List of Headings
- i Propositions that needed further investigation
- ii The most valuable instrument ever made
- iii An unrepeated mix of professional and environmental circumstances
- iv A remarkable woodworking technique
- v An ongoing debate
- vi Choosing the materials for different parts of a violin
- vii Disproving some hypotheses
- viii A well-known source of suitable wood
- ix Evidence of some exceptional environmental conditions
Questions 1-7
Drag a heading to each paragraph.
1. There is considerable controversy surrounding reasons why instruments made by the artisans of Cremona in Italy in the late 17th and early 18th centuries sound superior compared to modern instruments.
2. However, no basis has been found for these possible explanations.
3. Violin-makers have always known that the secret of a quality instrument lies in the selection of the wood. Maple wood is preferred for the back, ribs, and neck of the instrument, while spruce is often used for the top.
4. Stradivari and other eminent Italian violin-makers of the 17th and early 18th centuries had neighbouring workshops in Cremona and would most probably have used the nearby high forest slopes of the southern Italian Alps for their supplies of spruce wood.
5. These were questions that required more thorough research.
6. The well-documented Maunder Minimum (1645—1715) was a period characterised by a scarcity of sunspots and a reduction in overall solar activity. It coincided with a sharp dip in temperatures and a period of extremely cold weather.
7. Furthermore, the conjunction of elevation, topography, soil properties and a deterioration in climate was temporally unique—climate conditions with temperatures such as those that occurred during the Maunder Minimum simply cannot and do not occur today in areas where the Cremonese makers obtained their wood.