导语:  曾经卖出上千万美元天价的斯特拉迪瓦里小提琴到底有什么过人之处？

由意大利小提琴制造者安东尼奥·斯特拉迪瓦里（Antonio Stradivari，1644? -1737）制造的小提琴在古典音乐界有着特殊的神秘感。同时它们也非常昂贵。2011年，一位匿名买家以1590万美元的价格买下了一把名为“布朗特夫人”（Lady Blunt）的小提琴，其命名来自它的前主人之一安妮·布朗特夫人（Lady Anne Blunt）的名字。专家们认为这把小提琴是斯特拉迪瓦里保存第二完好的作品。那么保存最完好的斯特拉迪瓦里琴呢？外号是“弥赛亚”（The Messiah）的它坐落在英国牛津阿什莫林博物馆（Ashmolean Museum）的一个恒温箱里，享受着珍贵艺术品一般的关注和护理。

斯特拉迪瓦里在他60年的职业生涯中制造了1,200多把乐器，其中大约有500把目前仍在流通。大多数是小提琴，但也有一些中提琴，大提琴，吉他，曼陀铃和竖琴。有助于将小提琴演变成现代形式的一些设计上的创新和改进被归功于他。在他的时代和随后的几十年里，斯特拉迪瓦里被认为是工匠大师，但是他作为业界翘楚的名声直到19世纪早期才得到了巩固。那时，小提琴演奏越来越多地转移到大型音乐厅，在那里，人们可以充分欣赏到斯特拉迪瓦里乐器更宏亮的声音以及更优越的投射力。

斯特拉迪瓦里乐器因其历史价值而受到追捧，这并不奇怪，更不用说它们在视觉上的美了。令很多人（至少是非音乐家）惊讶的是，许多小提琴演奏者和其他古典音乐界的人认为斯特拉迪瓦里的小提琴在音乐上比任何新乐器都要优越。演奏者说这些小提琴的音色有着非比寻常的光泽，深度和个性。但是，拥有神奇的现代科技的我们真的无法制造出比17、18世纪更好的乐器吗? 

事实上，音乐家和科学家们仍在寻找一种答案，来解释斯特拉迪瓦里小提琴的特殊之处。早期的理论倾向于把焦点放在油漆上——也许斯特拉迪瓦里添加了某种神秘的成分——但是21世纪的化学分析显示，斯特拉迪瓦里的油漆的成分并没有什么异常。另一项调查集中在木材本身。科学家推测，小冰期时（1300-1850）较冷的气候可能是一个因素，因为这可能导致用于小提琴腹部（朝上的那一面）的高山云杉生长得更慢，从而导致木材密度更高，声音更好。最近，科学家发现一些斯特拉迪瓦里用来制作小提琴的木材经过了各种化学品的处理，包括铝、钙和铜，这可能改变了它的声音特性。

另一组科学家和小提琴制造商开始研究斯特拉迪瓦里乐器的优越性可能是一种幻想的可能性。难道斯特拉迪瓦里的神秘性使小提琴演奏者和听者习惯于期望斯特拉迪瓦里乐器能发出很棒的声音，而这种期望影响了他们对乐器声音的主观评价? 在对高档葡萄酒的盲测中也证实了类似的心理效应。在一系列的实验中，研究人员蒙住专业小提琴演奏者的眼睛，让他们测试旧小提琴——包括一些斯特拉迪瓦里小提琴，和高质量的新琴，并评估他们的喜好。结果震惊了许多参与者，而且肯定会引起长达几十年的争议：一些新琴赢了。

原文作者：大英百科编辑

Original Article

What’s So Special about Stradivarius Violins?

Violins built by the Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari (1644?–1737) have a special mystique in the classical music world. They’re also extremely expensive. In 2011 an anonymous buyer paid the record sum of $15.9 million for a violin—named “Lady Blunt” after Lady Anne Blunt, one of its previous owners—which was considered by experts to be the second best-preserved of Stradivari’s creations. And what about the best-preserved Stradivarius? Tellingly nicknamed “the Messiah,” it sits in a climate-controlled case in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, receiving the kind of curatorial attention and care reserved for precious works of art.

Of the more than 1,200 instruments built by Stradivari over his 60-year career, about 500 are still in circulation today. Most are violins, but there are also a few violas, cellos, guitars, mandolins, and harps. He is credited with several design innovations and refinements that helped bring the violin to its modern form. Stradivari was considered a master craftsman in his own time and in the decades that followed, but his reputation as the best of the best solidified only in the early 19th century, when violin performances increasingly shifted to large concert halls, where the bigger sound and better projection of Stradivari’s instruments could be fully appreciated.

It is no surprise that Stradivarius instruments are sought after for their historical value, not to mention their visual beauty. What is surprising, at least to non-musicians, is that many violin players and other people in the classical music world consider the violins of Stradivari to be musically superior to any new instruments. Players speak of the violins’ sound as having brilliance, depth, and character unlike anything else. But is it really possible that, despite our modern technological wizardry, we still haven’t been able to craft instruments that sound better than the ones that were built in the 17th and 18th centuries?

In fact, musicians and scientists are still searching for an explanation of what makes a Stradivarius special. Early theories tended to focus on the varnish—maybe Stradivari had added some sort of secret ingredient—but chemical analyses in the 2000s revealed nothing unusual about the composition of Stradivari’s varnish. Another line of inquiry focused on the wood itself. Scientists hypothesized that the cooler climate of the Little Ice Age (1300–1850) may have been a factor, since it would have caused the alpine spruce trees used for the belly (the upward-facing surface) of the violin to grow more slowly, leading to denser wood and better sound. More recently, scientists found that some of the wood Stradivarius used for violins was treated with various chemicals, including aluminum, calcium, and copper, which may have altered its acoustic properties.

Another group of scientists and violin makers set out to examine the possibility that the superiority of Stradivarius instruments might be an illusion. Could it be that the Stradivarius mystique had conditioned violin players and listeners to expect great sound from a Stradivarius instrument and that this expectation had influenced their subjective evaluations of an instrument’s sound? Similar psychological effects had been demonstrated in blind tests of fine wines. In a series of experiments, the researchers blindfolded expert violin players and allowed them to test old violins—including several by Stradivari—against top-quality new instruments and rate their preferences. The results shocked many of the participants and are guaranteed to be controversial for decades: some of the new instruments won.