History of the violin

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.

Violins are likely to have been developed from a number of other string instruments of the 15th and 16th centuries, including the vielle, rebec, and lira da braccio.

The history of bowed string instruments in Europe goes back to the 9th century with the Byzantine lira (or lūrā, Greek: λύρα).

The overall pattern for the instrument was set in the 17th century by luthiers like the prolific Amati family, Jakob Stainer of the Tyrol, and Antonio Stradivari, with many makers at the time and since following their templates.

[13] The Byzantine lyra spread through Europe westward and in the 11th and 12th centuries European writers use the terms fiddle and lira interchangeably when referring to bowed instruments (Encyclopædia Britannica.

[16] They eventually lost ground to the louder (and originally viewed as less aristocratic) lira da braccio family of the modern violin.

The instruments depicted by Ferrari have bulging front and back plates, strings that feed into peg-boxes with side pegs, and f-holes.

The first extant written use of the Italian term violino occurs in 1538, when "violini Milanesi" (Milanese violinists) were brought to Nice when negotiating the conclusion of a war.

[19] The violin quickly became very popular, both among street-musicians and the nobility, which is illustrated by the fact that Charles IX of France commissioned an extensive range of string instruments in the second half of the 16th century.

[20] Around 1555, the French court imported a dance band of Italian violinists and in 1573, during one of Catherine de' Medici's celebration "the music was the most melodious one had ever seen and the ballet was accompanied by some thirty violins playing very pleasantly a warlike tune," wrote an observer.

[21] The oldest confirmed surviving violin, dated inside, is the "Charles IX" by Andrea Amati, made in Cremona in 1564, but the label is very doubtful.

Instruments of approximately 300 years of age, especially those made by Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesù, are the most sought-after, by both performers and (generally wealthier) collectors.

While the French workshops in Mirecourt employed hundreds of workers, the Saxon/Bohemian instruments were made by a cottage industry of "mostly anonymous skilled laborers quickly turning out a simple, inexpensive product.