unparalleled. They were flawless.

Flawless works of art as musical instruments. So in addition to just being a flawless work of art, they also sounded better than anything, anything that could possibly compare, be compared to it. And what's really exceptional about Strativarius is it's not just one of those things where like, oh, the name is actually what is really driving it. A Strativarius violin that's 300 years old today

is probably better than any violin that's been produced in the last 300 years, including a brand new one. Like they're only now getting to the point where they've discovered techniques where they can start to replicate the sound of a Strativarius. That's how good this guy's violins were,

that it's not a joke. It's not hyperbole of how great the Strativarius violins were. They are still the ones that this guy made by hand, are still the best violins in the world. That's really saying something, considering how much progress we've made in the last 300 years on just about everything. And these are for the finest tuned ears in the world.

Like clearly there are flawless amazing instruments and violins being produced since then, but for the true like aficionado, they can spot the difference apparently. Oh yeah. Like you and I can't. No, but people whose job it is to identify and appraise Strativarius violins say that comparing it

to a non-Strativarius, like a knockoff or something, is like comparing a Ferrari to a school bus. It's like that obvious for them. People like saying things like that. It's a great quote. We're just a couple of schmumps, what do we know? Bev just went, oh. Might be a new gag.

So he and his first wife had six kids. He was good at having kids. He and his second wife, his wife sadly died in 1698. He got remarried and had five more kids with wife number two. He was great at making violins and making children. Yes. Crafting children. He's great at it.

Crafting little babies. Yeah. They called them the maestro in the bedroom. You know what I mean? And I think a couple of his sons even went on to follow in his footsteps. Is that right? From his first marriage.

Right. They were schmumps. Not that second lot. They were schmumps though. They couldn't hold a candle to their father's work. So let's talk about the golden period. From 1700 to 1720 to 25, depending on who you talk to. This was the golden period where these violins,

I mean he had really honed his design at this point. And the materials that he used and everything kind of all coalesced into making the best violins in the history of the world. It was like LeBron's tenure at the heat. Oh well, we'll see. His career's not over yet. Yeah. Wow, you're calling it now, huh?

I mean he made a case for a resurgence this past season, but we'll see if he can repeat it. Okay. He was playing on 500 cylinders with the heat. It was just perfect because he didn't have to be the team leader. He could be one of the leaders. That team had several leaders and he could be one of them. It wasn't like the whole team just pushed upward toward LeBron.

See, a lot of people have the opposite view that anyone can get on a team of superstars and win championships. No, not necessarily. To be the one leader is a bigger accomplishment. I'm very curious to know how the Golden State Warriors are going to be next season. With Durant and Steph Curry and Clay Thompson on there. Thompson knows so much, but like Steph Curry and Kevin Durant, they're like two of the greatest players that have ever lived. Ever lived.

Not just they're playing right now. How are they going to gel? The idea that Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosch and LeBron James were all able to keep their egos in check and come together to work together and lead a team together? I think that's harder than just being like, forget it, I'll do it myself. You think? Yes. So Strativari is making his mark on the world, getting his reputation,

and he's making a lot of money. He wasn't one of these. It's like after he died, they later realized how great he was. He was a rich man making and selling these violins. Yes, apparently there's a phrase rich as Strativari. Yes. Like richer than an astronaut is what we would say today. Yes, he was one of the more famous guys in Italy at the time for sure.

Yes, and rightfully so. His crowning achievement supposedly is in 1716 when he built the Messiah, and this is the only violin that he never sold that he kept in his workshop until the day died. It was his headstache violin. And this violin has rarely been played. Apparently one of the sort of things, unspoken rules when this thing's been sold and passed down is that don't even play it, this one should remain pristine. Yes, it's basically as close to a mint condition Strativarius as you can find in the world.

Yes, it's not close, it's mint. Yes, but I mean a couple of people have played it. Oh really? Yes. It's not been unplayed. Okay. Yes. A couple of bad eggs in there.

A couple of super lucky violin players. Is that screw your unwritten rules on playing this thing? Yes, this is before the Ashmolean got their hands on it. Oh, okay. So post-1720, post-Golden Period, he still produced violins and things, but apparently his eyesight was going, his hands were not as steady, and they weren't quite what they were during the Golden Period. I'm sure they were still wonderful violins. Oh yeah, he's still turning out the good stuff, but nothing like that Golden Period.

And he worked into his 90s. He was building violins for 70 years. He worked up to his death as far as I understand. I think so. So yeah, but that Golden Period stuff, there was the Messiah from 1716, the Allard from 1715, the Betts from 1704. Those are just a few of the ones that he made during this period that are still around today. I saw 1,000, I also saw 1,500 stringed instruments during his career.

