Research

Introduction: The Question of the “Ideal of Sound” Every epoch constructs its own ideal of sound. This phrase, often used by organologists and historians of the violin, conceals a complex...

When musicologists and historians say that “the ideal of sound has evolved across musical eras,” they imply that there exists a collective intentionality — a cultural noesis — toward which...

Johann Sebastian Bach’s music is not merely the culmination of a stylistic epoch; it is the audible resolution of a centuries-long theological dialectic. From the Platonic harmonics of Augustine and...

One of the persistent questions in violin and guitar making is how to approximate the condition of an instrument that has lived for centuries. Beyond the wood itself, the varnish...

     Among the varied wonders of hyperconnected tele-society, none has proven so enigmatic as the controversial social media post. So vexing was my recent experience of this kind that...

1. The Oral Roots of Musical Life Before notation became the axis of European musical culture, music lived primarily as an oral, embodied, and communal practice. Medieval and Renaissance practice: chant, folk...

Protein Folding, Creative Evolution, and the Future of the Violin For more than two centuries, the violin has been both the most cherished and the most paradoxically frozen instrument in...