Fiddling with Fungi

This is the second of five installments celebrating the Week of the Fungi on STC.

by Elio

Antonio Stradivari by Edgar Bundy, 1893

Next time you hear a dazzling violinist play on an exceptional instrument, think fungi. (Yes, I can hear it: Here he goes again, playing his old refrain: fungi, fungi…) The reason is that fungi may help us to produce instruments that, at long last, may be comparable to those made by Stradivari and others in the Northern Italian city of Cremona in the early seventeen hundreds. Just how good are Strads? George Eliot said (I paraphrase): God could not make a Stradivarius without Stradivari. Click here for a discussion and snippets of music played on Strads. The reason for their exceptional quality has long been sought. Notions abound.

One of them has to do with the Little Ice Age when the violin maker lived, which provided him with wood from trees whose tissues were less dense because of the climate. So, how to put this idea to use?

Transverse sections of sycamore
wood showing progressive cell
wall thinning by Xylaria longipes.
(d) = earlier. (e) = later. IZH =
fibres with intercellular spaces.
IZF = fibers without intercellular
spaces that are resistant to
decay. Source

Swiss and German wood scientists combined their efforts and subjected pieces of wood to “selective decay” by fungi that cause “just right” decay. They used Physisporinus vitreus (a basidiomycete) and Xylaria longipes (an ascomycete), both known for their ability to degrade the cell walls, leaving the lignin. Incubation with either one for 20 weeks resulted in thinning of the cell walls and improvement in acoustic properties.

So, why not test this idea? Sure enough, they are making six violins, three from treated and three from untreated wood. These will then be played by experts in a blind test by the end of this year.

Will this study reveal Stradivari’s “lost secret?” Listen for the answer six months from now.

Comments

[Ruth Gyure]

This is fascinating. I wonder if BACTERIA are also involved in the partnership? There are so many examples of Bacteria and Fungi in symbiotic relationships of this sort....

[Larry Ayers]

It seems that every few years a scientist or a team of scientists attempts to quantify and control those elusive factors which make a violin "good".

The violin world is rife with myths and suppositions and of course there is that human element -- much of a violin's sound depends upon the person playing it. Violin players tend to be a conservative lot and generally prefer old instruments.

I'm interested, though! Perhaps these fungi experiments will yield some useful results.

I play the violin and also collect wild fungi; I'm intrigued to encounter a possible intersection between these two worlds.