Violins Essay, Research Paper

Construction and Playing

The main parts of the violin are the front, also called the belly, top, or soundboard, usually

made of well-seasoned spruce; the back, usually made of well-seasoned maple; and the ribs,

neck, fingerboard, pegbox, scroll, bridge, tailpiece, and f-holes, or soundholes (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 construction. The strings are fastened to the tailpiece, rest on the bridge, are

suspended over the fingerboard, and run to the pegbox, where they are attached to tuning

pegs that can be turned to change the pitch of the string. 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 light, flutelike 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 viele or fiedel, and the rebec?and from the

Renaissance lira da braccio (a violinlike 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 earliest important violin makers were the northern Italians Gasparo da Sal? (1540-1609)

and Giovanni Maggini (1579-c. 1630) 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 the Italians 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 louder,

more robust, more brilliant tone. A number of 20th-century players have restored their

18th-century instruments to the original specifications, believing them more suited for early

music.

Used at first to accompany dancing or to double voice parts in vocal music, the violin was

considered an instrument of low social status. In the early 1600s, however, the violin gained

prestige through its use in operas such as Orfeo (1607), by the Italian composer 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 (circa 1600-c. 1750) 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 (circa 1750-c. 1820) 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 legendary fame concertized 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 Eug?ne Ysa?e. In the 20th century the violin achieved new artistic and

technical heights in the hands of the Americans Isaac Stern and Yehudi Menuhin, the

Austrian-born Fritz Kreisler, the Russian-born Jascha Heifetz, Mischa Elman, and Nathan

Milstein (who became U.S. citizens), the Hungarian Joseph Szigeti, and the Soviet David

Oistrakh.

Among composers of major solo and chamber works for the violin are Bach, Wolfgang

Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven in the baroque and classical eras; the Austrian

Franz Schubert, the Germans Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn, and Robert Schumann,

and the Russian Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky in the romantic era; and the French Claude Debussy,

the Austrian Arnold Schoenberg, the Hungarian B?la Bart?k, and the Russian-born Igor

Stravinsky in the 20th century.