Amazing. About 650 survived today. And they tend to have names, especially the ones from his Golden Period, as you just heard. They have names, and they're usually the name of the most famous player who owned it. Right. They weren't like Skippy and Old Roy. Right, Barnabas. Barnabas the violin.

So there's a superstition among violinists that the more you play a violin, the more a particular person plays violin, the more that violin takes on the character of that player, right? So much so that a violinist or even a cellist or a violist can come along afterward and play that person's violin. And it will sound much more like the person whose violin it is than the person playing it. Oh, wow. And there's a further superstition that the more you play a violin, the better it sounds. Well, that's not a superstition, that's fact. Right.

With any instrument. So there is a study from, I think, 1996 that I came across that found that the more violin wood is vibrated, the more the dampening coefficient is lowered. The lower the dampening coefficient, the longer a note resonates, the richer the sound. And so just playing it, right, because you're vibrating the wood when you're playing a violin, the more you do that, the more frequently you do that, the better the violin is actually going to sound. So astoundingly, the more you play a violin, the better it sounds. Well, that's true for any instrument.

Is it? It's called breaking it in. Oh. It's like a pair of jeans. Oh, man. You can identify with that. Sure. I love jeans.

And, you know, a pair of jeans five years in are better than they are when you take them off the shelf. Yeah. It's the same thing. It's breaking it in, especially strings with anything with a fingerboard. That fingerboard just, you know, wears in, those frets wear down a little. And it does get a little bit attuned, I think, to your style. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Very interesting. Yeah. I'd like to do more on musical instruments here and there. Okay. I'm putting it out there. All right. All right. Well, let's take another quick break and we will get into all the controversies surrounding

just why these things sound so good and all those theories. Very interesting stuff. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you.

Oh man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Oh, just stop now. So tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So Chuck, I gotta say you did a good job putting this one together. Okay, sure. I'm, I'm interested in it. You know, we, I had that stuff from the B-side podcast for like two months with back in the day. People still call for it.

And we covered this very briefly. Oh really? Yeah. And not, we didn't do right by it. So that's why I was like, you know what, that's a good topic. Nice. I mean, dust that one off. Nice.

Um, so there have been many, many theories over the years. Like if the, the strad is so revered and legendary that people, experts, scientists are bound to want to crack that nut. Yeah. Like why? Yeah. Like what's the deal? And it's not, again, this is, it's objectively better than other violence. That's right.

The ones that strad, strad of Barry made. Correct. Some of the theories, the old theories back then was that he would soak the wood in salt water. Not true. Uh, that the wood was coated with volcanic ash. Not true. Uh, that dragon's blood was used in the varnish. All right.

That may have been true. Okay. Uh, George R. Martin came up with that one. Probably so. And then I'll, you know, we'll get into the more modern theories. There's really, well, there's a couple of leading theories. One is the wood. Yeah.

This ice age would, which we'll talk about and the other is the varnish. Right. Go. Okay. Well, uh, the strad of Barry was working during what's known as Europe's little ice age, which is a period of unusually, very unusually colder temperatures. Um, and I think they're still trying to figure out what the heck happened. And as a matter of fact, we need to do like an irregular ice age podcast and we'll talk

about it then. Yeah. So what it was that because of the colder temperatures, the spruce that, uh, was used by strad of very, um, in the manufacturer of these violins grew slower, but more evenly steadier so that the wood that was harvested from the spruce trees was much more, um, uniformly grained. Right. So just basically really high end wood is was produced by this little ice age.

The problem with that being the reason that strad of varies, um, violins were so great is that that wood was also available to violin makers elsewhere in Europe and their violins don't sound anything like a strad of very. Yeah. So the little ice age theory, while still I think, um, out there has, I think that really kind of goes a long way to undermining it. Yeah. Like they were, people were really excited about that at first.

And I think they're like, yeah, not proof to cool theory. It is cool. Little ice age. Yeah. Now there's another dude at Texas A&M, a name, Joseph, uh, Nagivari, Nagivari, what a unique name, uh, and he said, it's all about this varnish, this cream and ease, cream and ease varnish, that not right? Yeah.

Cream and ease. Yeah. I think that's what they say. Start your morning. Right. With cream and ease. They published an article in scientific journal, public library of science one, it's capitalized for some reason, and he says, you know what's going on here?

It's this, it's this varnish that he used, uh, let me analyze it chemically. And what he found out was it's very unique in that it has these things in there that you would not expect to be, be in a varnish like borax and chromium. And he said, so what I think is going on is this stuff, he added this stuff to the varnish to protect it, uh, that wood against damage and infestation, but what it really did was actually weakened the wood and made it porous, uh, where it should not be. And that created more, uh, tone, a more booming, rich, powerful tone. Right.

