The Italian city was asked to keep quiet in order to record the violin. One take ruined a glass broken in another house
At home, Stradivari conduct a unique project that requires almost perfect silence. But it does not always work.
Photo by Isabella de Maddalena, The New York Times
The small Italian city of Cremona (about 70 thousand people) is the birthplace of many musical instruments and craftsmen who created them. The most famous of them was Antonio Stradivari. In 2019, Italian sound engineers launched in Cremona a project of digital recording of unique instruments of the 17th and 18th centuries for future generations. To do this, all residents of the city were asked to keep silence at the time of recording.
The Stradivarius Sound Bank database will consist of all possible tones issued by the Stradivarius tools. His violins and cellos are kept in the Museum of Cremona and are regularly restored, but in the future it will be impossible to play them.
For recording, 32 hypersensitive microphones were used. Because of this, the authors of the project are faced with a problem – extraneous sounds. “We realized that the streets around the recording room are paved with cobblestones. A nightmare. The sound of the car, the woman walking in heels — all this produced vibrations that were reflected in the microphones and made the entire recording useless, ”the organizers noted.
The mayor of Cremona and part-time head of the Stradivari Foundation came to help the project. He ordered to block the streets around the hall to record and asked all residents to keep quiet. For this, he held a special press conference, and the police were on duty on the day of recording on the streets.
Everything was ready. The first thing sound engineers began to record the Stradivarius violin. And after the first notes the equipment showed that some loud sound interfered with the recording. The project participants turned on the recording again and realized: someone in another building dropped the glass on the floor, and the microphones caught it.
It turned out that the barista at a cafe in the center of Cremona was wiping a glass and accidentally breaking it. In a conversation with the New York Times, she recalled: “All visitors stopped at that moment. I have not broken anything before, but on this very day. Even the police came to us and asked not to make noise. I was very confused. ” Record had to start again.
The small Italian city of Cremona (about 70 thousand people) is the birthplace of many musical instruments and craftsmen who created them. The most famous of them was Antonio Stradivari. In 2019, Italian sound engineers launched in Cremona a project of digital recording of unique instruments of the 17th and 18th centuries for future generations. To do this, all residents of the city were asked to keep silence at the time of recording.
The Stradivarius Sound Bank database will consist of all possible tones issued by the Stradivarius tools. His violins and cellos are kept in the Museum of Cremona and are regularly restored, but in the future it will be impossible to play them.
For recording, 32 hypersensitive microphones were used. Because of this, the authors of the project are faced with a problem – extraneous sounds. “We realized that the streets around the recording room are paved with cobblestones. A nightmare. The sound of the car, the woman walking in heels — all this produced vibrations that were reflected in the microphones and made the entire recording useless, ”the organizers noted.
The mayor of Cremona and part-time head of the Stradivari Foundation came to help the project. He ordered to block the streets around the hall to record and asked all residents to keep quiet. For this, he held a special press conference, and the police were on duty on the day of recording on the streets.
Everything was ready. The first thing sound engineers began to record the Stradivarius violin. And after the first notes the equipment showed that some loud sound interfered with the recording. The project participants turned on the recording again and realized: someone in another building dropped the glass on the floor, and the microphones caught it.
It turned out that the barista at a cafe in the center of Cremona was wiping a glass and accidentally breaking it. In a conversation with the New York Times, she recalled: “All visitors stopped at that moment. I have not broken anything before, but on this very day. Even the police came to us and asked not to make noise. I was very confused. ” Record had to start again.