Ep. 14: Resonant Grains (Craig Eley on Carleen Hutchins)

In the 1950s, a schoolteacher named Carleen Hutchins attempted a revolution in how concert violins are made. In this episode, Craig Eley of the Field Noise podcast tells us how this amateur outsider used 18th century science to disrupt the all-male guild tradition of violin luthiers. Would the myth of the never-equaled Stradivarius violin prove to be true or could a science teacher with a woodshop use an old idea to make new violins better than ever? 

We also learn about the mysterious beauty of Chladni patterns, the 18th century technique of using tiny particles to reveal how sound moves through resonant objects--the key to Hutchins' merger of art and science. In this episode, we hear the voices of:* Quincy Whitney,  Carleen Hutchins biographer and a former arts reporter for the Boston Globe.* Myles Jackson, a professor of the history of science at Princeton.* Joseph Curtin, a MacArthur-award winning violin maker.* Sam Zygmuntowicz, an extremely renowned violin maker and creator of Strad3D.* Carleen Hutchins herself. You can subscribe to Craig Eley's Field Noise podcast to hear the original version of this story. This episode was edited by Craig Eley and Mack Hagood. Music is by Blue Dot Sessions and Marc Bianchi. The archival interview clips of Carleen Hutchins were provided by filmmaker James Schneider. The interview with Quincy Whitney was recorded by Andrew Parrella at New Hampshire Public Radio.
Transcript
[ominous music plays][CRIS CHEEK]This…is…Phantom Power.[MACK HAGOOD]Episode 14.[CRIS]Resident grains.[a whirring sound plays, then a string being plucked][CARLEEN HUTCHINS]What I’m interested in now is to see what the waves that are traveling through the woods are like. And those are the things that I think are making a lot of difference in the way, energy and the waves of energy can go through the wood itself. And wood is all sorts of sort of discontinuity, if you will, that will make the energy have to slow down or go around something, it’s a little bit like a river flowing. And if you put some rocks on the edge of a river, you’ll change the whole flow of the river downstream. Think that’s what’s happening in violins. There are certain ways that those blockages, the discontinuity can be worked out. And that’s the kind of thing I’m looking for us to see what happens. Because some of the beautiful issues that I’ve been w...