Interesting bilind testing of Stradivarius Violin

Homogenization is what's desired by those who are afraid of differences, and those who can appreciate differences.

This reminds me of that old Twilight Zone episode where everyone was made to look like a small, select group of great looking people and there was this one hold out who wanted to be unique but was forced to go through the procedure and came out loving her new look, even though it was like everyone else.

It reminds me of some of the conversations here. :-)

All the best,
Nonoise

True enough Nonoise, but at the level of analysis of Globalization, we are talking about uber-powerful factors, chiefly economic, that are MANY orders of magnitude above individual psychology , or even large group factor.

Schubert: "musicians are not from mars..."

Aren't you forgetting Jimi Hendrix?

No, it was Sun Ra that was from Mars.
I had lunch with him once and he told me so.(no joke)

I am not convinced of the validity of the methodology so have some difficulty with the conclusions drawn from the test.

That being said, I also have difficulty with the assumption that all Stradivarius instruments are superb and therefore worth vast fortunes. The man had to have some duds, he couldn't have done his best work all the time and right out of the starting blocks.

Another assumption that bothers me is that all modern instruments are inferior in some way.

Plus one or two minutes on an instrument even if the test was valid would only give results for first impressions. Could those opinions change if an artist played each instrument for say a month or in a concert hall?

For me "The Battle of the Fiddles" leaves more questions than answers.