Blind listening tests cannot distinguish Strads from modern violins

Evidence

No one has ever demonstrated that Stradivarius violins (or Guarneri and the like) come out better in blind listening tests. In a BBC radio program in 1977, Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, and the violin dealer Charles Beare failed to distinguish among four violins of good quality but wildly differing pedigree: the “Chaconne” Stradivarius, a 1739 Guarneri, an 1846 Vuillaume, and a 1976 modern violin, all played behind a screen by another professional. Stern and Zukerman played all four instruments first. No one identified more than two of the four instruments. Two identified the twentieth-century violin as the Stradivarius. — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 1789

Categorization

• CANDY: The detail that two experts picked the 1976 modern violin as the Stradivarius is a delightful, low-context conversational fact about violin mythology.
• XREF: Parallels auditory perception findings elsewhere in this book about how expectations and prior knowledge shape hearing.