>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. >> Quincy Whitney: Thank you very much for coming tonight. And forgive my voice. I think the changing weather you all are having is as bad as New England. And so, I'm catching up with the blossoms and the pollen and everything else. But anyway, I'm very excited to be here at the Library of Congress. And first of all, I want to say a personal note about the connection between New Hampshire and the Library of Congress. I was an arts reporter for the Boston Globe covering New Hampshire for 14 years. And the result of that was my first book, which is called the "Hidden History of New Hampshire," which is 60 stories about New Hampshire's most important legacies. And one of those legacies is that New Hampshire granite built the Library of Congress. Is this good time? Is this close enough? Is that where you would like me? Is that good? Okay. So anyway, thank you for coming tonight. First of all, I want to thank very much the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the musical instruments department for giving me two research fellowships, which allowed me to finish my research, and also the Hosking Houses Trust, which is in Clifford Chambers England, and she gave me a five-week residency just at the point where I was trying to finish the book, which was rather incredible. I also want to thank Carol Lynn Ward-Bamford and the Library of Congress for inviting me. This is a very special opportunity for me and especially at the beginning of women's history month because we get to celebrate an American female luthier, which is rare to begin with. And Carleen Hutchins is quite a pioneer. So I'm going to start with the keyboard here. I'm trying not to lose my cards here. The Giant by N. C. Wyeth is my favorite painting. It always has been. I love it because it implies the limitless possibilities of a child's imagination. It reminds us that there is so much more to life, to reality than meets the eye, and it urges us to use and not lose our imagination. The axiom the sky is the limit sums up the nature of a successful pioneer. In her book "Pythagoras' Trousers," physicist Margaret Wertheim chronicles the unique numerous and wonderful contributions of female astronomers across three centuries. The question is why astronomy. Why were females able to self-actualize and pursue their passion in studying the skies? The answer is quite simple. Their classroom was the sky. No one could stop a curious female from looking up at the sky. In 1929, Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding. But his discovery hinged on a discovery by a female astronomer almost two decades earlier. Henrietta Leavitt in 1908 discovered the idea that the longer period of luminosity for a star means that is it directly related to the luminosity of the star. Leavitt was one of a litany of unsung female astronomers at Harvard chronicled recently by Dava Sobel in her book "The Glass Universe." These unschooled, self-taught women made great contributions to their field, just like Carleen Hutchins. I got a little turned around here. And the sky was literally the limit for George Lucas when he had a passion and a crazy idea about creating a space opera based on his passion as a child for Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. After struggling with a script for five years, Lucas never gave up on his dream. When he and partner Gary Kurtz pitched a 12-page treatment to Hollywood, United Artists and Universal both turned it down. Twentieth Century Fox gave it a shot, and the result was a $7.5 million budget film that ended up garnering 513 million and sort of capturing the imagination of generations. Lucas's dream will culminate with the opening of his space age designed museum called the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art to open on the lakeshore of Chicago in 2019, which is all a testament to the power of believing. And this year, recently a week ago, at the Academy Awards, the remarkable story of more hidden figures, females, African-American female mathematicians who were known as computers back then who produced the hidden mathematical figures that would put John Glenn into space. Of course, these women were also hidden figures themselves in the history of NASA. They calculated the mathematical variables of the NASA wind tunnel, which by the way, followed the example of the Wright brothers. And the Wright brothers also did not have a formal education and taught themselves physics and aeronautics through trial and error, very much like Hutchins. There was an innate belief that they could do the impossible. Unlike the 18th and 19th century female philosophers, unlike the ladies of the Harvard Observatory and unlike the hidden figures of NASA, Carleen Maley Hutchins was alone. She was a singular pioneer who contributed more to her field than any luthier since Andrea