And he had a lot of pushback. His, well, his theory is not entirely out of left field, like it's, it's pretty much accepted that if you put the wrong kind of varnish on a violin, it's going to ruin the sound. Sure. So his whole thing was, well, why couldn't you stumble upon some varnish that actually enhanced the sound? And that was his idea that that's that accounted for Stradivarius violin sounding like that.

Um, yeah, I think he did get a lot of pushback. He did. There seems to be, even if he's right, there seems to be a, uh, desire among the people who collect and play Stradivarius violins is that it will never understand what makes it special. We don't really want to know what will make it special. Yeah. Um, there's a guy who was widely quoted.

Um, he's a violinist from America's names, James, inns, inns, inns, man. Uh, well, James, his whole, his whole view is that he's played a number of Stradivarius violins and other stringed instruments. And he said that there's probably a thousand things that make them special. Yeah. And we can never possibly know what all those thousand things are. And there's never just going to be just this one thing that is the key to what made Stradivarius violin so great.

Yeah. I think, um, I watched a BBC documentary that was really pretty great and, um, they interviewed another violin maker and he said, you know, it was the right place, right time thing. Like this guy came along, maybe they had this good wood that was special, maybe he had this varnish that was special. Um, yeah, but they were in the hands of somebody special too. Well, that was his point was, uh, it was that other people were using some of these same things and they turned out very different.

He said he was so good at what he did. Like that's the secret. He was just better at doing this than other people. Right. Like how Chris Bosch and Dwayne Wade brought the best out of LeBron James. Well, where I think this Texas A&M professor, um, aired was that he was so bold as to even posit the idea that it may have been an accident and that like, I would say bold is an appropriate term.

Yeah. Like they turned out this good on accident. He didn't know this varnish was going to do that or the wood may have been even pretreated with these chemicals and he kind of lucked into what it ended up being. Yeah. And not that he wasn't talented, but like that's why they are what they are. And people are like, whoa, blasphemy. Yeah.

Out. Heretic. So how much of these things cost? A lot. The end. I saw, I mean, the numbers are all over the place. Like one thing we'll say that the, the record was 3.544 million dollars. Yeah.

And then later on the record was broken with 3.6 million dollars with the Molliter Stradivarius owned famously by Milwaukee Brewer, Paul Molliter, that's where that one got its name. Well, yeah, I agree. And then this says in June, 2014, the Kreuzer had a presale estimate of 7.5 million to 10 million. Right. But it failed to reach the reserve price. Right.

But then later on another one sold in 2011 for 16 million. So apparently nobody's really keeping tabs here. I looked on the internet, I couldn't find anything approaching a comprehensive list of how much these things had gone for. But the fact is... Millions of dollars. Tens of millions in some cases from what I understand. And there are collectors, very, very wealthy collectors who are driving the price of Stradivarius

violins and other string instruments through the roof where if you were smart enough to buy one for a few hundred thousand dollars 20, 30 years ago, it's worth easily 10, 20 times that now. Yeah. And it's kind of a shame that these aren't in the hands of the great players of the world, you know? They're in the hands of the great players of the world who come from very wealthy families. Yeah.

Or who, like you said, bought one 20 or 30 years ago. Right. And that's their go-to. But yeah, it's just another fat-piggy thing to buy and own and possess. Yeah. The one I have is the most expensive one. Right. Fortunately, the one that's so valuable that it's frequently cited as priceless is the

Messiah. Yeah. And it's also the Ashmolean at Oxford University. Yeah. So that one's not up for grabs, which is cool because all the other ones are just operating under that level. Yeah. And the lady in the BBC documentary is a violinist and she got to hold the Messiah

with gloves. And it's called that because there's a nativity scene in late on the back, I believe. Oh. I don't think it's the back. I think it's in the little tailpiece. Oh, okay. But this thing is gorgeous and she was allowed to hold it with gloves, like white cotton gloves, and the whole time, even though I knew that wouldn't happen, I was like, don't

drop it. Yeah, yeah. You know, those slippy little cotton gloves. Sure. And it just made me nervous watching it. Did you ever see that video of things that were very expensive, things that were accidentally broken that I made years back? I remember that.

Yeah. It's just like, it was tough to make. I bet. It's tough to watch, too. Yeah. So, over the years, there have been many, many, many, many fakes. Soon as he died, they started pumping out forgeries, and not even forgeries, like just mass produced violins that they would throw a label on.

At the time, in the 19th century, 18th and 19th century, the people buying the violins knew that they were like knock off manufactured fakes. Yeah. They weren't in Germany, right? Right. But they weren't like, yeah, they weren't being duped. It was like, this is in the style of Stradivarius or whatever. Right.

