Music Welcome to this newscast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. Find us at snoozecast.com and if you enjoy our show, please share us with a friend. If you'd like to get an email once a week with

upcoming sleep stories and other news, subscribe to the snooze letter at snoozecast.com. This episode is brought to you by Feverish Fibrations. Tonight we'll read about selecting wood from violin making written by Walter H. Mason and published in 1909. The modern violin was first known in 16th century Italy. The name fiddle is often used regardless of the type of music played on it and the genres are not limited to western classical music, folk, country, and jazz music, along with plenty of non-Western music as well. Violinists and collectors particularly prize the fine historical instruments made by certain well-known families and makers, like Strativari, for example. The quality of their sound has defied attempts to explain or equal it, though this belief is disputed. The current record amount paid for a Stratavari violin is 9.8 million pounds, or 15.9 million US dollars in 2011. This book was published posthumously by the English violin maker who started his fiddle-making career at the age of 39. Let's get cozy. Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now, take a few deep breaths. Many persons of good practical ability and moderately versed in the laws of acoustics, with an eye for form, who have the instinct to check any approach to vulgarity, and work on lines, curves, and thicknesses, more or less true, elegant, and the best for producing fine tone have seen, and will yet again see their efforts of small avail cast aside, never to assume even mediocre rank in the stern array of violins of modern make, much less of those of ancient Italy, merely because the wood chosen for the instrument made is of an inferior, probably worthless character, which would have been employed to much more purpose had it been used in the construction of a windmill or the shaft of a mine. That is to say, if, as I presume, the first germ in the conception of construction of the instrument B tone, as most assuredly tone it ought to be, not to the detriment of appearance or to its subjugation as an artwork, but as an adjunct or accessory of such importance that it is apparent it must imperatively assume preeminence. Just as we forget the plain box of the Eolean harp, the moment the strings are struck by the passing gale into the most exquisite chords. As, on the contrary, do we seem to wish for no song from the tropical bird of magnificent plumage and express no surprise that none comes from it. I may put this more plainly as I proceed, and in more homely words. What I want to lay before you now, and must insist upon, is that you seek for tone, tone before all. Tone you must get at all cost, and to get it, you must have as choice would as ever can be procured, and fashion it into a singing shell, so that from it pure music may be evolved. Then you must get this choice wood, but how? Now the word choice presupposes variety from which to select, as I select or choose so and so, which is my choice. But I use the word in another way, on the face of it, bearing the same significance, but not quite so. I say it is fine, of superb quality for my purpose, which is the emission of the grandest tone possible, rapid, strong, and sonorous, from two plates of wood becoming, if they possess these attributes, choice to me. We will consider the back wood first. I have 30 pieces from which to take one, which shall act in conjunction with the belly, to be selected later on. are plain, pear tree in fact, others are also plain and of sickamore, others are of maple. I do not select a handsome one for its beauty, just as Surely as I do not reject an ordinary one for its plainness.

This will show you at once that I am seeking for that which, to my mind, will yield me the finest tone. Well, but we must determine this before we go farther, and in the rough, the initial stage of the wood, supposed to be old, and fit for the undertable of the instrument about to be made. I will try this one of maple, moderately handsome, looking old, but I fear, not quite honest as it is too heavy for its bulk. I take the half of it, it being in two parts, and about one third from the top, having the thick edge or that to which, later on, I joined the other thick edge, close to my left ear. My left first finger and thumb grasping it there, so as just to free the body for vibration, I strike it near the lower part of the thin side rapidly, with the large joint of the first finger of my right hand, with what result? That of strengthening, almost confirming my suspicion of its honesty. For I find a lack of energy, of resonance, and of that quality to which I apply the word sympathy, it is crude, it is dull, and it will not do for my purpose. Well, but as so many go by, what so many advocate and so many do, why not try it by placing the plate in this vice and applying a well-rosened bow to draw forth its sonority, etc. I will do so. I fear many of you, even just in front of me, will scare scather much from this thin miserable stuff which the wood says is its voice and which its vendors assert to be old, well-dried, and that for which it was bought. And I pity indeed those receding into the misty background, for not of this squeak will they hear and well for them.