Amati designed the earliest known violin in 1560. And Stradivari perfected it around 1720. The stakes in the violin world may seem inconsequential compared to the space program. Still, Hutchins is another intriguing example of a most unlikely pioneer who pursued her passion relentlessly. Hutchins also has a link to NASA. On March 2, 1999, 18 years almost to the day ago, I accompanied Hutchins to NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. She gave her last public lecture called Acoustics and the Violin: Past, Present and Future. And she gave it to 150 acoustical physicists at NASA. She was the keynote speaker for a colloquium they called What Is Music. I bring up all this sky talk because Hutchins is a story. The Hutchins story is about the pursuit of dreams and never giving up. It is also a story about the fact that things are not as they seem. "American Luthier," my book over there, which I just completed this past spring and was published by ForeEdge of the University Press of New England. "American Luthier" intertwines the story of this unlikely pioneer with the story the violent itself. The story reminds us that music is both art and science. Without the science of the human auditory system interacting with vibrating soundwaves, there would be no music. Music hinges on the science of acoustics, the same science that put man into space. The cover of "American Luthier" is a painting by Walter Tandy Murch. It first appeared in November of 1962 as the cover of Scientific American, in conjunction with her breakout article that put her on the map in her field. It depicts a scientific experiment that was set up by Hutchins in her acoustical laboratory in the basement of her home at 112 Essex in Montclair, New Jersey. The word "luthier" is a French word for violin maker, originally meaning lute maker because the lute maker made a range of stringed instruments, which included both those plucked like the lute and those bowed like the violin. Carleen Hutchins, pregnant with her first child, carved her first viola just to see if she could do it. She chased her passion for fiddles for the rest of her life. As an only child, Carleen possessed a self-reliance, born of the sparks, flying between a nurturing mother and a difficult father, fanned by an early passion for the Girl Scouts. The Girl Scouts gave Carleen an escape, an oasis, a direction and instilled in her the innate belief that she could do anything. As a Girl Scout, Carleen developed the courage to do what she did not know how to do. The Carleen Hutchins story is a story of many hats. By the time she graduated from Montclair High School, she was an accomplished naturalist, trumpeter and master woodcarver. At Cornell, she became a birder and a biologist and eventually became a science teacher. When her friends invited her to play chamber music, Hutchins gladly traded her trumpet for a viola because she was so enamored of the camaraderie of chamber music. In the two years it took her to complete her first viola, she donned the luthier hat. The same year, she met physicist, chamber music player Frederick Saunders. She apprenticed at the same time in violin making to Karl Berger, a master German luthier. And then she began experiments in the same year in violent acoustics with Saunders. Essentially, she taught herself acoustical physics by carving fiddles in her kitchen. Carleen eventually became an inventor, an author, a catalyst, an editor and an international lecturer. Hutchins and Saunders performed more than a hundred different experiments over a decade. And why did they begin with the viola and not the violin? Well, unlike the celebrated violin, the viola is the unsung stepsister of the quartet. In three centuries, no one has ever figured out a standard size for the viola. Too large to play comfortably and too small for its tonal range. The viola is forever stuck between the ergonomics of playing and the acoustics of tone. For these reasons, violists tend to suffer the most injuries among string players. But the great silver lining here is that, also an irony, is that the viola is the tonal center of the quartet. The chamber music world and every quartet generally always is looking for a viola, which is a great thing for a violist. Saunders was a physicist and a good amateur violinist and violist. Before he met Hutchins, he experimented by playing instruments in his own sound chamber that he developed and also by placing small weights on the bridge of an instrument. They were delicates because he loved the instruments and didn't want to ruin them. On the day that they met, Saunders gave Hutchins reprints of some of his articles on violin acoustics. Now Hutchins was a biologist, and she wasn't real familiar with the physicist jargon. But she had a lot of common sense. And she looked at these articles and she thought, well, for some reason he's not doing