(Fr. corde; Ger. Saite, Streich-; It. corda).
In a musical instrument, a uniform length of any material which is held under tension and which produces a musical note when plucked, struck, bowed or otherwise excited. Many materials may be used: common examples are gut, nylon and related polymers, and metal wire.
3. Bowed and plucked string instruments.
GABRIEL WEINREICH, J. WOODHOUSE (1), FRANK HUBBARD/DENZIL WRAIGHT (2), STEPHEN BONTA, RICHARD PARTRIDGE (3)
When a string is impulsively excited (as by being plucked or struck) and then allowed to vibrate freely, it produces a large set of frequencies (‘overtones’ or ‘partials’) at the same time. The lowest of these frequencies (the ‘fundamental’) is inversely proportional to the string’s length, proportional to the square root of its tension and inversely proportional to the square root of its mass per unit length. As a result, a string is not only capable of being ‘tuned’ by adjusting the tension, but in many instruments the player can further vary the pitch by ‘stopping’ with the finger, thus controlling the vibrating length.
In an ideal string the higher overtones are harmonically related; that is, they are whole-number multiples of the fundamental frequency. There are, however, a number of factors that make the overtones of a real string deviate from being perfectly harmonic. An ideal string is assumed to be perfectly flexible, but a real string has some stiffness which resists bending. This produces progressive sharpening of the overtone frequencies relative to the harmonic series. To make a heavy string without excessive bending stiffness, a helically-wrapped construction is often used. To obtain harmonic overtones, the ideal string must have rigidly fixed ends. A real string is fixed (via a bridge) to the soundboard of a musical instrument, which must by definition vibrate. This coupling to the instrument body disturbs the overtone frequencies away from the harmonic series. Any irregularity of the string, due to manufacturing variation, wear or kinks, will disturb the overtone frequencies and cause ‘falseness’. Many instruments have strings in groups of two or three tuned to nominal unison or octave pitches. These groups of strings interact to give modified vibration behaviour. In summary, a thin, tight, flexible string will have approximately harmonic overtones, while a heavy, slack or stiff string will be more inharmonic.
The way in which inharmonicity affects the sound of a string is quite different for impulsively excited free vibration (as in a guitar, harp or piano) than for a string which is bowed. In the first case, a perfectly harmonic overtone series endows the sound with a very definite sense of pitch, whereas a severely inharmonic string may approach the sound of a metal bar. By contrast, when a string is continuously bowed the partial frequencies of its vibration (which is, of course, no longer a free vibration) are automatically forced to be harmonic. In that case any inharmonicity of the free overtones manifests itself more subtly, through an effect on the ease and controllability of bowing (see Acoustics, §II, 7).
The same factors that disturb the harmonicity of overtone frequencies also introduce ‘damping’ into the string’s vibration, so that following impulsive excitation the motion dies away and eventually ceases. In general, the rate of damping is different for the different overtones. The initial proportions of these different overtones are governed by the position of the plucking or striking point, and the size and hardness of the object doing the plucking or striking, but these relative proportions in the mixture change as the vibration decays. This time-varying mixture of non-harmonic overtone frequencies governs the tone quality of the sound.
In the West the manufacture of strings has chiefly involved the techniques of the metal worker (for wire drawing) and of the gut string maker. Keyboard instruments mostly use wire strings. Although there is evidence of drawn gold wire as early as the 5th or 6th century bce in Persia, it seems that the draw plate was not used in medieval Europe until the 10th century, from which time iron wire was available for musical instruments. The wrought iron produced for wire drawing was probably given particular attention at all stages of its handling. Recent analyses have shown the impressive purity that could be attained. The ingots of iron or brass were forged to smaller strips, cut into rods, hammered round and finally drawn down to the sizes required by instrument makers. It is known that trade in drawn wire was highly organized at an early stage, and certain areas acquired a reputation for the quality of their products. In the 18th century, Liège, Cologne, Hamburg, Switzerland and Sweden were particularly esteemed as sources of iron wire; Nuremberg was renowned for its brass wire. The harpsichord or plucked string instrument maker would buy this wire in small coils or wound on wooden bobbins, each marked with its own gauge number.
