A Summer Evening and the Echo of a Violin
It was one of those late summer afternoons when time seems to slow down, and the sky—stained amber and purple—announces a beauty that defies explanation and can only be felt. Sitting on the porch, wrapped in the warm stillness of dusk, I began to hear, in the distance, the sound of a violin. But it wasn’t just any sound: it held an ancient melancholy, as if the day itself were playing a gentle farewell to its own passing.
The notes floated over the rooftops with an almost magical lightness, intertwining with the chirping of crickets—the soundtrack of summer nights—and the soft whisper of the breeze. Everything fit together: sound and silence, warmth and nostalgia, solitude and the presence of something greater. There was an invisible harmony in the air. A subtle balance. A sense that, even if just for a moment, everything might make sense.
I was reminded of the film Fiddler on the Roof and its description: “A universal story of hope, love, and acceptance.” Words that grow deeper as the years go by. And so, on that late afternoon, I found myself thinking of the violin—an instrument so often a symbol of sorrow, yet also of resilience and beauty. The violin is something universal. It can be baroque or folk, refined or improvised. But above all, it is voice.
A voice without words, crossing borders, times, and languages. A violin has four strings—just like the cardinal points, the elements of nature, the seasons. Tuned in perfect fifths, each string has its own timbral personality, responding with nuance to the bow’s movement. Sweet or intense sounds, waiting to be released. Each string, a possibility; each note, a singular voice in an intimate chorus.
The sound came from above, outlined against a sky fading into shades of red. I couldn’t see the violinist, but the music reached me clearly, as if the rooftop were the stage for a secret concert offered to the twilight. And what a concert it was. I caught myself imagining he was playing a Stradivarius. Some words carry centuries of myth, and this is one of them. Crafted with the precision of a master artisan and the auditory sensitivity of a genius, the Stradivarius, they say, is the embodiment of harmony. There’s much talk about the secret of the Stradivarius. Some claim it’s in the resonant 17th-century wood, others in the varnish, others still in the near-perfect proportions (close to the golden ratio) of the instrument’s body. Maybe it’s all of that—and something more.
What I do know is that, hearing that sound rise as if it were part of the air itself, I understood there are moments when beauty ceases to be mere contemplation—it becomes revelation. And in that revelation, perhaps, lies the hope that amid chaos, pain, and doubt, something greater persists: an invisible order, a meaning just beyond our reach, but one that calls to us. Even if that call comes from the roof of a house I cannot see.
But the beauty of a Stradivarius isn’t made of magic alone. Some prefer to examine the mystery through the lens of science. Javier Sampedro, in a column published in El País in December 2016, reminds us that the pursuit of the Stradivarius’s crystalline sound has obsessed scientists, luthiers, and musicians for centuries. The fascination with how a simple wooden object can produce such a subtle and unmistakable tone has driven researchers around the world to try to unlock the enigma. Even though Stradivarius violins were made with maple, like many other violins of the era, replicas have never successfully recreated their harmonic code.
Sampedro notes that a group of Taiwanese scientists discovered the difference lies mainly in the chemical treatments used at the time—a tradition lost to history. The wood wasn’t merely selected; it was treated with minerals, and that treatment altered its acoustic properties. Add to that the centuries of continuous vibration, and you have, literally, a new material—an organic-inorganic composite shaped by time in a way only time can manage.
It’s curious: chemistry, so often seen as the antithesis of art, may actually guard its secret. There’s something poetic in that idea. Some neuroscientists go even further and suggest that every aesthetic experience is, in the end, chemical: what we feel before art—that shiver, that unexpected tear, that sigh—is triggered by substances that course through the brain along paths yet to be fully mapped. Perhaps one day we’ll discover the formula for beauty. Or perhaps it’s better if we don’t.
The connection between art and science is not as rare as one might think. Albert Einstein, for instance, found in the violin a constant source of joy and inspiration: “If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music… I get most joy in life out of my violin.”
In the work of Vergílio Ferreira, music appears as a privileged metaphor for both aesthetic and existential experience. More than sound, it is presence—a language that, like writing, tries to touch the ineffable. In his novel Cântico Final, music represents the absolute, the eternal, that which escapes reason but feels essential. In Para Sempre, the protagonist’s reunion with the violin from his childhood becomes a moment of connection with the past and with his very identity, revealing music as a mirror of inner life. For Vergílio, music is a bridge between the visible and the invisible, between time and the timeless. Perhaps that’s why, in his view, art—and especially music—is one of the few ways to be truly present in the world. In Conta-Corrente I, he writes:
Among the sounds of music, in the ear
like a door left ajar
what reveals itself to me as meaningful
is what that music concealswaving in vain from the other side of it
and I feel it like the voice that responds
to what in me did not call nor lies in it,
for it is only the desire that knocks there.
And this is what I recall now, thinking of that lone violinist playing to the sky. As the world withdraws, the wood, the metal, the rosin, the years—everything transforms into vibration. And vibration becomes sound. And sound, art. And art, infinite.
That violin, suspended in the warmth of the night, is a bridge between heaven and earth—as if each note were a star falling silently into the heart of whoever listens. Sergei Rachmaninoff once wrote: “Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.” And maybe that’s what keeps us moving—that intimate knowing that something will always escape us, yet elevates us as we strive to reach it.
May everyone, even from afar, hear—as in the echo of another life—the sound of a violin coming from a rooftop. May they carry that melody in their hearts and, if only for a brief moment, feel the serene yet intense presence of someone who, in absence, became silence.
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