The Italian town of Cremona has taken a vow of silence while the sounds the violins make are recorded. Photo / Getty Images
The Italian town of Cremona has taken a vow of silence while the sounds the violins make are recorded. Photo / Getty Images
A town in Italy renowned for making the world's finest violins has taken a collective vow of silence so that the mellifluous sounds the instruments make can be recorded for posterity.
Cremona has been known for centuries as the home of violin making, including instruments produced by Antonio Stradivari, considered the finest exponent of the art.
He established his workshop in the town in the late 17th century and made more than 1,000 violins, violas and cellos, winning commissions from King James II and other royalty.
Now the town has blocked streets and a piazza off to traffic and urged residents to go about their business with as little noise as possible as the music made by four violins is digitally recorded by a team of technicians in the town's Violin Museum.
The rumble of a truck, the barking of a dog or the click of a pair of high heels could compromise the project.
The world's oldest violin at the Antonio Stradivari museum in Cremona. Photo / Getty Images
The noise restriction measures will be in place until February 9, giving experts the chance to attain the most perfect recording of the instruments.
"So far we've not had any complaints and people seem to be positive about the project, which is important for Cremona," Gianluca Galimberti, the mayor, told The Telegraph.
"The restrictions affect a relatively small part of the town centre so the inconvenience to people is fairly limited."
The instruments are so esteemed that they have individual names, including the Stauffer, a viola made in 1615 by craftsman Girolamo Amati, a violin called the Prince Doria, made in 1734 by the maestro Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu and a violin called Vesuvio – Vesuvius in English - that was crafted by Stradivari in 1727.
The instruments are played by musicians in an auditorium within the Violin Museum.
They will produce tens of thousands of notes which will be recorded by 32 ultra-sensitive microphones.
Even the lightbulbs in the auditorium have been unscrewed in order to stop a tiny buzzing sound that they emitted.
"Despite being 404 years old it still produces a soft, harmonic sound," musician Marcello Schiavi said of the viola made in 1615.
The recordings will eventually be uploaded to an online "Bank of Sound" database that will be available to composers, musicians and sound technicians from around the world.
More than 70 pieces of wood are used to make violins and other instruments by craftsmen in Cremona. Photo / Getty Images
"This is about the democratisation of music - the sounds of these instruments have been reserved until now for an elite audience, but now they will be available to the general public," Leonardo Tedeschi, a former DJ and the founder of a company involved in the project, told Corriere della Sera newspaper.
"The idea is to match these prestigious instruments with today's innovative technology and digital software," said Mattia Bersani, co-founder of the firm, Audiozone.
"It's a marriage between the past and the future to render immortal the unique sounds of instruments made by Stradivari, Guarneri and Amati."
Cremona's expertise in making stringed instruments was granted World Heritage status in 2012 when it was included by UNESCO on its listed of "intangible cultural heritage of humanity."
