NPR

What did the beginning of time sound like? A new string quartet offers an impression

Abrasive, intense and about to erupt at any moment. So begins Flow, a new piece by Nokuthula Ngwenyama for the Takács Quartet. Coaxing peculiar sounds out of centuries-old string instruments, the ...
The Columbian

Sound of Battle Ground: Luthier says the climate is ideal for making world-class stringed instruments

BATTLE GROUND — One day in December 2016, during a rail journey into same northern Italian countryside where the legendary luthier Antonio Stradivari made his stringed masterpieces, Mark and Sharon ...
WQXR

Every A+ Violin Needs an ‘F’: Why the Instrument Has Those Distinctive Sound Holes

Part of How To Classical. Why does the oboe tune the orchestra? Why does the orchestra sit the way it does? What does rosin actually do to a violin bow? If you find the traditions of the classical ...
Princeton University

‘Musical Instruments, Sound, Perception and Creativity’

Imagine a sound, a tone. Engineering and math might go into creating a musical instrument that can make that tone, but that same sound also depends on acoustics, perception, creativity — a multitude ...
Smithsonian Magazine

How to Hear the Met’s Historic Instruments’ Singular Sounds

Recordings are available via Soundcloud and the Google Arts & Culture platform The Metropolitan Museum of Art Have you ever been struck by the irony of exhibiting musical instruments — renowned for ...
NPR

An Italian Town Fell Silent So The Sounds Of A Stradivarius Could Be Preserved

Inside the concert hall of the Violin Museum in Cremona, Italy, Antonio de Lorenzi plays the prelude from Bach's Partita No. 3 on a Stradivarius violin. Cremona is the town where master luthier ...