Yeah. Largely in Germany and Czechoslovakia. And the thing is, though, is over time, these, what are now pretty old violins, because they were, again, made in the 18th and 19th century, they had labels on them that would say like Stradivarius, Cremonesis, Fatcibatano, and then say like 1679 or something like that. Right? So, if you find one of these violins in your attic and it looks pretty old, it literally says in Italian, this violin was made by Stradivarius in 1679, you could be forgiven to think

that you have just found a Stradivarius violin and all of your money problems are over. Yeah. You can go buy more meth than you'll ever be able to do in your entire life. It might say made in Germany, too, though. That's a big giveaway. It is. And apparently, if you're an appraiser of this kind of thing, you are so sick of people calling you that you can't even hide it when you're interviewed in an article.

Yeah. The one guy even said that, he's like, people get angry when you tell them it's not. He said, because they think they got a lottery ticket and you have to break it to them and he said, they get mad on these phone calls. Right. Do you have 20 bucks for meth? That's pretty funny. Do you got anything else?

Yeah. If you find a violin and you look it over and it says Stradivarius and you look even further and it doesn't say made in Germany. Fake. If it doesn't say that. I know, but it's still probably a fake. Well, there's a Smithsonian article about it that has basically step-by-step what you can do and who you can submit photos to, to get it basically pre-appraised, well, not

appraised, but just looked at and they can usually tell from the photos like, no, that's a fake. Like step one, leave it out in the sun and let it get rained on a couple of times. If ants are attracted to it, it's not a strat. Exactly. Yeah. But one of the appraisers makes the point like, they're about 650 in the world and they're all basically accounted for.

Right. Like we know where they are. Yeah. And even when we don't know where they are, we know, we would know the ones that we don't know where they are when they surface. Yeah. Like a stolen one. Yeah.

There was one that was famously stolen 30-something years ago from a concert violinist and it was a Stradivarius and it was in the attic of a Milwaukee thief's house and I guess he died and his girlfriend took it to an appraiser who's like, this is stolen. I know who this is. Crazy. So it's a very small community. So the idea that somebody's just going to walk up with a real Stradivarius that had previously been unknown is just most likely not going to happen.

Yeah. One of the other appraisers said it's like finding a new Rembrandt and he said, we know what he painted. Right. We know where they are. Yeah. Now they got computers painting Rembrandt. Oh yeah.

I remember that. Yeah. I think a guy left his Strad in the cab a few years ago too. Oh yeah. Was it Joshua Bell? Yeah. Sounds like something that guy would do. He's wacky.

I can't remember. I believe that happened though. I remember reading that. Did he get it back? I think so. Only in New York, right? Jeez. Can you imagine?

No. Because again, these are concert violinists who have almost been entrusted by humanity with these things. Like here, this is a very expensive violin, yes, but we are giving this to you because we think you will enrich this with your playing and maybe someday it'll be called your last name, Stradivarius. Play it well. Right.

Don't leave it in the back of a cab. And then that guy had to get on Craigslist and buy $100 fiddle to play first chair at the Philharmonic. Yeah. Chuck. Yes. You got anything else? I got nothing else.

I don't either. Good job putting this together, man. Thanks. If you want to know more about Stradivarius, you can search the internet for it because we know I have an article on how stuff works since I said internet. It's time for Listener Mail. This is, we call this from my good buddy, Bex, Rebecca Bloomfield. She's one of my pin pals from the stuff you should know about.

She in prison? Over the years. She sure is. No, she's not. She's a delight though. And she backed me up on my comments about women in science, so I felt good about it. So I wanted to read it. She made me feel better.

I hope you guys had a great time in the UK. By the way, she just missed our show and I think in London by a couple of days and she's very bummed out. Does she live there or was she visiting? I think visiting, she now lives somewhere else. Good. So she said, I know you did. I just listened to the delightful history of steam.

Anyway, I'm trying to say, bloody well done. Is that a curse word? I think like, it's like very. Very. Oh, okay. Great. Well done, Chuck, on your comment on what we could have achieved of women had been allowed into the STEM fields from the start.

I know this sort of comment could be a minefield for a guy, but I can assure you, you made your point really well. I'm normally the first to jump on non-feminist comments or mansplaining. That's what I was afraid of. So she said, I'm usually the first to jump on the mansplaining and when you said it, I just said, yes, yes, Chuck, very loudly in my office. I even startled the dogs. Raising children is very important, but men can do it too.

All humans of any gender should have a choice as to what they do with their lives that should not be predetermined because of their gender. So good on you, Chuck, makes me happy to know that the next generation of women are being raised by men like you. And that's from Bex Bloomfield. And she is a graphic designer for Little Red Robot Design. Oh, shout out. And just a nice lady.

Nice. Well, thanks a lot. Bex, can I call her that or should I just call her Rebecca? No, you're in the club. Okay. Well, thanks a lot, Bex, for that email and for shouting. We appreciate that kind of thing. Certainly.

If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K Podcast or Josh underscore um underscore Clark. You can hang out with us at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook or Super Josh Clark on Facebook or facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can also send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the

cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

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