The violin octet

Abstract

Eight new violin family instruments in graduated sizes project the tone quality of the violin into seven other tone ranges, representing the first time a consistent theory of acoustics has been applied to a family of musical instruments. Undertaken in 1956 at the instigation of Henry Brant, they resemble instruments constructed in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. Using early violin tests, F. A. Saunders, John C. Schelleng, and C. M. Hutchins ferreted out a controlling characteristic of the violin: namely the two main resonances within a semitone of the two open middle strings. These two resonances are differently placed in viola, cello, and bass. Schelleng and Hutchins developed a mathematical scaling theory and Hutchins spent nearly 10 years adapting and constructing instruments according to these parameters. The first concert was at Harvard in 1963, a memorial to F. A. Saunders; a second in 1967 at the New York YMHA. There are over 50 compositions and arrangements for the OCTET, which has traveled thousands of miles for concerts and lecture demonstrations—one set permanently in England, another in Stockholm, with a composer contest and concert for the “Swedish Musical Acoustics Conference 1983.” Violin makers in the USA, Europe, and Australia are constructing the instruments which are described in “THE VIOLIN OCTET” available from the Catgut Acoustical Society. Personal work time privately donated; machinery and acoustical equipment funded by: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, American Philosophical Society, Arnold Hoffman Foundation, George MacDonald Foundation, Estates of Virginia Apgar, Helen Rice, Eunice Wheeler, and the Harriett M. Bartlett Fund of the Catgut Acoustical Society, Inc.