In practical instruments the strings in the bass cannot be as long as a theoretical doubling of string length would require for an octave drop in frequency: there is always some foreshortening of the scale towards the bass. This is very clear on those plucked string instruments with strings of the same length but tuned to different pitches. It is less obvious, however, that on a harpsichord strings 1·5 metres long in the bass may be about only half of their theoretical length. In order that the strings may reach the desired frequency with a short length, the mass must be increased. It was historically the case that different types of string material were used in the bass if the treble was designed to use iron wire. Thus strings of yellow brass (about 70% copper, 30% zinc alloy) were used in the tenor of iron-scaled instruments, with red brass (about 85% copper, 15% zinc alloy) for the last few notes. The scalings in the bass were designed to match the tensile strengths of the different materials (see O’Brien, C1981 and Wraight, C1997, chap.5). Silver and gold strings were used in a similar way; because of their higher specific gravity and lower elastic modulus they offer an acoustical advantage over brass strings. Piccinini (D1623) described using silver strings on his chitarrone, and there is evidence that gold strings were used on some keyboard instruments in the Medici collection in Florence. The expense no doubt prevented these materials being widely used. Another way of increasing the mass of strings without seriously increasing their stiffness was to twist two strings together. Such strings were used on cisterns and other plucked wire-strung instruments; they might also have been used on virginals. A related idea consists of increasing the twisting in a gut string in order to increase the elasticity and improve the tone in the bass (see Abbot and Segerman, A1974). Some clavichords and fortepianos of the late 18th century have a form of overspun string, consisting of a brass core with spaced winding around it. This was the forerunner of the modern piano’s covered strings, which are considerably heavier and have a close-wound overspinning.
Wire drawers identified their wire with gauge numbers, and since the mid-1970s considerable effort has been expended to discover how the numbers of the wire sizes (often marked on harpsichords, virginals and clavichords) can yield information on how old instruments, or copies of them, should be strung. This research has shown that although a variety of wire gauge systems were in use, wire drawn in Nuremberg was pre-eminent until the early 19th century. Old wire samples have confirmed that the Nuremberg gauge sizes were not based on a constant ratio of reduction, but were nevertheless held to fairly close tolerances (see Wraight, C forthcoming). Evidence of gauge numbers is also found on early fortepianos, and it seems that the iron wire used for pianos at the beginning of the 19th century was essentially the same as that for harpsichords and other instruments, albeit much thicker.
As a result of studying the question from the angles of physics, technology and organology, it is now clear that early instrument makers designed their scales to use the string materials to their best advantage. It would no longer be countenanced in most circles to string short-scaled instruments with a c'' of about 28 cm (intended for ‘normal’ pitch; i.e. not octave or quint instruments) with iron wire, nor would the strong steel wires developed for pianos be used on harpsichords. Modern makers of old instruments now have access to a range of strings in different materials, wire and gut, with tensile strengths suited to the specific types of scaling. Attention has also been drawn to the importance of the mechanical treatment of metals at the wire-drawing stage, and before that during the reduction of the material from large bars to rods for drawing. Metal wires take their strength from the hardening process of drawing them through progressively smaller holes; only later in the 19th century came the search for a more powerful tone and the requirement for stronger wire. Thus early 19th-century pianos used wires of the same composition as for harpsichords.
The most common materials used for strings for bowed and plucked instruments in Western music have been sheep gut, metal wire and plastic. Other materials have been used in various cultures and time periods around the world; these have included animal sinews (of water-fowl, in China, sometime between the 7th and 10th centuries ce), gut from young lions (9th-century Arabic source), wolf gut (14th-century English source; see Fiddle, §2), horsehair (the Near East, the Balkans, northern Europe and Central Asia, from the early 15th century onwards), vegetable matter such as bast, hemp, flax, liana (according to ancient writers) and, in the 17th century, coconut, yucca and aloe (see Bachmann).
Surviving early accounts on the making of strings indicate that the methods employed were essentially those still in use today. Of the three earliest of these, all from the 14th century, two (the anonymous Secretum philosophorum and Jean de Brie’s Le bon berger) are concerned solely with the manufacture of gut strings. The third is the Persian-Arabic treatise Kanz al-tuhāf, which describes how both gut and silk strings are made. According to Secretum philosophorum, sheep gut should be soaked for at least 12 hours in water or lye, until all external layers of flesh have been separated from the fibrous intestinal membrane. The cleaned gut is then soaked for two days in a strong lye solution or in red wine, and dried in a linen cloth. Then while they are still damp, two, three or four intestines are twisted together, to make a string of the required strength, which is then laid out to dry. The author gave a final warning that strings should not be stored in too damp or dry a place since excessive dryness or dampness causes them to snap easily.
