Songs from Alaska's Spruce
Let me offer a trick question: Why should management of the Tongass and Chugach national forests be of great interest to violinists? The straight answer is that the kind of trees growing in those Alaska forests, and the way they're treated once cut, offer a chance to recreate the wonderful sound of the world's greatest musical instruments.
They offer part of what chance we have, anyway---or so says a knowledgeable Texan. (At least he works in that state, at Texas A & M; since his name is Joseph Nagyvary, I suspect he doesn't answer to "Bubba" or "Tex.")
The roots of the tale reach far back, to 17th century Italy. The town of Cremona became a center of the violin-maker's craft like nothing seen before or since. A few families became known for their masterpieces in wood: Amati, Guarneri, Stradivari have been names associated with the most coveted stringed instruments for nearly three centuries. Despite prodigious efforts, and some magnificent also-rans, no violin makers since have been able to equal the products of the masters of Cremona.
Such a long-standing puzzle naturally attracted scientists. What human wit could ac- complish once, human wisdom surely could accomplish again---if the wisdom was furnished with enough information. Joseph Nagyvary turned aside from a career in biochemistry to gather that missing knowledge.
Some details are widely known. Only certain types of wood can be used in good violins; for proper resonance, backs are maple, tops are spruce. The wood must be carefully selected---for example, the spruce must have a compact, even, and fine grain. It's in the other details that the mystery lies. Simply dried as if it were construction material, raw wood has dreadful acoustical properties. It's full of internal tensions and dried sap. It's too stiff for good tone, and violins made from it produce harsh, shrill notes. So all violin makers agree that the wood must be made to relax somehow, but they differ on how it's to be treated to get that proper degree of relaxation. They anoint it with chemicals, they boil it, they set it in smokehouses above piles of smoldering manure. The masters of Cremona left no record of which treatment they used.
If, indeed, they used any. From a combination of historical reconstruction and micro- scopic examination of minute samples of classic violins wheedled from the world's best instrument restorers, Nagyvary has come to suspect that nature provided the crucial treatment for the Cremonese wood.
First, history: trees destined to become famous violins were cut in the Alps. The green logs reached Cremona after long river voyages, and perhaps after long waits in rafted storage at sea.
Second, science: Nagyvary knew that long soaking should encourage the growth of mi- croorganisms in the sodden wood. The scanning electron microscope confirmed it. The precious fragments of Cremonese violins contained bacteria-caused holes in the wood's cell walls and tiny bits of fungal threads--some still growing. Microbial enzymes had increased the permeability of the wood fifty-fold, without decreasing its strength. It was full of myriad tiny additional air chambers to increase its resonance.
In short, Stradivarius and his colleagues used rotten wood---just slightly, exactly, rotten-enough wood. And the salt concentration in the old wood was 10 to 50 times higher than any Nagyvary found in wood not exposed to seawater.
Think now of Alaska coastal spruce, tossed fresh-cut into the sea and left to leach its sap into the ocean. It may wait a long time, long enough for microorganisms to begin their rotten work. It's just the right treatment. Nagyvary suspects if he does recreate the superb sound of a Stradivarius, it will be with the help of wood that once grew on Alaska's coast.
