THE VIOLA SOUND

During this period some Viola bows came out from the workshop D.T. Navea Vera & Sarri , including the one shown in the photos. Consequently, as business man of the company, I have got in touch with many violists therefore I could realize that none of them ever heard about Prof. Kurt Goedel !

Viola bow in gold, ebony and tortoise "DT Navea Vera

Doing this work, I often find myself in front of musicians of any level, from students to soloists, intent to test and compare bows, everytime what surprises me more than anything else, is the total lack of logic and scientific method with which all deal with this thing.

I speak of violists not because I disliked them, on the contrary I understand them, because making a great viola bow is really difficult. The viola is a very particular instrument, it is a sound mix between violin and cello, and not all sticks, even if they are good ones may be used for this. If the violin has a beautiful tone even if a little bit open, it is always pleasant, the same cannot be said for the viola. But pretending to play the viola hearing a cello tone seems excessive.

Even if the instrument is more critical, the violists are not the only musicians suffering from lack of method and excess of sentiment when they try bows or instruments. I would say that n this disease affects 90% of string players.

But let's come back to  Prof. Goedel. This nice gentleman is the one who in 1931 at the age of 25 years, completely destroyed all the certainties of the mathematic way formulating his two incompleteness theorems.

I leave to you to discover who this brilliant and picturesque character was , by logic he has destroyed Prof. David Hilbert's dreams . You can do this by clicking the highlighted words. I state here his second theorem:

    For any formal effectively generated theory T including basic arithmetical truths and also certain truths about formal provability, T includes a  statement of its own  consistency if and only if  T is inconsistent.

Simplifying, but not that much, we can say that it is impossible to determine the consistency of a system of axioms, using the axioms that compose it. Translated into the music field, it means you can not judge the sound of an instrument or a bow while testing it, because you are part of the system Violin / Bow / Player . To correctly judge the sound, you have to get out of this scheme and listen. You see, no musician usually takes into account the time factor, and obviously does not speak of the metronome. Time is crucial because its spending is linked to the flux that has already passed.

One example: if in the moment you say "How fine I am ," someone gives you a stroke on the teeth, "I am" becomes "I were". And you will have discovered, sharply and suddenly the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It relates to the sound in the Tone Indetermination Principle. (LINK WITH  ITALIAN VERSION ONLY)  For the more willing among you: discover what they are by linking to Wikipedia clicking on the highlighted words.

You can judge the mechanic, det3ect the sharpness of the instruments you are testing, but you certainly should not pretend to understand which sound they have , because even if the sound going from you to the listener takes a little time, it's still a 'little" , and is no more what you heard.

Please keep in mind that I affirm that not all phenomena of this world can be explained with the help of logic, think that Godel proved the existence of God with logic, even though he never published these dissertations during his life . Anyway having a more rational approach, and try to discern by ourselves can help us not only to play, but also to live better.

Do you consider it as logical wanting an Italian instrument even if the sound is not good convincing ourselves that it is beautiful just because it was made in Italy?
Do you consider it as logical wanting a French bow even if it doesn't work telling you that the French are the greatest?
Do you consider it as logical wanting a free, right, and civil country, and vote for Silvio Berlusconi?
In my opinion logic would help!

Golden Viola bow, with Ebony, and Turtle

Stick : Round pernambuco wood, dark brown tending to black, with gold wrapping and turtle. Length: 72.8 cm

Frog: Ebony, gold with contoured eye and slide in heart-shaped mother of pearl, button in one piece Weight: 73.2 grams.

So long

Paolo.