History of String Instruments

Of all string musical instruments, the "classical" string instrument that we call the violin would arguably be the most familiar to the most people on any list of string instruments. Renowned in the history of string instruments and instruments of the orchestra, the violin's renown first grew among the Renaissance instruments, although at first among the "classical" music instruments of later decades (really the early Baroque period) it was considered to be a symbol of low social status before the efforts of composers like Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi and the performances of groups like King Louis XIII's 24 Violons du Roi the violin began to gain the respect that it enjoys in such great abundance today.

The fiddle and the lira da braccio (another Renaissance instrument) seem to have been the two immediate precursors to the violin. However, the Indus Valley string instruments known as the ravanstron, the rabab, and the rebec trace their start all the way back to 5000 B.C.E. and these bowed string instruments, too, are apparently precursors to the violin. Probably the very earliest direct ancestors of the European violin, however, can be traced back to the 9th century in Asia. All string instruments began as types of bows and were plucked. Today, the violin is actually played with a bow (though plucking the strings with the technique known as "pizzicato" is used to get a staccato effect from the violin). The rabab and ravanastron could also be bowed or plucked, and became widely used in percussion-accompanied dance music throughout the Indus Valley, Persia, North Africa, and later on Arabia.

By the 11th century, Europeans had invented the the vielle and the rote, both of which are also known to be violin ancestors and both of which were derived conceptually from the zither, one of the first ancient string instruments that was played with a plectrum as the modern non-classical guitar is. It was during this time with these instruments that the fingerboard was added so that string instruments could be played with either a bow or by plucking with a plectrum or the fingers in "pizzicato" style. The fingerboard also allowed new notes to be produced by the fingers placing stops at various places along the length of the strings to allow higher or lower vibrational frequencies. The vielle and rote may well have been modeled on the Muslim Arabic rebec of visiting merchants from North Africa or the Middle East. The rebec includes a half-pear shaped body, a fingerboard, a box with tuning pegs, tuning in 5ths, three strings, and the necessity of being played with a bow while being held against the breast or shoulder.

It was during the Baroque period, considered the first "classical" music period of Western Europe and the modern world and dating its start to 1660, that the violin really began to soar. Antionio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Georg Philipp Telemann were the three greatest Baroque period violin music composers. The luthier artistry of Antonio Stradivari, Guiseppe Guarneri, and Jacob Stainer began creating magnificent-sounding violins during this period and on into the subsequent Classical period. It was during the Romantic period of the 19th century with the emergence of performers like Niccolo Paganini that the now-famous violin virtuoso emerged, with the works of Classical composers like Mozart and Beethoven having paved the way for them to rise.

Today, of course, the ability to play the violin well is considered a mark of good breeding or a sophisticated education--not low social status!

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