The ''Blackbird'', also called the Black Stone Violin, is a full-size playable

violin The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regu ...

made of black diabase after drawings by

Antonio Stradivari Antonio Stradivari (, also , ; – 18 December 1737) was an Italian luthier and a craftsman of string instruments such as violins, cellos, guitars, violas and harps. The Latinized form of his surname, '' Stradivarius'', as well as the collo ...

(Stradivarius), but with technical modifications to allow it to be played. The violin was conceived and designed by the

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

artist Lars Widenfalk. It was named 'Blackbird' after the common blackbird (''Turdus merula'') because of its coloring.

Inspiration

The idea of constructing a musical instrument from stone came when Lars Widenfalk was working on big diabase blocks destined to form part of the artistic embellishment of the Norwegian TV building in

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

. Each rock has a unique composition so they vibrate in different manners, producing a sound characteristic to that type of rock. In 1990 Widenfalk acquired a small diabase block of high quality and blackness. It probably came from the quarries of northern Skåne in southern Sweden.Yman, Bosse. ''Lars Widenfalk skulptör utan gränser'' Magasinet Herjedalen. Vinter/vår 2012. It became clear to him that the size was right for an instrument such as a violin. The rock came from his grandfather's tombstone, which had been discarded after a joint family grave had been established. What made Widenfalk start to work on a violin was the desire to discover how far stone, in this case diabase, could be pushed as an artistic material, and he turned it into the world's first playable stone violin.

Construction

Diabase is a black

igneous rock Igneous rock (derived from the Latin word ''ignis'' meaning fire), or magmatic rock, is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic. Igneous rock is formed through the cooling and solidification of magma o ...

with a dense and finely crystalline structure. The rock used for the belly and neck of the violin is about 1.6 billion years old. However, the source tombstone was not large enough for the whole violin. Therefore, the back plate was made of another stone, a porphyritic diabase, about 1.9 billion years old, from the province of

Härjedalen Härjedalen (; no, Herjådalen or ) is a historical province (''landskap'') in the centre of Sweden. It borders the Norwegian county of Trøndelag as well as the provinces of Dalarna, Hälsingland, Medelpad, and Jämtland. The province origi ...

in south central Sweden. The stone violin is constructed to the designs of Stradivarius, but it uses Widenfalk's own technical modifications to allow it to be played. It weighs only and took two years to construct, being completed in 1992. The

sound box A sound box or sounding box (sometimes written soundbox) is an open chamber in the body of a musical instrument which modifies the sound of the instrument, and helps transfer that sound to the surrounding air. Objects respond more strongly to vibr ...

of the violin is only thick. It was made with highest precision and constructed with sound-holes, back and graceful scroll. The ribs (sound box wall) were made in one piece by first sawing out a thick plate shaped to form the external violin contour. Then the inside was removed using a waterjet and machined with hand tools to create a thin rib, no more than a couple of millimetres thick at its thinnest point. The interior of the box was gilded with

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...

. The fingerboard is made of

ebony Ebony is a dense black/brown hardwood, coming from several species in the genus '' Diospyros'', which also contains the persimmons. Unlike most woods, ebony is dense enough to sink in water. It is finely textured and has a mirror finish when ...

. Precision bonding of the sound box parts was done using two component glue and the neck secured with two silvered steel pins where it joins the body. The

bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

is formed from a piece of

mammoth ivory Ivory is a hard, white material from the tusks (traditionally from elephants) and Tooth, teeth of animals, that consists mainly of dentine, one of the physical structures of teeth and tusks. The chemical structure of the teeth and tusks of mamm ...

from

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, the yellowest available, symbolising the blackbird's yellow beak. The Blackbird is not the only stone violin; the

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech, ...

sculptor Jan Řeřicha has made some stone violins. They are made from

marble Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite. Marble is typically not foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the term ''marble'' refers to metamorphose ...

, a much softer stone and easier to process than diabase, and weigh between .

Performance

The Swedish composer Sven-David Sandström composed music specifically for the instrument. The music's first public performance on the Blackbird took place in the Swedish Pavilion at the 1992 Seville Expo in

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. In the same year the violin was blessed by

Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...

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. Since then, it has been played in many places including

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, Monza,

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, Stockholm and

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. A video from Face II Face, the Lars Holm and Lars Widenfalk art exhibition in Linneanum, Botanical Garden, Uppsala 2009, includes a 30-second segment of a performance on the violin.

References

External links

Blackbird: The Black Stone Violin
(Lars Widenfalk)
Blackbird the Black Stone Violin - YouTube
Violinist Guo Jia Yin plays the Blackbird
Blackbird: The Story of The Blackbird Violin from Epizootics of the Blowhole
Individual violins Swedish contemporary art

Inspiration

Construction

Performance

References

Further reading

External links