the age-old question of what makes stradivarius string instruments so special is getting a new twist. It's all in the chemistry, apparently, according to yesterday's issue of Nature:
Brief Communications
Wood used by Stradivari and Guarneri p565
The material used by the old masters to make exquisite violins may have been chemically manipulated.
Joseph Nagyvary, Joseph A. DiVerdi, Noel L. Owen and H. Dennis Tolley
doi:10.1038/444565a
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (215K) | Supplementary information
See also: Editor's summary
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