51: Fingerboard length has been evolving!

We still have, play, and deeply treasure, Italian violins from 350-400 years ago. But a few articles ago, I mentioned that a G6—a G4 is on the second line of the treble clef; a G5 is on the space above the fifth line, and a G6 is an octave above that— was the highest note Bach ever wrote for the violin, and possibly, for any instrument.
               Violins of his time—when Guarnerii and Stradivarii were basically new—had significantly shorter fingerboards than modern ones do. Pushing down the string to the fingerboard in a particular place, and then dragging a bow across the string or plucking it is how a violin makes its sound. It is theoretically possible, but much more difficult (and may cause hand pain, damage, or in some cases even be outright impossible) to play notes with actual pressure beyond where the fingerboard ends.
               The first harmonic of the E string—whose fundamental is E5, so cutting it exactly in half gives us an E6—was roughly the upper limit; on the rare occasion that composers did write above that E, they almost certainly would not pass the G a third above it. But, as I mentioned in our walkthrough of music history, as time passed, ensembles got bigger, dynamic ranges expanded (“soft” got softer and “loud” got louder). Something else changed: the upper limit that composers would routinely ask for.
               Because those higher notes (say, the octave from G6 to G7) were never used by Bach and his contemporaries, instrument-makers of the day knew they could get by with fingerboards that weren’t that much longer than where the upper limit would be when the instrument was properly tuned. This is the only real evolution in the design of the violin since Stradivarius, Guarneri, and the Baroque composers: more recently made violins have longer fingerboards since music written after those masters made their violins calls for a wider range. The range didn’t change on the bottom side, so the only place it could expand was up, and it sure did.
               If you ever watch a period performance and a modern performance of the same thing (I highly recommend this), find a video and look at the relative lengths of the fingerboards. You’ll see that the Baroque instruments (modern, very high-quality copies of Baroque-era instruments, most of the time) have noticeably shorter fingerboards than their modern-design cousins. This, and of course the change in string material (from sheep intestine—yes, really—to something synthetic like steel and/or nylon), are the two major changes in the design of the violin in the last 400 years. Other than that, we have in our hands a perfect instrument, so what else is there to change?

 

 

 

 

 

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