very invasive experiments. So she asked Hutchins, Hutchins asked Saunders what would you do if you had instruments that could be destroyed. And Saunders thought this was a crazy idea and said what violin maker would be crazy enough to make instruments that are going to be destroyed. And Hutchins said, I will. When Vermont composer Henry Brant learned of the New Jersey housewife violin maker who was making news in the New York Times, he decided to stop by Montclair and meet her. And when he did, on that first day, he posed the question about families of instruments. We have families of recorders and families of viols, and we have families of saxophones. Why not a complete family of violins? Hutchins agreed to try this in five minutes, but it took her the better part of a decade, aided by the calculations of Bell telephone engineer John Schelling. In 1965, Hutchins designed her first violin octet, eight instruments across the tonal range of a piano ranging from an 11-inch treble to a 7-foot contrabass violin. She proceeded then to make about 100 octet instruments, which amounted to about six more violin octets and about 400 conventional stringed instruments. She also found an international community devoted to violin acoustics called the Catgut Acoustical Society and published a biannual journal in the field of violin acoustics for more than 30 years. But more important, Carleen reversed the paradigm, almost every paradigm she came across in the violin world, beginning with the fact that there had been centuries of secrecy and competition between luthiers. She asked why not share information instead of guard it. She built a bridge where there had been a wall between luthiers, and she built a bridge between the art and science of the violin by sharing information about acoustics, about her experiments, and about violin making, rather than hoarding it. Realistically, Carleen Hutchins had absolutely no business in the string world. She did not belong. She was a total outsider as a female and a biologist. But like female astronomers, the female astronomers, and like the Wright brothers and those human computers who followed them, Hutchins displayed a curiosity, creativity, courage and resilience that characterized most successful pioneers. They have the courage to go it alone and to be the first, if no one's done it before them. For the untrained mind, there are no dumb questions and there is no sacred ground. The complete disregard for authority enables the outsider to question everything about the trappings of traditional thinking. Part of Carleen's investigations revolved around the study of old instruments made by European masters. In the spring of 1962, Hutchins visited the Library of Congress to view the Cassavetti viola, which is in this room, in the glass case over there. At this time, the Budapest quartet was the quartet in residence at the Library of Congress. One morning, Carleen went to the Budapest quartet rehearsal in the Library of Congress auditorium. She was listening to the Strad cello that was being played by Mischa Schneider. Afterward, they got to talking to Hutchins. And Hutchins dared to say to Mischa Schneider that she thought she had a cello that might be as good if not better than his Strad in her car. And Schneider suggested that perhaps she should bring it by his home so he could try it. Carleen recalled, much to my delight, he found that it was very similar to his own cello, and he liked it very much. As it happened, the Budapest quartet was presenting a concert the following week at Montclair High School. And Schneider, delighted to not have to bring his cello case along, said he would be happy to bring his bow only if Carleen would meet him at the auditorium door with her cello. Carleen recalled her excitement. You can imagine how thrilled I was to sit in the audience and listen to the cello sing. Afterward, I went to retrieve my cello and I asked Schneider how did it go. He said one word, magnifico. This was, indeed, the thrill of a lifetime for Carleen. The violin octet, this is a photograph that was taken in her living room in Montclair, New Jersey. The violin octet, the Hutchins violin octet is a family of eight tonally matched violins, graduated in size from the smallest to largest violins. They are the treble, soprano, mezzo, alto, tenor, baritone, base and contrabass violins. The mezzo is the closest to the size in size the conventional violin. The treble, soprano and mezzo are played da braccio, via outstretched arm. The tenor and baritone are played delle gambe, between the legs. The bass and contra are played standing in the standing position. That leaves the enigma in the middle of the octet. The alto violin or the vertical viola played like a cello. What happens when someone introduces something new in the classical music world? There's lots of opposition. The violin octet made waves