Violin

To play the violin properly, tuck the instrument under your chin and rest it on your shoulder. Keep your chin in a straight line with the scroll. Keep your left elbow in close to the body. Cup your fingers over the strings, and place the thumb against the side of the finger board.

Violin is a stringed instrument that is played with a bow. It is probably the best known and most widely used of all orchestral instruments. Some of the greatest music in the world owes much of its beauty to the violin. Such music may be the sound of a mighty orchestra, with dozens of violins playing together. Or it may be the music produced by one great master playing alone on a violin to a hushed audience.

Several other instruments are similar to the violin in construction and in method of playing. These include the cello and viola. They are considered members of the violin family.

Music for the violin covers a wide range. Some com­posers, such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Eugene Ysaye, and Bela Bartok, have written music for the violin alone. Many composers have written pieces for the violin with piano or orchestral accompaniment. The violin also has an important role as part of a group of instruments, as in an orchestra or in a string quartet.

Parts of the violin. A violin is a special kind of box that amplifies (makes louder) the sound of the strings stretched across it. If you stretch a piece of string tightly and then pluck it, you will hear a faint note. If you stretch it across a wooden box, you will hear a much louder note. A violin-maker uses soft pine or spruce for the belly (front! of the violin, and maple or sycamore for the back and the ribs (sides). The head (scroll and pegbox) and neck are made of maple. The graceful shapes of the back and belly are carved out of solid pieces of wood. The violin-maker cuts two f-holes in the belly to allow the sound to escape, and makes the finger board And the tailpiece (string-holder) of ebony. Ebony is an ex­tremely hard, longlasting wood. The violin-maker glues the violin parts together, using no nails or screws.

The violin has four strings, which are tuned in the in­terval of a fifth from each other. The first (E) string is gen­erally made of steel. The second (A) string and the third ID) string are sometimes made of plain catgut, a material made from the intestines of sheep. But most players pre­fer to use A or D strings made of a thinner gut over­wound with fine aluminium wire. Synthetic materials such as nylon are also used. The fourth (C) string is gen­erally made of gut covered with silver or copper wire. The strings are attached to pegs set in the head. The player tightens the strings with these pegs to tune them.

There are two other important parts of the violin that are not permanently glued to the body. The bridge stands on the belly, midway between the two /-holes. It supports the strings. A pattern of holes is cut into the bridge to give it greater flexibility. The sound-post, a thin rod of pine, is wedged between the back and the belly underneath the bridge, inside the violin. The sound-post conducts the sound from the front to the back of the violin. It also supports the belly against the pressure of the strings. The sound-post is slightly be­hind one foot of the bridge. The bass-bar, a bar of pine that is glued on the underside of the belly, gives further support for the belly. It runs lengthwise underneath the other foot of the bridge.

The bow is a curved, springy stick about 70 centime­tres long that has a flat ribbon of hair attached to it. This ribbon consists of more than 150 horsehairs. The hair is attached to the point of the bow and to a sliding wood block called a frog or nut at the other end, near the point at which the violinist holds the bow. By turning a screw set into the end of the bow, the player can move the frog back and forth to tighten the hair against the spring of the bow. The bow is usually made of Pernam­buco, a light, springy wood.

Playing the violin. The player tucks the end of the vi­olin between the chin and the left shoulder. To obtain a good grip, the player uses a chin-rest clamped to the top of the violin, and a shoulder-rest or a pad between the back of the violin and the shoulder. The violin should be supported entirely without the aid of the play­er's left hand. The bow is held in the players right hand.

The player makes the strings of the violin vibrate by drawing the hair of the bow across them. Each of the separate strands of hair on the bow is rough, with min­ute projections. These projections make the strings vibrate as the bow slides over them. The player can vary the loudness of the tone and get other special effects by changing the way in which the bow is drawn across the strings. The player can also pluck the strings with the fingers, a form of playing known as pizzicato.

Violinists practise for years to perfect their skills, but very little strength is required to play the violin well. Im­provement is usually the result of using less tension in the hands, arms, and body. The finest violinists make playing look easy, with a minimum of muscle activity.

Historic violins

The first reference to stringed instruments appears in Persian and Chinese writings from the 800's. Developments over the next 800 years led to the superb violins of Stradivari.

The strings of the violin give the player four notes. To obtain other notes, the player shortens the vibrating length of the strings by pressing them down on the fin­ger board with the fingers of the left hand. Flutelike tones called harmonics can be produced by touching the strings lightly in certain places.

History. Musicians have used many kinds of stringed instruments, such as harps and lyres, for thousands of years. But no one knows when players began to use bows, instead of just plucking the strings. Chinese play­ers used bowed instruments in the A.D. 900's. A hundred years later, musicians used forms of bowed instruments in many countries of Asia, Europe, and northern Africa.

In the 1400's, players started using bows to play instru­ments of the guitar family. These bowed guitars devel­oped into the instruments called viols.

Violins date from the 1500's. They were developed from the early bowed instruments. For many years, viols and violins developed side by side, each influencing the other. But by the late 1600's, most musicians favoured the violin family, and the viols dropped out of use.

The little Italian town of Cremona became the most important centre of violin making. Members of the Amati family made fine instruments there in the late 1500's and early 1600's. Later in the 1600s, Antonio Stra­divari, a pupil of the Amatis, perfected the design of the violin and produced some of the finest violins. Another great family was that of Guarneri. The violins of Giu­seppe Guarneri, known as Guarneri del Gesu, rival those of Stradivari. A Frenchman, Frangoise Tourte, perfected the modern bow in the late 1700^rs.

From the 1600's to the early 1800's, many outstanding violinists were also the main composers for violin. Their works led to developments in playing technique.

Among the most important of these composers were Arcangelo Corelli, Antonio Vivaldi, Giuseppe Tartini, Giovanni Viotti, Pierre Rode, Rodolphe Kreutzer, and Niccolo Paganini. Viotti has been called the father of modern violin playing. He greatly improved and ex­tended the use of the violin bow.

Great violinists of the 1900’s include Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, Yehudi Menuhin, Nathan Milstein, David Oistrakh, Itzhak Perlman, Isaac Stern, and Pinchas Zuker- man. There is much interest today in performing violin music composed in the 1700s with bows of that period. Their thinner wood and lighter bow and the gut strings then widely used result in a more gentle sound, espe­cially when accompanied by a harpsichord rather than a modern piano.

Related articles:

Violinists

Corelli, Arcangelo

Heifetz, Jascha

Kreisler, Fritz

Menuhin, Yehudi

Milstein, Nathan

Oistrakh, David

Paganini, Niccolo

Perlman, Itzhak

Stern, Isaac

Tartini, Giuseppe

Vivaldi, Antonio

Zukerman, Pinchas

Other related articles

Amati family           

Stradivari, Antonio

Bass   

Suzuki method

Cello  

Viol

Guarneri      

Viola Music (Stringed instruments)

Take note:

Viola is a stringed musical instrument that resembles a large violin. The viola serves as the tenor voice in the vi­olin family, with the violins taking the higher parts and the cello and bass taking the lower parts. Like the other members of the violin family, the viola has four strings and is played with a bow. The instrument has a range of more than three octaves, and produces a distinctive rich, velvety sound. The viola originated in the 1500s. Since the late 1700's, it has had a prominent role in symphonic music and chamber music. Composers such as Hector Berlioz, Richard Strauss, and Sir William Walton, have written for the viola as a solo instrument. The viola looks like a large violin, and the musician holds and plays it like a violin. But the viola has a full, rich tone and a pitch lower than that of a violin.