sonata in z-flat minor

This is the most expensive violin in the world. It is a Stradivarius (nicknamed the Lady Tennant), made in 1699. It cost 2.3 million dollars.

It is very pretty, yes. And it is very old. It's namebrand. But there is something I've always wondered about high priced instruments such as this: how good can something really sound? And more to the point--if an instrument is so great that it's worth over 2 million dollars to someone, how much credit can the musician take for the sounds that come from that instrument?

This question actually comes from a more personal dilemmma that I've been faced with recently. I was given a violin for graduation per my request. It is a really great instrument--as a matter of fact, when I was trying it on I was told by the woman who sold it to me that the previous owner had only been able to upgrade to a better sounding instrument when he moved up to the $10,000+ range (for comparison's sake, this one cost around $1,900).

Well, that little tidbit hooked me completely, so I took it home and started playing, joined a band, and am doing all sorts of cool stuff with it. However, every now and then when I am playing it, I have this weird sense of guilt--like, if I were really spectacular, I wouldn't need such a great instrument to make me sound good. I would be able to draw the same quality of sound out of a piece of shit rental violin that weighs 5 pounds and has an inch of varnish on its green-pine body.

In staying with this theme, I also can't really put my finger on what makes me sound good in the first place. I don't feel like I am doing anything particularly skilled. Yet there is something different about the way that I handle my instrument now versus the way that I handled it ten years ago when I picked it up for the first time. But when I look back and try to pinpoint the exact moment that I went from sounding like a cat dying horribly to a reasonably skilled musician, I have no idea when it happened.

Ahhh, mysteriousness of mystery.