Origin

The Ravanastron (this instrument is said to have belonged to a sovereign of India 5000 years before Christ), the Rabab or Rebab (very ancient, it was played in Persia, in Arabia and in North Africa), the Rebec (the rubebe or rebel or rebec was brought to southern Europe in the Middle Ages by Muslim merchants and artists)... and many other more or less rudimentary instruments dating back to ancient times are considered to be interesting - although distant - precursors of the violin.

The North African rebab (centre, with inlaid bow) gave birth, in Europe, to the pear-shaped (or pyriform) rebec. The more ancient type has round sound holes (front, left); later the sound holes took the form of an f (behind, left). The ribbed vielle (right) represented, with the rebec, the second major mediaeval type of instrument. The four strings and the f-holes were forerunners of the future violin.

In the Middle Ages in Europe, as from the 11th century, we can find the vielle and the rote (rotta), a simple reproduction of the ancient zither: in order to use it as a bow instrument and produce various sounds by shortening the strings, a fingerboard was placed between the sound-box and the upper transversal bar of the zither.

In the 10th and 11th centuries the rote was widely used in all of central Europe, as testified by iconography. It was superseded by the vielle in the 12th century.

Already quite early on, small instruments were played by holding against the left shoulder or the breast and not only on the knees! As from the 12th century there appeared a slightly more deeply cut-out form similar to the modern guitar and representing the last phase of the evolution of the vielle. This instrument was already predominant during the Middle Ages, probably because it was easy to handle, it had a vast sound range, and all the notes of the scale could be played relatively easily.

The number of strings soon grew from one or two to three or four. As early as the beginning of the 11th century the classical form of the five-stringed vielle came into being and remained until the 16th century. Little by little ribs were introduced to facilitate the use of the bow; the plaque to which the strings were fitted, characteristic of the plucked stringed instruments, was replaced by a separate tailpiece and bridge, more appropriate for bowed instruments. Thus gradually the transition was made from the stringed instrument of the Middle Ages to the Renaissance viol, equipped at first with a round opening that was eventually transformed into two crescent-shaped sound holes.

Following a series of combinations of the two primitive types, three other families of instruments appeared before 1500: the viola da gamba (viol held on or between the player’s knees), the lira da braccio (played with a bow) and the viola da braccio (held against the shoulder). It is from the viola da braccio that the VIOLIN evolved

The viola da braccio resulted from reducing the number of strings of the vielle to three or four, adopting the pegbox and the lateral pegs of the rebec as well as the tuning in fifths, which is most convenient for small arm instruments as it allows the use of four fingers, thus increasing both the range and the manoeuvrability. It should be noted that the ribs are much lower than in the viola da gamba, and the cut-out becomes increasingly marked. As for the two sound holes, which at the beginning were C or crescent-shaped, they soon adopted the form of an ƒ as in the modern violin.

Thus, with the passing of the centuries, the violin, properly speaking, took form. As we have seen, the origins of the violin are several and varied; each of its parts is the outcome of a more or less complex evolutionary process whose beginnings are often difficult to determine; each of its parts, therefore, has its own history. An instrument with a rather chaotic family tree, the violin is an entity encompassing many destinies in a single instrument...

Next