Digital Amati: Digitally Curating and Studying the Italian Violin-Making Tradition | Harry Mairson

A presentation from 2023–2024 Rieman and Baketel Fellow for Music Harry Mairson

Following the presentation is a musical performance featuring Emmanuel Feldman on violoncello and Anne Tyson on piano.

Harry Mairson is professor of computer science at Brandeis University and a cello maker. He is interested in designing and using software to inform the artisanal practice of making classical stringed instruments. A recent project is the publication of a folio of CT images of the 1700 Stradivari “Stauffer-ex Cristiani” violoncello, in the collection of the Museo del Violino, in Cremona, Italy.

At Radcliffe, Mairson is building a digital library of iconic instruments from the Italian golden age of violin making. The work includes deconstructing this data into the proportional Renaissance geometry that was used to design these instruments, further work on a “cello compiler” that translates these designs into computer numerically-controlled fabrication, and using computer-manipulable representations of this Renaissance geometry to explain the evolution of instrument forms. Find out more at https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/peo....

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0:00 Introduction
2:32 Harry Mairson
45:54 Musical Performance