It’s not often that one takes the time, as a professional musician, to just sit and take a look at one’s instrument. I don’t mean actually looking at the instrument – that happens all the time. Inspecting for damage, polishing the varnish, making sure the bridge is straight, etc. What I mean is looking at it as an object of aesthetic beauty. I think that in these terms, we string players are pretty fortunate.
What more perfect and beautiful object could there be, which is basically a tool? I can’t really think of anything close, except maybe the french horn. Even then, the horn lacks the organic naturalness of being made of almost entirely wood.
I read an excellent book a couple years ago, Stradivari’s Genius by Toby Faber, which has a passage that describes the functional reasons for why the f-holes (one of which is pictured above) are shaped and placed such as they are. It’s the perfect distillation of the art of Italian stringed instrument making and its inherent genius – both mechanically and aesthetically. Enjoy.
And what about the soundholes? Symmetrical cursive f’s, with circular finials at each end, they are perhaps the most recognizable part of the violin. They have such grace and beauty that it is easy to imagine hat they owe little to functionality. Yet the more one considers them, the clearer it is that few other shapes would work so well. Some sort of aperture is necessary to allow sound to escape, but the middle of the belly must remain intact to support the bridge, hence the holes’ positions toward the sides. Their narrowness means removing as few grains of spruce as possible – again important for strength – and the curves into circles at each end prevent splits from developing. Finally, the outward curve into the lower corners places the bottom finials in dead wood, not wasting any potential source of amplification, while the narrow waist of the violin forces the holes to curve inward at the top ends. In short, no one has conceived of a better basic design for the soundholes than the original, seen to perfection in Amati’s work.