Starting with a design that is nearly four hundred years old, the violin maker selects just the right pieces of wood from his storeroom. Each part of the instrument will be made from a special kind of wood, and he chooses pieces of spruce, maple, pine, ebony, or Pernambuco wood with which to work.

For the next three or four months the instrument maker will carve, shape, and fit these pieces of wood together like a puzzle. As he finishes each of the nearly seventy different parts, it will be fitted in the proper place. Some parts will be glued, others will be held in the proper position by being fitted just right, but no nails or screws are used. With all of the parts in place, the instrument will be given several coats of varnish. Finally, when the last coat of varnish is dry, four steel or gut strings will be stretched tightly across the instrument’s hollow body, and a new member of the violin family is ready to be played.

The player makes the strings vibrate to produce the sound by either plucking (pizzicato) or drawing a bow across them (arco). Although the sound of a vibrating string is very soft, the instrument’s body vibrates in sympathy with the string. This sympathetic vibration, especially of the large surfaces of the belly and back, adds resonance and volume to the tone.

The string’s vibrations are first transmitted through the bridge to the belly. They are then spread over a wide area by the bass bar and carried to the back through the sound post. The amplified tone then travels out of the sound holes to the listener.

The history of the violin family goes back several thousand years, but the violin’s most important ancestors are found during the ninth to sixteenth centuries. Musicians in Germany were making music on the lira and fidicula during this time. In the Orient they played the tube zither, and troubadours accompanied their singing on the vielle and viol in many parts of Europe. During the sixteenth century, the musicians of India played instruments called the sarangi and sarinda, in Greece they played the lyre, and in Arabia the rebec.

All of these instruments used a vibrating string to make their sound and were played either pizzicato or arco. Although their names are unfamiliar to us today, they led to the development of the first violin by Gasparo da Salo, an instrument maker of northern Italy, in the late 1500s.

With the development of the viola, cello, and double bass, the violin family was complete, and it quickly became an important group of instruments throughout Europe.

From the time of the first violin until about 1750, the most famous makers lived in the little Italian town of Cremona. During that period, members of the Amati and Guarneri families made such beautiful instruments that they are still played and prized by professional musicians.

The master of all of the Cremona violin makers was a student of Amati—Antonio Stradivari. His instruments also are still played by some of today’s greatest musicians. There are many fine violin makers in the world, but none has been able to discover exactly what causes a Strad to produce such a beautiful tone. About six hundred of the eleven hundred instruments made by Stradivari during his lifetime are still in existence, and each is valued at thousands of pounds. The finest of today’s string instruments are still made like those of Amati, Guarneri, and Stradivari. Even those used by beginning students are of the same design developed by the masters of Cremona.

The bow used in playing the instruments of the violin family is largely responsible for the richness of tone, variety of expression, and singing quality that characterizes them. Originating among the nomads of Central Asia in the eighth century, the bow didn’t take on its present shape until nearly a thousand years later. The man responsible for developing the modern bow was a Frenchman named Francois Tourte, often called the Stradivari of the bow because of his important contribution to string playing.

The early bows consisted of a curved stick with horsehair stretched tightly between the ends of the stick, much like a hunter’s bow. This kind of bow was not only awkward to handle but difficult to adjust. The design of later bows improved both of these areas by curving the stick inward towards the hair for better balance and fastening one end of the hair to a device called a frog, which makes it easy for the player to adjust the tension of the hair by turning a small knob. In the 1700s, Tourte took this design and refined it to make what many players still consider to be the perfect bow.

A modern bow stick is fifteen to twenty inches long, made from Pernambuco wood, and weighs only a few ounces. Although it is very simple in design, a professional player knows how important a bow is to his playing and will pay several hundred pounds for a fine Tourte bow.

Attending a symphony orchestra concert for the first time, you might be surprised to see that two thirds of the one hundred musicians are playing instruments of the violin family. To the left of the conductor are thirty-six musicians playing violins. The violin section is divided into two groups—first violins and second violins. There is no difference in the instruments that are used in each group, only in the parts that they play. Just like the soprano singers in a choir, the first violins usually play the highest part and the melody; the second violins usually play a part which is lower in pitch.

The violinists hold their instruments between the jaw and shoulder while drawing the bow across the strings. If the bow is drawn smoothly, the sound is smooth or legato. Sometimes the bow is bounced on the strings (spiccato) and at other_ times it is moved back and forth rapidly (tremolo). Each use of the bow makes a different kind of sound, and every player in the section must use his bow in exactly the same manner.

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dodoString Instruments, Violin7 Oct, 2008