A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, the style of the music played may determine specific construction differences between fiddles and classical violins. For example, fiddles may optionally be set up with a bridge with a flatter arch to reduce the range of bow-arm motion needed for techniques such as the double shuffle, a form of bariolage involving rapid alternation between pairs of adjacent strings. To produce a "brighter" tone than the deep tones of gut or synthetic core strings, fiddlers often use steel strings. The fiddle is part of many traditional (folk) styles, which are typically aural traditions—taught "by ear" rather than via written music.
The viol, viola da gamba, or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitch of each of the strings. Frets on the viol are usually made of gut, tied on the fingerboard around the instrument's neck, to enable the performer to stop the strings more cleanly. Frets improve consistency of intonation and lend the stopped notes a tone that better matches the open strings. Viols first appeared in Spain in the mid-to-late 15th century, and were most popular in the Renaissance and Baroque (1600–1750) periods. Early ancestors include the Arabic rebab and the medieval European vielle, but later, more direct possible ancestors include the Venetian viole and the 15th- and 16th-century Spanish vihuela, a six-course plucked instrument tuned like a lute that looked like but was quite distinct from the four-course guitar.
The viola d'amore is a 7- or 6-stringed musical instrument with sympathetic strings used chiefly in the baroque period. It is played under the chin in the same manner as the violin.
The rebec is a bowed stringed instrument of the Medieval era and the early Renaissance. In its most common form, it has a narrow boat-shaped body and one to five strings.
The vihuela is a 15th-century fretted plucked Spanish string instrument, shaped like a guitar but tuned like a lute. It was used in 15th- and 16th-century Spain as the equivalent of the lute in Italy and has a large resultant repertory. There were usually five or six doubled strings.
Bowed string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by a bow rubbing the strings. The bow rubbing the string causes vibration which the instrument emits as sound.
The lijerica is a musical instrument from the Croatian region of Dalmatia and Croat parts of eastern Herzegovina. It is a pear-shaped, three-stringed instrument which is played with a bow. It is played to accompany the traditional linđo dance from the region. The lijerica's name comes from the lyra, the bowed instrument of the Byzantine Empire which it probably evolved from.
The lirone is the bass member of the lira family of instruments that was popular in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. It is a bowed string instrument with between 9 and 16 gut strings and a fretted neck. When played, it is held between the legs in the manner of a cello or viol.
Hille Perl is a German virtuoso performer of the viola da gamba and lirone.
The violin family of musical instruments was developed in Italy in the 16th century. At the time the name of this family of instruments was viole da braccio which was used to distinguish them from the viol family. The standard modern violin family consists of the violin, viola, cello, and (possibly) double bass.
The violin, viola and cello were first built in the early 16th century, in Italy. The earliest evidence for their existence is in paintings by Gaudenzio Ferrari from the 1530s, though Ferrari's instruments had only three strings. The Académie musicale, a treatise written in 1556 by Philibert Jambe de Fer, gives a clear description of the violin family much as we know it today.
The lyra viol is a small bass viol, used primarily in England in the seventeenth century.
The Harp Consort is an international early music ensemble directed by Andrew Lawrence-King, specialising in Baroque opera, early dance-music, and historical World Music.
Bass violin is the modern term for various 16th- and 17th-century bass instruments of the violin family. They were the direct ancestor of the modern cello. Bass violins were usually somewhat larger than the modern cello, but tuned to the same nominal pitches or sometimes one step lower. Contemporaneous names for these instruments include "basso de viola da braccio," "basso da braccio," or the generic term "violone," which simply meant "large fiddle." The instrument differed from the violone of the viol, or "viola da gamba" family in that like the other violins it had at first three, and later usually four strings, as opposed to five, six, or seven strings, it was tuned in fifths, and it had no frets. With its F-holes and stylized C-bouts it also more closely resembled the viola da braccio.
The Byzantine lyra or lira was a medieval bowed string musical instrument in the Byzantine Empire. In its popular form, the lyra was a pear-shaped instrument with three to five strings, held upright and played by stopping the strings from the side with fingernails. The first known depiction of the instrument is on a Byzantine ivory casket, preserved in the Bargello in Florence. Versions of the Byzantine lyra are still played throughout the former lands of the Byzantine Empire: Greece, Crete, Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Croatia, Italy and Armenia.
The Cretan lyra is a Greek pear-shaped, three-stringed bowed musical instrument, central to the traditional music of Crete and other islands in the Dodecanese and the Aegean Archipelago, in Greece. The Cretan lyra is considered to be the most popular surviving form of the medieval Byzantine lyra, an ancestor of most European bowed instruments.
Atalante Migliorotti was an Italian Renaissance musician, instrument maker and assistant to Leonardo da Vinci.
The violetta was a 16th-century musical instrument. It is believed to have been similar to a violin, but occasionally had only three strings, particularly before the 17th century. The term was later used as an umbrella for a variety of string instruments. Some of the instruments that fall under its umbrella are the viol, viola, viola bastarda, viola da braccio, viola d'amore, violetta marina, tromba marina and the viola da gamba, viola pomposa, violino piccolo, violoncello, and the violin. Many of the instruments within this family contained anywhere from three to eight strings, either had frets or did not, was built with either very narrow ribs or wide ribs, and most unique of all either did or did not contain sympathetic strings. Sympathetic strings, are strings that sit below the regular strings and vibrate, or resonate, in sympathy with the strings above them as they’re played. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, one of the earliest inceptions of the term came from G.M. Lanfranco, a lesser known 16th century Italian composer, who uses the term “violetta” in one of his books titled Scintille di musica in 1533.
Imke David is a German viol player, author, Professor and Ensemble-Member.
Viola da braccio is a term variously applied during the baroque period to instruments of the violin family, in distinction to the viola da gamba and the viol family to which the latter belongs. At first "da braccio" seems to encompass the entire violin family. Monteverdi's Orfeo designates an entire six-part string section "viole da brazzo", apparently including bass instruments held between the knees like the cello and bass violin. His Selva morale (1641) contains a piece calling for "due violini & 3 viole da brazzo ouero 3 Tronboni", reflecting a general shift in meaning towards the lower instruments. Eventually it came to be reserved for the alto member, the viola. A famous example is Bach's Sixth Brandenburg Concerto (1721), combining two viole da braccio with two viole da gamba. The German word for viola, Bratsche, is a relic of this last use.