Somewhat similar instructions appear in the article ‘Corde’ in Diderot’s Encyclopèdie (1754). Diderot added that it is the number of guts employed that determines the final diameter of the string, and hence which pitches it can produce. This varies from two, for the smallest mandolin string, to 120 for a double bass (Bonta, 1999). In his time the best gut strings came from Italy, although, with the growing use of the violin family, their manufacture was spreading elsewhere.
According to Mersenne's Law on vibrating strings, the pitch produced by a string is a function of its length, tension, diameter and density. Gut is not a very dense material, and to compensate for this bass strings made from it have to be either very long or very thick (at a given tension). On keyboard instruments and harps length is no object because the strings are not stopped by the fingers and thus do not have to fall easily within the reach of the player’s arms. Double-necked lutes such as the theorbo and archlute have a set of long, thin, diapason strings (not stopped by the left hand) to provide the deep bass alongside the normal fretted strings. However, on bowed instruments such as the viol and the violin families, diapason strings are impractical (because of the difference in nature between bowing and plucking) and the bass strings have to be the same length as the treble strings. The bass strings therefore have either to be very thick (which are then slow to speak and tend to produce a thick and woolly sound that is hard to control), or some method must be found to increase their density. Some scholars, string makers and performers argue that gut strings must have been made that could cope with low bass music. Supporting evidence includes the existence of the late-16th-century Italian Viola bastarda repertory, which employs the whole range of the viol in a highly virtuoso manner, and the notion that the adoption of metalwound strings was by no means standard until the second half of the 18th century, by which time the continuo bass had been in existance for a century and a half. This would imply some or all of the following: that bass violins and viols were of large sizes to give the bass strings extra length; that musicians were accustomed to quite heavy-guage strings; and that there may have been techniques used to increase the density of the gut. Since the last decades of the 20th century there has been growing interest in rediscovering the techniques that must have been used. Experiments with very high-twist roped gut (so-called ‘catline’), or with soaking gut in metal solutions (‘metal-loading’) are producing interesting, if not conclusive results, and every such experiment provokes considerable controversy about its historical validity (see Webber).
The most significant solution to the problem of density, in which metal wire is wound around a core of some material (in modern times, gut, metal or nylon), seems to have been invented in the mid-17th century, probably in Bologna. On ‘overspun’ (‘overwound’ or ‘wirewound’) strings density is increased considerably, thus much reducing the length of string required to produce low notes. This invention was crucial to the development of the bass member of the violin family, as it permitted the cutting down in size of the violone (or bass violin) and its conversion to a violoncello (see Violoncello, §I). It also permitted the addition (reputedly by Sainte-Colombe) of the seventh, A' string to the bass viol in France. The earliest known mention of overspun strings is in the fourth edition of John Playford’s Introduction to the Skill of Music (1664), and the first known use of the term ‘violoncello’ appeared a year later in G.C. Arresti’s Sonate op.4. Some strings were wound with a single strand of metal in a fairly open spiral (‘demifilé’); such strings are being manufactured again and are sometimes used for the middle range, as a transitional sound between the reedy pure gut at the treble end of the instrument and the firm, metallic sound of fully overwound strings in the bass.
From the early 18th century all members of the violin family used the same selection of materials for each of its strings. The lowest string (g on the violin; c on the viola; C on the cello) and occasionally its neighbour (d'; g; G) were overspun. For the top two strings of each instrument plain gut continued to be used until the 20th century when overspun strings came to be used on these too (the e''' string of the violin being made either of unwound wire or a wire core wound with flat aluminium ribbon). Strings are now usually wound with metal ribbon rather than wire, of aluminium, silver or even gold. In the latter years of the 20th century, strings with nylon or gut cores have been preferred for playing classical music, but for country and folk styles the harder-edged tone of strings with steel cores is often desired. On the modern classical guitar gut strings were made obsolete after the introduction of nylon strings in 1946 (wirewound on the bass strings), which offered greater tension and durability than the traditional material.
See Lute, §2; also Courses; Overspun string; Sympathetic strings.
A General. B Acoustics. C Keyboard. D Plucked and bowed instruments.
GroveI (F. Hubbard/D. Wraight)
MersenneHU
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