Reykjavík Grapevine - 13.08.2010, Blaðsíða 42

26
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 12 — 2010
Music | Instruments
This is probably the only violinmaker we've ever ran. It's also
super interesting. Feast your minds on it, will you!
Stepping into Hans Jóhannsson’s violin
workshop feels like stepping into an 18th
century science lab. A beaker filled with
amber-coloured varnish bubbles and
hisses in the corner. Jars of oils, a scale,
syringes, mixing bowls and test tubes
line the windowsills. Parts of instruments
hang from the walls. Hans shows me his
latest creation, a classical violin made
from his own model. Inside the label
reads ‘Berlin-Reykjavík’, the two cities he
divides his time making violins and other
stringed instruments.
Hans has been making violins for 33
years. He studied the craft in England
for 3 years before moving to Luxem-
bourg, where he worked at the Chateau
de Bourglinster, an isolated, 12th cen-
tury castle. Inspired by the seclusion and
fairytale-like environment, Hans concen-
trated on making violins for twelve years.
Today, he continues to only create, shy-
ing away from the business side of mak-
ing violins, restorations, and repairs.
Hans spends a little over two months
designing, making varnish, and sculpting
the wood for a single instrument. Unlike
most violinmakers, he does not make
copies of instruments. Hans works from
his own classical model and makes small
changes every year. He describes the
experience as a lifelong process. He also
makes strange instruments. I sat down
with Hans to ask him how he got his start
creating stringed instruments, and what
the future holds for violin making.
How did you get started in the violin
making business?
My grandfather was a cabinetmaker. I
used to hang out in his workshop when
I was a kid, and I suppose my interest
in working with wood comes from him.
There weren’t any musicians in my fam-
ily. In my teens, I played jazz violin and
guitar, but I never had any formal train-
ing in classical music. I think I was about
twelve or thirteen when I decided that
violin making was what I really wanted
to do.

What is special about the way you
make violins?
I am now heavily into the science of violin
making. I do a lot of computer analysis
of tones and sounds. I am involved in a
group that is a part of the Catgut Acous-
tical Society in the US. Every year we
meet in Oberlin at the music conserva-
tory. It’s a diffusion of what people have
learned in past decades and the sciences
of modal analysis of instruments. It’s the
same knowledge that is used to design
airplanes and cars and anything you can
think of that moves and is dynamic.
There are few good, classically
trained makers in the world who have
made the effort to learn a little bit about
objective analysis. It’s all about finding
out how the instrument moves at differ-
ent frequencies, because that teaches
you specifics about the density of the
wood and where to remove wood to
make it work in a certain way. It’s an
interesting way to learn how to control
the sound of an instrument, for example,
how to make a bright or a dark sounding
instrument.
Can you explain the science that you
use?
I put a little motion sensor, called an
accelerometer, on the bridge of the in-
strument. Then, I go around the whole
instrument with a tiny hammer with a
motion sensor in it as well. I collect all the
data from each point on the instrument
as it starts to move. The software takes
all of the information and makes a map of
the whole instrument. The software was
developed by an ingenious violinmaker
in England named George Stoppani. You
can make little animations of how the
thing is moving. The animations show me
things that I couldn’t possibly realise on
my own. It’s a revolution in the way we
think about sound.
How has that changed the way you
make instruments?
The work doesn’t become completely
scientific, because violin making is based
on the old tradition of feeling. It changes
the picture that I have in my head of what
it is that’s making the sound and how the
instrument is behaving. I don’t see the
reason for the dichotomy between tra-
ditional, empirical ways of doing things
and the scientific way. I think it is a mis-
take to separate things out and refuse to
think about objective analysis in violin
making.
When scientists are at their peak,
it usually has to do with their frame of
mind. Traditionally, people don’t think
about a scientist as being a creative per-
son, but that’s exactly what it’s all about.
There are a lot of violinmakers that are
really sceptical about science, because
they think that if you objectify things that
are done with feeling, then you somehow
destroy them. I don’t agree with that.
Tell me about the strange instrument
you make.
I love the baroque form of the classical
violin, but the whole aesthetics of the
violin belong to the baroque era. It’s in-
triguing that something so great has re-
mained unchanged for almost 400 years;
whereas, everything else is develop-
ing—chairs, tables, cars and things are
constantly evolving. I always wanted to
try and create something that had to do
with our times. I’ve been working for a
few years now with an architect in Oslo,
Andreas Eggertsen, and an artist in Ber-
lin, Ólafur Elíasson. I needed to work with
other people, because otherwise I would
always be stuck in my way of thinking.
The classical music scene is kind of con-
servative and not willing to accept big
changes. My line of thinking was that
if I were collaborating with an architect
and artist, their whole approach would
be completely open. There is an incred-
ible amount of experimentation and a lot
of interesting, contemporary thought in
those spheres.
We decided to do some preliminary
tests and experiments. First of all, we
wanted to make a stringed instrument
that anybody who had learned to play
the violin, viola, cello or double bass
could pick up and feel at home with. We
didn’t want to create a new culture. We
could’ve made a wacky instrument, but
then we would’ve had to make a whole
new culture around it. We started think-
ing about the phenomena of resonance
and how that fits in with shapes. The
Germans have a really good word called
“gestalt.” It’s more than shape; it’s how a
shape functions.
Ólafur had been doing some studies
on three dimensional vibratory designs
that he made a few years ago based on
a harmonograph. It had three swinging
pendulums, which if you tuned them to
a harmonic series, you would get these
beautiful shapes drawn in three dimen-
sions. We thought we would try, just for
fun, to make a shape that would be an
efficient resonator to amplify the string
sounds. Using that as a basis, we also did
a lot of studies on animal shapes, plant
shapes and organic, natural shapes. In-
sects have outside skeletons or shells
that can withstand tremendous forces
and distribute vibrations really well.
There was a resonator that worked quite
well that was based on the shape of a
beetle. Then, we fused those two kinds
of things together and we made a se-
ries of resonators out of wood, which I
carved. They were wooden resonating
sculptures.
How did the sculptures work?
I made a series of sculptures, each one
resonating in its own frequency range.
We did this sound installation in Lon-
don where we placed the resonators in
different parts of a building designed
by Ólafur. The acoustics were strange,
which suited us well. We got this incredi-
bly good English violinist, Thomas Gould,
to improvise. We channelled the signal
from his electric violin to these electro-
magnetic drivers (like a speaker without
a paper cone). The violin was one I made
out of wood, but it was just like a skel-
Words
Emily Burton
Photography
Julia Staples
The Scientist of Sound
World-renowned violinmaker Hans Jóhannsson talks about making stringed instruments in the 21st century
“When I listen to music, I
very often don’t listen to the
music; I just listen to the in-
struments. Otherwise, I get
involved with an emotional
situation, which is what we
are all after; but in order to
learn about the nature of the
sound, I have to kind of forget
the music.”
Geysir Fact #5
Cheap Cars
www.geysir.is
Check out our
website at
www.hostel.is
We’ll be here, to
arrange the most
exciting excursions at
the best price, and
offer you local advice
on how to get the
most from your stay
in this wonderful city.
Stay at Reykjavík City
Hostel or Reykjavík
Downtown Hostel.
Reykjavík City Hostel
Reykjavík Downtown Hostel.
HI Hostels Reykjavík
- your affordable quality bed