Every day musical instruments enrich the lives of people around the world and continue to promote culture and art throughout every society and community, no matter what size or structure. Even those people of the world who live outside the realm of technology enjoy and use musical instruments to tell stories or entertain. Someone who has never played musical instruments but is interested in trying one has quite a selection to choose from Playing the violin is a wonderful experience and relatively easy to learn if you take it step by step. Firstly however you need to understand the mechanics of the violin so you know where to put your fingers and why. The main components of the violin are the front, also called the belly, top, or soundboard, usually made of well-seasoned spruce; the back, usually made of well-seasoned maple; and the ribs, neck, fingerboard, pegbox, scroll, bridge, tailpiece, and f-holes, or soundholes. The front, back, and ribs are joined together to form a hollow sound box. The sound box contains the sound post, a thin, dowel-like stick of wood wedged inside underneath the right side of the bridge and connecting the front and back of the violin; and the bass-bar, a long strip of wood glued to the inside of the front under the left side of the bridge. The sound post and bass-bar are important for the transmission of sound, and they also give additional support to the construction. The strings are fastened to the tailpiece, rest on the bridge, are suspended over the fingerboard, and run to the pegbox, where they are attached to tuning pegs that can be turned to change the pitch of the string. A violinist makes different pitches by placing the left-hand fingers on the string and pressing against the fingerboard. The strings are set in vibration and produce sound when the player draws the bow across them at a right angle near the bridge. Among the most decorated characteristics of the violin are its singing tone and its potential to play rapid, brilliant figurations as well as lyrical melodies. Violinists can easily create special effects by means of the following techniques: pizzicato, plucking the strings; tremolo, moving the bow rapidly back and forth on a string; sul ponticello, playing with the bow extremely close to the bridge to produce a thin, glassy sound; col legno, playing with the wooden part of the bow instead of with the hair; harmonics, placing the fingers of the left hand lightly on certain points of the string to obtain a light, flutelike sound; and glissando, steadily gliding the left-hand fingers up and down along the string to produce an upward- or downward-sliding pitch. Among composers of major solo and chamber works for the violin are Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven in the baroque and classical eras; the Austrian Franz Schubert, the Germans Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn, and Robert Schumann, and the Russian Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky in the romantic era; and the French Claude Debussy, the Austrian Arnold Schoenberg, the Hungarian Bla Bartk, and the Russian-born Igor Stravinsky in the 20th century. You are certainly joining an elite group when you pick up a violin. |
