The sound from just about any Stradivarius violin is said to belong to the heavenly realm, and when you couple it with the hand of an accomplished violinist, you can safely say that you have witnessed heaven here on earth – at least in terms of music. Dr. Sirr, a radiologist, claims to have ‘replicated’ the antique Stradivarius violin with three different copies, something that is made possible using an X-ray scanner that is normally seen in action to detect cancers and injuries. The US-based group relied on a computerized axial tomography (CAT) scanner on the 307-year-old instrument in order to uncover its secrets. Following that, they relied on the data recovered in order to construct what they deem as “nearly exact copies”.
According to the team, this particular technique could result in delivering access of rare musical equipment to musicians. According to Dr. Sirr, when he was presiding over a gunshot victim, “I put the violin of the side on a table near the scanner and then after the patient went to surgery I turned round and saw my violin and thought – well it would be interesting to scan that.” Dr. Sirr’s future plans include replicating a Stradivarius cello, but too bad there is no way one can replicate or clone the musical maestros of the past – now that would be something else.
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