Carleen never imagined. The new violent family was controversial from the start. Understandably, most classical musicians marry their instrument and are reluctant to retool on a new one. The Wright brothers worked in total obscurity for several years in the vacuum of the interest from their own government. They sold their first flyer to France. Similarly, after fighting an uphill battle for more than a decade, a fight trying to find interest in America, Carleen first found interest in her violin octet in Europe. Her violin octets, first in England, Scotland, Wales, then in Sweden and then in Russia, each have their own story about what makes or breaks a new instrument in the classical music marketplace. And here, the Russians in 1995 were the very first to produce a professional recording of the Hutchins' violin octet. In 1995, Yo-Yo Ma won a Grammy for his performance of the difficult Bartok viola concerto performed on Hutchins' vertical viola. In a recent interview, Ma said this, "What's interesting is that in the last 40 years, the quality of new instruments has increased exponentially, with the idea that there are no secrets between makers. It's the collapse of secrets. And that's part of Carleen's legacy." In 1983, California bassist, and he is far left, Joe McNally first played the Hutchins' contrabass in a concert at the University of California San Diego. From that moment on, he dreamed that he would one day own one. And in 2000, he made that dream come true. And McNally founded the Hutchins' consort, which is the only professional ensemble in the world that perform on a Hutchins' violin octet. They actually own two. The new violin family rocked the boat of people's expectations about chamber music. In 2009, as an example, following the death of Hutchins, a you New York Times obituary writer, who was writing about her, happened to be a former cellist. She pulled her cello out and hadn't played it in ten years. And she went and started practicing. And then when she was ready, she took her bow to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and found it on Hutchins' instrument just because she wanted to play it. She wanted to try it out. And she ended up complaining to me that Hutchins -- She was upset with Hutchins for fooling around with the quartet. The quartet was already perfect. Is the quartet tonally perfect? The idea that the traditional quartet has tonal gaps is actually an old idea. In a letter dated 1690, the Marquis Ariberti of Cremona, Italy ordered two altos from Stradivari. One was to play the contralto, and the other was to play the tenor. So there you have the problem right there. Other luthiers tried to address the problem of tonal gaps in the quartet before Hutchins. In the early 1900s, two French makers by the name of Leo Sir Senior [phonetic] and Leo Sir Junior [phonetic] created a true family of violins by creating six stringed instruments that were complementing the quartet instruments. So there were ten of them. Their ten-instrument concert, which was called [inaudible], won awards in Liege in 1905 and a grand prize at Bordeaux in 1907. Tragically, fire destroyed this consort of instruments, and then the work ended for both of them because the young Sir died in the war. In 1935 Frederick Dautrich of Torrington, Connecticut, also invented four more instruments to complement the quartet. Dautrich had limited success, but his instruments gave Hutchins a head start in figuring the sizes and tunings for her violin octet. In 1965, when Hutchins debuted her violin octet at the 92nd Street YM-YWHA, conductor Leopold Stokowski was in the audience. He found her the next day raving about this tone of her alto violin. And he said that was the tone he'd always wanted in a viola. For a year, Stokowski tried to convince his violists to play a vertical instrument. It failed. And when it failed, the maestro asked Hutchins to make an ergonomically successful viola with the same tone. And this is the result. She ended up calling it the monster. And it was so unbalanced, she just tried everything she could to figure out a way to make it easier, but that's what -- It resides today in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. So it's now an artifact because it couldn't be played. Carleen Hutchins defied the odds on every front, and she did it modestly and frugally. In 1954, when the Acoustical Society of America awarded Frederick Saunders the Honorary Fellowship, which is the highest honor for the ASA, he said to Carleen, who was then his young apprentice, that she need not come to see him receive the award because she "may not understand it all." Thirty-four years later, in 1998, Carleen Hutchins won the same award as her mentor. In the finale of my book, I like in violin world to the violin itself. In choosing one of the 80 parts that make up a violin, I like in Carleen Hutchins to the sound post