Stradivarius instruments—violins, violas, and cellos made in the seventeenth and eighteenth hundreds of years by Antonio Stradivari of Cremona, Italy—are known for their unmatched tones. It’s hence that the instruments are passed down and painstakingly restored over generations. All things considered, their tones start to change as the instruments debilitate with age, and in the long run they should “go to sleep,” as Fausto Cacciatori puts it. The keeper of Cremona’s Museo del Violino, in any case, needs to ensure that future generations don’t miss out. He’s attempting to save the sounds of two violins, a viola, and a cello. It’s really a city undertaking. As the New York Times reports, Cremona’s mayor has encouraged occupants to keep away from superfluous sounds and police have shut the cobblestone avenues around the historical center for five weeks as work advances.

A barista got a thought of exactly how vital the task is the point at which she unintentionally smashed a cup. “Even a police officer popped in and asked me to keep it down,” she tells the Times. Lightbulbs in the museum’s concert hall were even unscrewed to eliminate a faint buzzing during recordings for the “Stradivarius Sound Bank,” the brainchild of former DJ Leonardo Tedeschi. “We are making immortal the finest instrument ever crafted,” he says, while a sound engineer explains hundreds of thousands of recorded notes could in the future be used to “record a sonata with an instrument that will no longer function.” The Times of London previously revealed that cool temperatures in the region during Stradivarius’ lifetime allowed him to work with a denser quality of wood, taken from a Paneveggio forest that was heavily damaged in a storm.