From the time of Stradivari; the mysterious craft of violinmaking has been a closely guarded; lucrative; and entirely masculine preserve. In the 1950s Carleen Maley Hutchins was a grade school science teacher; amateur trumpet player; and New Jersey housewife. When musical friends asked her to trade a trumpet for a $75 viola; she decided to try making one; thus setting in motion a surprising career. A self-taught genius who went head to head with a closed and ancient guild; Hutchins carved nearly 500 stringed instruments over the course of half a century and collaborated on more than 100 experiments in violin acoustics. In answer to a challenge from a composer; she built the first violin octetmdash;a family of eight violins ranging in size from an eleven-inch treble to a seven-foot contrabass; and in register across the gamut of the piano keyboard. She wrote more than 100 technical papersmdash;including two benchmark Scientific American cover articlesmdash;founded an international society devoted to violin acoustics; and became the only American and the only woman to be honored in Cremona; Italy; the birthplace of Stradivari.Hutchins died in 2009 at the age of ninety-eight. The most innovative violinmaker of the modern age; she set out to explore two worlds she knew virtually nothing aboutmdash;violins and acoustical physics. American Luthier chronicles the life of this unsung woman who altered everything in a world that had changed little in three centuries.
#3721572 in eBooks 2015-11-30 2015-11-30File Name: B018R7W3ES
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