of the violin. She was a hidden figure, just like the sound post is hidden inside the violin, an invisible component hidden from view that plays a vital role in perfecting the sound of the violin. Carleen's life touched every corner of the violin world, and yet she was little known outside her field. Will her life go unnoticed, as do so many those of hidden figures, or will it pave the way for the discovery of new highways and byways in the art and science of the violin? Either way, the Carleen Hutchins story reminds us to reach for the skies and follow our passions. You never know where that journey will lead us. Thank you. [ Applause ] And now I'm very excited to introduce Shannon Merlino, who is a viola doctoral student at Temple University. And she's going to play a Bach Prelude on a Hutchins' traditional viola, which is SUS number 53. And this is the last story I'll tell you, which is why all of Hutchins' instruments have SUS before them in the numbering of them in the label inside. It's going to say SUS 1, SUS 23, SUS 450 because of a story that happened in 1945, before she ever made an instrument. She was teaching science at the Brearley School. She was teaching grade school science, and she was a naturalist by her passion. So she had all these animals in her classroom for the children. She had guinea pigs, rabbits and, you know, little chicks. So on the first day of school in 1945, she is the science teacher and a new music teacher arrives. And that's Helen Rice, chamber music lady and guru. And she has to start a string program. And she's only got one string player. She hears that the science teacher is an amateur violist. So she also has a very pregnant sow on her family farm in western Massachusetts. And so, she says to Carleen the day she meets her, I hear that you like animals in the classroom. And Carleen said yes. And she said well how would you like a piglet. And Carleen said I'd love to have piglet. And she said, well, you can have the piglet if you come and play viola with my students on Friday afternoons. So when Carleen made her first instrument, she felt it had to be SUS number one because SUS is the Latin word for pig. And they had named the pig Susy the pig anyway. So SUS 53 is now what Shannon's going to tell you about. You want to -- What's good? Over here? >> Shannon Merlino: Hi. So before I began, I just want to mention that the vertical viola that we have today has been recently donated by the Carpenter family. And we are just very grateful to have that. I'd also like to thank Wamsley Violins in Haddonfield, New Jersey, who has been generous enough to loan me the Hutchins' viola that I'm going to be playing the Bach today, and also my mother, who's in the audience, who made this all possible. Anyway, when I first started my doctorate in viola, we had to take an entrance exam on the very first day of classes. And the question I was asked was what is the role of the violist. What exactly do we do with our job? And it's kind of hard. I've spoken with some composers who often have told me we can't really hear you when you play in an orchestra. What is the viola's job in the orchestra? As Quincy was saying, our role as a violist is to kind of tie the whole thing together. There's a little bit of tonal disagreement between the violin and the cello. Our job is to bring them together somehow with our sound. So in Carleen's instruments, they follow a very interesting tonal range, I think. Very different than my own instrument. What I've noticed playing Carleen's viola for a few days is that, as Yo-Yo Ma said in a review in I believe it was a Baltimore Sun of his Bartok performance. He mentioned that the viola had a very reedy kind of sound, almost like an early music instrument. I would have to agree. And there are certain things about Carleen's traditional viola that I found very, very, very interesting. So to start, I wanted to discuss the measurements of these instruments. Standard measurement for a viola, for, you know, an average viola is anywhere between 38 and 46 centimeters long. That's about 15 to 18 inches. Interestingly enough, the viola is the only string instrument that does not have a standard full-size. So I'll show you. So this is the size of the standard Hutchins' viola. This is SUS number 53. It was made in 1966 in Montclair, New Jersey. It's 41.8 centimeters long body length. The lower bout from here to here is 25.7 centimeters, middle bout 14 centimeters exact, upper bout is 20.4 centimeters. That's around standard. The viola that I perform on now, which was made by Clifford Hoing, a British viola maker, contemporary to Carleen Hutchins, is 42.5 centimeters for comparison. So it's just slightly longer. In comparison, the vertical viola, which is kind of massive, as you can see, this is 50.75 centimeters long by length. The upper bout in comparison to Carleen's other viola that is 