The wood a violin is made from determines its voice, pointing to this truth: matter matters.
By Christina Brown
“Let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.” – Psalm 96:12 (NIV)
We’ve all heard the sound that emanates from a master violinist playing a concerto in the halls of an auditorium. It’s haunting, magnificent, and often otherworldly. We praise both the player and the composer. But we don’t always think to praise the craftsman who made the violin, and even fewer of us think to marvel at the trees that generated the sound of the concerto in the first place.
The talent of the violinist matters, but so does the quality of the violin. In luthier craftmanship, the species of tree, the age of its wood, and even the subtleties of its wood grain make a huge difference in the timbre, or “voice” of the violin.
As a young girl, I was in love with the violin, and at age 10, I was finally allowed to take my first lesson. Immediately I was hooked, and became determined to master it. By age 14, I had progressed enough that my parents took me to a “real” violin shop in a small corner of Washington, D.C., where I spent hours playing violins from different eras and origins around the world. I finally settled on a beautiful one crafted in Germany, and from that day forward, it became my dear friend and faithful companion.
To me, she is alive. The very molecules of her wood — the tree from which she was carved — and the shape into which she was fashioned gives her a voice. As a violinist, it is my job to turn her voice into song.
Martin Schleske, a German luthier, wrote a book titled The Sound of Life’s Unspeakable Beauty. In it, he applies the science of physics, the crafting of a violin, and its relationship to Christian theology. He explains how violin makers search for their perfect tree. Luthiers call them “singing trees.”
High in the Bavarian Alps grow some of the most resilient and full-bodied trees used by luthiers around the world. The high altitude and the poor soil have given these trees a determination to survive, and the strength they’ve harnessed to endure the harsh alpine conditions gives them a transformative power that the trees on the lower slopes don’t have. When tapped with the blunt edge of an axe, the tree replies with a resonant bell-like tone, and the luthier knows he has found his tree.
Schleske writes,
The tree submits to the formative strength of the master and is there shaped into a sound of which it knew nothing when it was in the forest…. The singing trees, like our calling, will be granted a new, second life. They will sing. The Master will form them in his
hand.[1]
In the Western Church, Christians have historically believed that our bodies matter, and the “resurrection of the dead” is not just a repetitious phrase in the Apostles’ Creed, but a literal reality.
Matter matters. And if the very cells of a tree contain the potential to soar in sublime melody inside the halls of an auditorium, then we, too, were designed to be re-fashioned in bodily form in the New Creation, singing to our Maker through the purity of our transmuted bodies.
Our physical forms aren’t merely houses for souls any more than trees are houses for violins. Rather, our molecules, our DNA, and our corporeal composition are essential parts of who we are and will be. Would our God have come to us, given Himself our flesh and ascended to the Father with the scars of mortality if He didn’t value our bodies?
All creation was made to sing for our Maker, and He glories in our substance; for in the heartwood of the tree we find the loving heart of our Maker.
Christina Brown and her husband, Brian, are the founders of the Anselm Society, whose mission and calling is a renaissance of the Christian imagination. She serves as the director of the Anselm Society Arts Guild, and is the garden columnist for Cultivating magazine. Her creative work can be found at LiveBeautiful.today and on Instagram.
[1] Martin Schleske, The Sound of Life’s Unspeakable Beauty (Eerdmans, 2020), 14-15.