Programs · Episode

Violin Family

Aired: Tuesday, December 5, 2017 @ 9:00 am
Hosted by Miles Hoffman

The members of the modern violin family—the violin, viola, cello, and double bass. These instruments are decedents of various kinds of medieval fiddles. Fiddle, by the way, being an older word than violin.

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The members of the modern violin family—the violin, viola, cello, and double bass. These instruments are decedents of various kinds of medieval fiddles. Fiddle, by the way, being an older word than violin. And the medieval fiddles themselves were bowed stringed instruments that were originally imported to Europe from the Middle East.

Up until the early 1500s the instruments of the modern violin family were still evolving. But by the mid-1500s the Italian craftsman had created them model set with minor modifications and have remained standard ever since.  Quite a few 400-year-old Italian instruments are still in use, in fact.  If the instruments themselves were standardized early on though, their names weren’t. For several centuries the word viola in Italian was the generic term for any stringed instrument played with a bow. It wasn’t until the 1700s that term came to refer specifically to the instrument we now call the viola.

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