20.4 centimeters, 24 centimeters. The lower bout is 30 centimeters. So the difference of 5 centimeters doesn't seem like that big of a deal. But when considering what our training as instrumentalists, that becomes problematic. So that's the next thing that I'd like to address is, you know, what do we do, what does the viola do? Up until about 1930, the viola was, as Quincy said, the ugly stepchild of the violin family. We had some technical issues owing to the fact that acoustically, our instrument is just not in a good position right from the start. Yeah, sure. Thank you. In order for a viola to have the same acoustical properties as the violin or cello, it would need to be, in fact, 20 inches long, which is what we have here. And until about 1930, we performed primarily on gut strings. And technology was such that we really hadn't had a way to address the tonal issues that the instrument had. So a lot of the extended techniques that you'll see possibly in the Shostakovich, which is being performed tonight, wouldn't really be possible on earlier instrument. So as a violist, one of the things that, you know, became very interesting to me when I first spoke with Quincy was that, you know, how do these issues translate to the vertical viola. How do we address the idea of learning how to play this entirely new instrument? So because of the innovations in viola design and viola techniques since about 1960, it is kind of an issue. So we would love to open this up to some questions and answers now. So Quincy, like to join me? >> Can I have a microphone coming for the people with questions? >> I guess more to Quincy. Have there been -- I'd be interested in knowing if there have been works composed specifically for the violin octet if you have examples. >> Quincy Whitney: There's probably now about at least 500. There were 300 maybe ten years ago. With the Hutchins' consort, two basses were both composing and one bass as we lost one bass because he died very suddenly this year or this past year. So Joe McNally, the founder, is one of the primary composers for the octet. But I know the octet is also open to any composers who would be interested. Yes. >> I was wondering about the price of her instruments. Have they gone up and all of that kind of thing? And also, the acoustical experiments that Saunders wanted to do and that she was willing to make these instruments that could be destroyed in the process, a little more about that. >> Quincy Whitney: Let's see. When she sold her first sold her first octet, I believe it was like 80,000 for the 8-inch instrument. So 10,000 was dirt cheap in 1970 something when the English group wanted to purchase them for Edinburgh. They are now at the University of Edinburgh. In terms of the kind of acoustics experiments, I could, you know, have a whole talk just on those. But one of the most interesting ones with the swiss cheese violin, where she punched 64 holes in the ribs of the instrument and then plugged those holes of cotton. Then, she would remove the cotton. And she and Saunders were exploring really the violin as a wind instrument. You think of them. They start out studying the wood modes. They want to see how the wood's vibrating. And then they realized that maybe the air currents inside the box are far more important. So that was one interesting experiment. Yes. >> Are you considering writing a screen play, and who would you consider [inaudible]? >> Quincy Whitney: You know, after seeing Hidden Figures, I am convinced that this is a film. But I've been convinced for 20 years. And I'm not sure who should play her, but I know it's a story. I know it's film. I haven't gotten to that point, but I'm certainly willing to do it if somebody had some interest. Yes. [ Inaudible Comment ] The acoustic. >> Shannon Merlino: Sure. >> Quincy Whitney: Go with that. >> Shannon Merlino: Okay. So one of the issues with the acoustics is, as I said, in order for the instrument to have the same acoustical properties as the violin, it would need to be about 20 inches long. So one of the things -- And surprisingly, this viola doesn't have these. One of the things that we experience as string players is called a wolf tone. Violins don't often have them. I was the unfortunate owner of a violin with a very bad wolf tone for many years. And my viola that I have has a wolf tone as well. In the past few years, a little device has been invented that gets rid of these wolf tones. But really, when you use a wolf tone eliminator or something like that, it does damp the sound a little bit. So -- >> Quincy Whitney: And I would just add to that, the wolf tone was also something that Hutchins and Saunders were studying a lot, what makes them happen and why and when they're really bad. And sometimes you can't do anything about them. >> Shannon Merlino: Right. The sound of the instrument is produced by two different forces. The