Violin

Emerged in the early 16th century in Italy

The violin or fiddle as it has been popularly called, emerged in the early 16th century in Italy and had its origin in medieval instruments that were also played with a bow. The basic construction of the violin has hardly changed since the 17th century.

Leopold Auer

Leopold Auer's book, Violin Playing As I Teach It, should be required reading for every burgeoning teacher and thoughtful student of the violin, whether amateur or professional, whose interest is in gaining more insights into mastering the violin. Whether he wishes to make his spiccato crisper, his trills faster or his double-stops less painful to himself and the listener, he will find valuable information and helpful hints from this master teacher on every page of this delightful "how to" book.
ISBN: 0486239179

Stradivari's Genius

Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737) was a perfectionist whose single-minded pursuit of excellence changed the world of music. In the course of his long career in the northern Italian city of Cremona, he created more than a thousand stringed instruments; approximately six hundred survive. In this fascinating book, Toby Faber traces the rich, multilayered stories of six of these peerless instruments-five violins and a cello-and the one towering artist who brought them into being.
Blending history, biography, meticulous detective work, and an abiding passion for music, Toby Faber embarks on an absorbing journey as he follows some of the most prized instruments of all time. Mysteries and unanswered questions proliferate from the outset-starting with the enigma of Antonio Stradivari himself. What made this apparently unsophisticated craftsman so special? Why were his techniques not maintained by his successors? How is it that even two and a half centuries after his death, no one has succeeded in matching the purity, depth, and delicacy of a Stradivarius?
In Toby Faber's illuminating narrative, each of the six fabled instruments becomes a character in its own right-a living entity cherished by artists, bought and sold by princes and plutocrats, coveted, collected, hidden, lost, copied, and occasionally played by a musician whose skill matches its maker's.
Here is the fabulous Viotti, named for the virtuoso who enchanted all Paris in the 1780s, only to fall foul of the French Revolution. Paganini supposedly made a pact with the devil to transformthe art of the violin-and by the end of his life he owned eleven Strads. Then there's the Davidov cello, fashioned in 1712 and lovingly handed down through a succession of celebrated artists until, in the 1980s, it passed into the capable hands of Yo-Yo Ma.
ISBN: 0375508481

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