But as the second test is condemnatory, and more and more convinces me of the unworthyness of the wood, for a violin of high-class, or of any violin destined to live, let me put it to a still more searching one, in fact, to two, neither of which I venture to assert, will it bear? I clamp it to the bench and proceed to cut with a gouge, several pieces from the surface of an area of about three inches close to the thick edge. These I lay aside as number one. Deeper but still from the same area more as number two. Deeper but not now as deep as before, for an obvious reason, according to my theory, which is my last heap and number three. Now gentlemen, will you pass round this handful? Number one, what is there about it? Really. An acid smell. And number 2. The same but less pungent. Number 3. Less still. Well, there you have absolute proof of roguery, which, if it were lacking in strength, would be born out by the diminution of the lying brown color towards the center of the wood. That color, not of age, but of fraud, which, named acid, affects the surface more than the interior, and which the novice glutes over, as old and pure as God's mountains. Well, but in addition to these two farther tests of smell and color, making wood almost Green, of probably not more than four years old, appear to the ignorant one hundred. There is another which I often use, and that is, as I do now, I make the plate rigid, but free to vibrate, so as to allow those mysterious motions play. And I place my ear at one extremity whilst I scratch or scrape or move the rosin' bow over the other. the similar result. The tone is not what I want, nor would it ought to be from a piece of really old, well-grown wood. But mind, it does not follow that, given these conditions, the genuine thing would be what I want. But there would be more likelihood of its being so, unless annoyance in laying it aside, as worthless as I do, selecting for a second trial, a piece of what I call Crabbedwood, known by a peculiar curl, and it's very handsome and uncommon appearance. But before I test this, I must tell you that none but a workman of great skill would undertake to put it to use, as it is so crabbed, so twisted in its fiber, that on the least carelessness of the artist out flies a chip from where it should not, and a very delicate operation is resorted to in consequence to amend the blunder. insertion of a slip which must match the grain of the original every way, not only in flame, but even just as the flash of that fire falls in its movement when it becomes part of a violin.

I have said earlier, I do not select him some wood for its beauty, and the loveliness of this piece must not tempt me to sacrifice what I hold of more consequence, tone. I should do so, for it is weak where it should be strong, and poor, flabby, and wretched from the view of acoustics. So you see how difficult it is even for the eye of experience and the mind of knowledge to wait through the vile to the pure, uncontaminated. How much more so him the amateur at once the plaything and the dupe of those who do not scruple to beguile him by the one to the safe usage of the other. Still, do not let it be supposed that this slight tinge of the minor key is intended to make you despond. On the contrary, I want to show you better things and mean to do so. And should the doing of it seem to prolong this part of my address beyond moderate limits, my excuse must be its deep importance. I have laid aside three pieces of sycamore, all, as I believe, very good for the back I purpose making. One is what I call on the quarter, the other two on the slab. These terms I shall explain later when I have fully spoken of the selection of wood. The two on the slab are in one piece, of course, the one on the quarter in two pieces, one of which, while I have been speaking, I have glued slightly but firmly to an upright support of glass, made very rough at the place where I fix the plate, so that the glue may the better hold temporarily. The glass, being a non-conductor, or if it responds in any way, however infinitimally, it does not perceptibly affect my plate, and in no way my argument leaves me the absolute control of this wood, and I proceed to lay an English leather watch on several places of it, keeping my ear near to that nodal point where I know will come the inner bout, or d of the violin, consequently the bridge, which I mark with an x. The tick-tack of the watch varies in strength as I get farther from or nearer to a nodal point. As, of course, it was bound to do. But from experience, it is a fine-toned piece of wood. I detach it from the glass rod, and I try it by my finger and thumbtask,

and the vibrations and their quality are all I could desire.

The signs of age appear genuine. The small pieces I cut from it do not give out any smell,

which they should not, and I pronounce the wood honest. I try the two whole backs on the slab, both are good, one very fine in tone and handsome in appearance, which I finally select for the violin about to be made. Well, but you may say in all your experiments, it appears to us the result is a question of degree. Exactly, a question of degree as purity of air is, but who chooses the foul when he can live in the pure. As with flowers in their unassuming simplicity up to such elegance of form, color and fragrance that we stand amazed before them, as with man, from the worse than bestial state to the intemperance and crime have brought him to the calm majesty of that eminence, attained only by the love of truth, of self-government, and scorn of evil doing.