resonating body of air inside the instrument and also the resonance of the plates in the back. So, you know, it's just my guess. I don't have anything to back this up. But because of the shape and the dimensions of Carleen's instruments, they do avoid some of those issues that come up. So does that answer? >> Quincy Whitney: With respect to playing them, I know that she had an experience many times when a player would come to one of her instruments and immediately start putting a particular pressure that a cellist might put on his cello. And she had to pull them all off and just say go much lighter and listen to what the instrument can do because lots of times, you come to an instrument with an expectation about how much pressure you have to add. And she was always trying to get them to lighten up because she did so much work on the resonance of both the box and the wood that it started to sing with less pressure. And I also wanted to add one other thing about the fact that someone had asked me if there are people who make these instruments still. Carleen had about -- She taught about 50 students and she has about nine living students today who make these instruments if they were requested. There is a luthier in Genoa, Italy. There's one in Belgium, and there's about six or seven in the states that know Carleen's work and have made them and might even have them in their inventory. But as I say, you need to -- I could get that information to you if you're interested. Yes. >> My question's going to be limited by the fact that I've already forgotten the term that you used. But you mentioned the fact that you and a colleague cracked one of these open and saw that there was a part, that there was a new cut in it or an unexpected cut in it. And I'm wondering if you can comment as to why she might have constructed it in that way or what acoustical effect that was supposed to have had. >> Shannon Merlino: That's a really good question. Unfortunately, my knowledge of physics as a music student is somewhat limited. But, you know, one of the things that musicians spend hours upon hours upon hours doing is getting adjustments made to our sound post. As the force that carries the vibrations from the front of the instrument to the back of the instrument, even a half of a millimeter adjustment can dramatically change the sound of this instrument. So I know like my luthier will go in there with a little tool and tap on my sound post when my viola is having a bad day. I can only think that to reduce some of the volume and the bulk of that sound post may have a pretty interesting effect. I do know that this instrument responds very differently than anything I've ever played before. So I do think that there is something to be said about that. Thank you. It's been a pleasure to have it for a few days, so. >> Quincy Whitney: Yes. >> I noticed in the diagram here that the bass bar. Is that the bass bar coming across the back or across the top? >> Quincy Whitney: Yes. >> It looks more tapered than the standard bass bar. Is that something that you noticed or is there something she was experimenting with? >> Quincy Whitney: This particular drawing was from the scientific American article in 1962. I don't really know that it's a particular -- I know that tapering is not unusual I don't think for the bass bar. But I couldn't tell you about this particular one in this drawing. >> Shannon Merlino: Can I just jump [inaudible]? >> Yeah. I have to say I'm a novice about all of this. I don't really know much about instrument making. I know the Sitka spruce is used for pianos sometimes. I'm just wondering how much experimentation there was with materials or if, you know, if that makes any sense at all and if there's any new technologies, you know, discovered and so on in all of the components, including the bow? >> Quincy Whitney: I don't know. I can't speak to the bow. But with respect to materials, with respect to the instrument, one of Carleen's experiments, she tried 35 different kinds of wood for the bridge alone. That was one of her experiments. Another one was the epoxy violin that she did, she made out of epoxy resin. She made an instrument. And she found that epoxy actually was in many ways more uniform, and it actually could work. But many players thought it was ugly. >> We have time for one last question. >> Quincy Whitney: Yes. >> Did she experiment with bows? >> Quincy Whitney: No. Never touched experimenting with bows. >> We can do one more quick question. >> Quincy Whitney: And I just want to remind you that I would love to sign a copy for anyone who would like to read the book. >> So let's please thank you Quincy and Shannon. >> Quincy Whitney: Thank you. [ Applause ] Thank you so much. I really, really appreciate it. >> Shannon Merlino: That was amazing. >> Quincy Whitney: Really good. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.