Million-dollar fiddle?

Stories of dusty, old violins found in odd places and turning out to be million-dollar Stradivarius fiddles have always amused me. The Stradivari family is known to have handmade the best sounding bowed instruments of their time. Violins are known to improve their tone as time slowly plays its magic in the wood and varnish. That is why old violins are more expensive than new ones.

Imagine the sound of one Stradivarius violin that time has worked on for centuries. Would it be awesome to hear one played right in front of you? Would it give justice to pieces written by the legendary composers who lived during the same era the violins were made? How much does a four-century old violin cost? Millions.

Now, here's one story of a "strad" that sounds too good to be true. read on...

It was 1985 when my dad was taking up his MA in Mass communication at the University of the Philippines at Diliman, Quezon city. He had this dormitory room and when he started cleaning up the room, he saw this old violin on top of his locker gathering dust. Apparently, no one owned it, so he claimed it for himself and decided to buy strings and a bow for it. He then enrolled in violin class at the same university. When his violin teacher saw this old work of art, he wanted to buy it from dad for a handsome amount. Realizing that this might actually cost more than the offer, dad decided to keep it. It bacame our family's violin.

This masterpiece had "close calls" in our possession. My sister left it in the car for 3 days and most of the time, the car was parked under direct scorching sunlight. We discovered a crack at the back side of the violin! Dad carefully applied wood glue to save this violin. Since then, it never sounded the same. We kids got a good wigging for not caring for the instrument as one should.

It is not uncommon for violins to be labeled or branded "Stradivarius", as the name has been used by other manufacturers. However, it is generally believed that there are less than 700 genuine instruments extant, very few of which are unaccounted for.

One can trace their whereabouts at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stradivarius.

The label in our violin says: Antonios Stradivarius Cremonensis Faciebat Anno 1713. There are a lot of knock offs around and we have no clue if ours was genuine or not, but the thought that MAYBE this one is real and costs a million dollars always intrigues me.

Pictures in this blog are actual pictures of our violin.