This question of degree strikes at the root of the whole subject before you, for upon how you answer it or to what person or persons you repair for guidance in the selection of wood novices, will depend in a great measure your success or failure in the instrument yet unmade. The upper table or belly made of pine, Swiss pine by preference, is the most important factor in the production of tone, consequently that to which the chief attention of the artist should be directed. No matter how good be his back or his ribs, or the sweep of his lines or curves, or quality of his varnish and its elasticity or its superb color. The selection of wood for his upper table or belly or soundboard must be his chief concern, neither money nor energy spared to secure the best. Well, I have by me several of various degrees of excellence and some of very doubtful reputation. Nay, I may at once say they are bad, even by their look they are bad. This one is fairly straight in the grain, but it has been dried artificially. Not as were the backs, yet more wickedly treated, impregnated with a deleteriousious something having the power of destroying a germ destined if left to age to become the soul of resonance. Bringing it at once to a wretched maturity, it sells starved so that when the strain of three hours play and a hot room is put upon it, dumb is its voice, poor at the best, and it is played out. I say this is my contention and how I account for many superior, great-sold viol, which it has been my heart struggle to produce, yet now gaze on with pride, almost gloring in that enthusiasm which enabled me to combat all against my theory, and do that which I believe was done 200 years ago to such fine issues reviled or not for so doing is now to me of little consequence. Yet you must be told that there has been fierce, very fierce controversy on this point. Some going halfway and asserting only a portion of the sap should be withdrawn. Some, and one of them a great chemist, a friend of mine, fighting hard to have it all taken away, and artificially dried after that. Does nature do this to the lungs or a simrives before she turns them on the world nonsense? But it is tests you want and I will supply another somewhat original. This piece I called above, bad, I lay aside.

As number one, another, worse in grain, but I believe, honest, as far as having the sap left in it goes but not old. Number two, and a magnificent piece of very old Swiss pine, brown, and honestly brown with probably two or three hundred years of exposure as a beam in a Swiss chalet. For from that place and that dwelling I am prepared to prove it comes to me, which I number three. The number one is what I call feverish in its vibrations, would be certain to give any instrument a hollow tone, an instrument cuddled, tempered, and made to fit the ear of the expected purchaser by the experienced one who has it to dispose of. The tone would not be intermittent. If it were that, we might have some hope of ultimate fullness and fair quality. But it would be loud and coarse, balling when it should be energetic, yet somewhat horse, scarce knowing where to vibrate, it being capable of doing so, and well, when fairly mature. But that which, like the brazen actress, has a word or a sentence ready at any moment and in any key and in any pitch, say goodbye to that at once. The number two will be good in about four or five years, but would be bad to work just now. So we will take up number three upon which I must dwell somewhat. I can depend on the gentleman's word who procured this and other pieces for me, and I imagine his estimate of age is much under the approximate date, for I should say it was nearer three than 200 years old. The color all through is a mellow brown. The read is of medium width, well developed and nearly equal all over. And it is singularly bowed from bottom to top, meeting when joined. For it is in two parts, just as will a string of a violin, when you hold it in both hands, and twang it to test its equal vibration. is bold enough to assert that this is not a piece of finely developed virgin pine? Grown on the southern slope of some Alp, adjacent to where it had rested so long, and so mean a position for such finely sounding wood which I have proved it to be, yet destined to fill such an honorable place in the grand instrument of which I treat. No one I venture to reply, but to my mind, and from experience, it is such the softer part where run the cells, being firm, full, and mellow to the thumbnail on pressure, showing I think, good sap lies right there, which I have found before in such wood proved to be grand beyond doubt by its superb tone in a violin. But I must give you, besides my other tests, that to which I occasionally resort. Number one, you see, is, as I intimated, loud and vulgar, seizing its vibrations, the instant I draw away my test of bow, whereas number two does behave better in this respect, but is crude and must lie some years longer neglected when it will be interesting again to test it by me or some other. 3 is all I could wish for, or was prepared for, so I will hasten to the final trial and bring this lecture to a close, not subjecting this number 3 to the trial which the others have undergone, as I am quite convinced of its great superiority, but shall, along with the others, put it now to the concluding one. From each of the three pieces, one, two, three, I cut a slip, as you observe I put number one in this bright clear fire behind me, prepared so that it shall be as nearly free from flame as possible to enable me to to make the manner of burning of each separated piece more real to you. From what I have said, leading up to what I now do, I imagine you will be somewhat prepared for the manner in which number one burns. And perhaps the other two. But I hardly thank you expected such a wretched flare-up as you see here. of fizzing, spluttering, ragged exhibition of imbicility. What of that sonority which could fill a mighty hall where we find 5,000 listeners? Is such flabby nonsense, as this, to be put into an immortal violin because it purports to be fine Swiss pine at ten pence. But I reverence its ashes and will lay them aside for a moment as I wish you to see them alongside the others when burned. Number 2 is all right as to the sap being in it, but it is too volatile, somewhat crackling in its burning, yet far more steady in its flame, not spending its energy and fireworks, or giving great

cracks like a whip and a jump afterwards as number one. So we will lay aside his ashes. Now, look at number three as it burns and do not say you invariably have nothing but praise for your best things. How is that? Because gentlemen, there is no blame which can be laid to them. That is why and that is all. I ask you to look at this number three. It is a steady piece of business altogether. The flame is bright, strong, and well sustained, with little or no smoke, and it gradually dies down. As if you will allow my fancy, does he who has grown in uprightness to find maturity hail, and beautiful to the last. you you you