Introducing the Baroque Violin — Transcript

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1. 0:05This is a violin made by Alessandro Mezzadri
2. 0:08in Ferrara in the 1720s so this is set up
3. 0:12as a baroque violin which means that
4. 0:16the strings are made out of gut
5. 0:20cat gut which is made out of sheep's
6. 0:23intestines and that the angle of the
7. 0:26neck is different from a modern violin
8. 0:29it's more parallel with the rest of the
9. 0:33body not not back like that and
10. 0:36fingerboard is a bit shorter because you
11. 0:38don't need to go up anywhere there in
12. 0:42this repertoire the gut strings make a
13. 0:44more gutsy sound and less polished
14. 0:49perhaps than the sound of metal
15. 0:51strings and they speak in a
16. 0:54slightly different way so it requires a
17. 0:55different way of of bowing
18. 1:16the bow is perhaps what changed the most
19. 1:18between let's say the 18th century and
20. 1:21now the shape of the bow changed
21. 1:24completely and the curve goes outwards
22. 1:28rather than inwards and there's probably
23. 1:30less hair all together and there's no
24. 1:32ferrule keeping the hairs rigid and
25. 1:37the effect of that is that it has a very
26. 1:40incisive sound especially when you're
27. 1:45playing fast notes I think this
28. 1:48bow does that very well and it's easy
29. 1:52to shape notes I think with this bow
30. 1:54the OAE uses these old instruments
31. 1:56because the music was written for these
32. 1:58instruments and we think that the music
33. 2:02is brought alive by playing them on old
34. 2:04instruments but of course the way we
35. 2:07play them is also extremely significant
36. 2:10more of a difference more of an
37. 2:11effect on how the music sounds and we
38. 2:14study the ways that they played
39. 2:17back in the 18th century for example to
40. 2:21to try and recreate that