Violin

The violin, whose powers of expression are often compared to those of the human voice, is the smallest and highest member of a family of bowed stringed instruments that emerged in northern Italy early in the sixteenth century. The violin's immediate ancestors were not, despite the terminological similarity, the Renaissance viols, but rather the lira da braccio ("arm lyre") and the fiddle (German: Fidel, now merely a vernacular term for a violin but actually an older instrument). Both players and instrument makers soon pushed the violin's limits; the names of Stradivari and other great Italian craftsmen are familiar even to those with little interest in classical music, and the eighteenth century saw the emergence of the first violin virtuosi. The brilliant nineteenth-century violinist Paganini was perhaps the first international musical star, and ever since then an unbroken succession of charismatic violinists has captivated the classical-music public. The current young sensation Hilary Hahn, a student of the last student of the nineteenth-century virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe, carries forward a tradition several centuries old by now. Of the violin's numerous applications outside of classical music, its numerous solo functions in country music (often under the "fiddle" name) and its increasing importance in jazz are especially noteworthy.

Strings Instruments