Violin 
Violin,
bowed
stringed instrument, the highest-pitched member of the violin family. Other members of the
violin family are the viola, cello, and double bass. The bow is a narrow, slightly
incurved stick of Brazil-wood about 75 cm (30 in) long, with a band of horsehair stretched
from end to end of the bow stick. The violin has four strings tuned a fifth apart, to the
notes g, d’, a’, e’’:
On early violins the strings were of pure gut. Today they may be of gut, gut wound with aluminium or silver, steel, or perlon.
Construction
and Playing
The
main parts of the violin are the front (also called the belly, top plate, or soundboard),
usually made of well-seasoned spruce; the back, usually of maple; and the ribs, neck,
fingerboard, peg box, scroll, bridge, tailpiece, and f-holes (or sound holes, see
illustration). The front, back, and ribs are joined together to form a hollow sound box.
The sound box contains the sound post, a thin, dowel-like stick of wood wedged inside
underneath the right side of the bridge and connecting the front and back of the violin;
and the bass-bar, a long strip of wood glued to the inside of the front under the left
side of the bridge. The sound post and bass-bar are important for the transmission of
sound, and they also give additional support to the structure. The strings run from the
tailpiece, across the bridge, are suspended over the fingerboard, and finish at the peg
box, where they are attached to adjustable tuning pegs. The player makes different pitches
by placing the left-hand fingers on the string and pressing against the fingerboard. The
strings are set in vibration and produce sound when the player draws the bow across them
at a right angle near the bridge.
Among
the prized characteristics of the violin are its singing tone and its potential to play
rapid, brilliant figurations as well as lyrical melodies. Violinists can also create
special effects by means of the following techniques: pizzicato, plucking the strings;
tremolo, moving the bow rapidly back and forth on a string; sul ponticello, playing
with the bow extremely close to the bridge to produce a thin, glassy sound; col legno,
playing with the wooden part of the bow instead of with the hair; harmonics, placing the
fingers of the left hand lightly on certain points of the string to obtain a high,
flute-like sound; and glissando, steadily gliding the left-hand fingers up and down along
the string to produce an upward- or downward-sliding pitch.
History
The
violin emerged in Italy in the early 1500s and seems to have evolved from two medieval
bowed instruments—the fiddle, also called vielle or fiedel, and the rebec—and
from the Renaissance lira da braccio (a violin-like instrument with off-the-fingerboard
drone strings). Also related, but not a direct ancestor, is the viol, a fretted,
six-string instrument that appeared in Europe before the violin and existed side by side
with it for about 200 years.
The
first important violin-makers in the early 17th century were the northern Italians Gasparo
da Sal? and Giovanni Maggini from Brescia and Andrea Amati from Cremona. The craft of
violin-making reached unprecedented artistic heights in the 17th and early 18th centuries
in the workshops of Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri, both from Cremona, and the
Austrian Jacob Stainer.
Compared
with the modern instrument, the early violin had a shorter, thicker neck that was less
angled back from the violin's front; a shorter fingerboard; a flatter bridge; and strings
made solely of gut. Early bows were somewhat different in design from modern ones. These
construction details were all modified in the 18th and 19th centuries to give the violin a
stronger and more brilliant tone. A number of 20th-century players have restored their
18th-century instruments to the original specifications, believing them better suited for
early music.
Used
at first to accompany dancing or to double various lines in vocal music, the violin was
considered an instrument of low social status. In the early 1600s, however, it gained
prestige through its use in operas such as Orfeo (1607) by Claudio Monteverdi, and
through the French king Louis XIII's band of musicians, the 24 Violons du Roi
(“the king's 24 violins”, formed in 1626). This growth in stature continued
throughout the Baroque period in the works of many notable composer-performers, including
Arcangelo Corelli, Antonio Vivaldi, and Giuseppe Tartini in Italy and Heinrich Biber,
Georg Philipp Telemann, and Johann Sebastian Bach in Germany. The violin became the
principal force in the instrumental genres then current—the solo concerto, concerto
grosso, sonata, trio sonata, and suite—as well as in opera. By the mid-18th century
the violin was one of the most popular solo instruments in European music. Violins also
formed the leading section of the orchestra, the most important instrumental ensemble to
emerge in both the Baroque and Classical eras; and in the modern orchestra—still the
most important instrumental ensemble in Western music—the violin family continues to
account for more than half the players. The predominant chamber-music ensemble, the string
quartet, consists of two violins, viola, and cello.
During
the 19th century virtuoso violinists of international fame toured extensively throughout
Europe. They included the Italians Giovanni Viotti and Nicol? Paganini, the Germans Louis Spohr and Joseph Joachim, the Spaniard Pablo de
Sarasate, and the Belgians Henri Vieuxtemps and Eugène Ysa?e. In
the 20th century the violin achieved new artistic and technical heights in the hands of
such masters as Isaac Stern, Yehudi Menuhin, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, Mischa Elman,
Nathan Milstein, Joseph Szigeti, and David Oistrakh.
From
the early Baroque period to the present day, virtually every composer has written music
for the violin. Among the most popular concertos for the instrument are those by
Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Tchaikovsky.