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The stringed instruments that we are most familiar with the violins, violas, cellos and double basses which form the orchestral string section, and the acoustic guitar have changed remarkably little since the 1600s, when their long evolution came to fruition.
To produce their sound, stringed instruments fall into two main categories:
• Plucked: with the fingers, fingernails, pick or plectrum, e.g. harp, mandolin, sitar.
• Bowed: with a length of horsehair (or a similar material) brushing against the strings, e.g. viol, double bass.
There is also a small group of instruments the dulcimer, for example where the strings are hit by hammers or beaters. We have included, too, the aeolian harp, which is played by the natural force of the wind.
The combination of orchestral stringed instruments has long had a major influence on the history of chamber music: just listen to Mozart’s String Trio In E Flat Major or Franz Schubert’s Trout Quintet. Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings also displays their strong emotional pull the ability, appropriately, to tug at our heartstrings. In the last few decades, other arrangers and musicians have realised the potential: the brilliant decision to add pizzicato strings to Buddy Holly’s ‘Raining in my Heart’, the ever experimental George Martin’s use of a string quartet on The Beatles’ ‘Eleanor Rigby’, and Björk’s Talvin Singh-arranged string backing on her Debut album.
In general, the plucked stringed instruments have tended to be used either for solo performance or in an accompanying role although Russian balalaika orchestras, guitar orchestras and mandolin ensembles have all existed.
The aeolian harp is one of the rare instruments that does not require a human player. Even more significantly, there is no automatic or mechanical replacement for the performer, as there is in the player piano, for example. All that the aeolian harp requires is the wind to activate its other-worldly sound it takes its name from Aeolus, the Greek god of the winds.
The harp’s origins are somewhat obscure, although it was certainly in use from the end of the sixteenth century. In construction it is not unlike the dulcimer: a box-like rectangular frame, about a metre long, with a range of strings made of gut laid across it. Each of these strings is tuned in unison (in other words, all to the same note) and the instrument is positioned at a suitable location to catch the wind. The current of air vibrates the strings to produce a soft humming sound; the stronger the wind the more harmonic overtones come into play, creating disembodied chords.
There have been efforts to modify the simplicity of the harp by tuning the strings to a chord, but it is generally accepted that the purest form is the best. Some organs attempt to imitate its soft sound with a stop called the Aeolina or Aeoline.
Repertoire
There are few recorded examples of the aeolian harp, but Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek carried out an interesting exercise on the album Dis when he interacted with an unmanned wind harp and the North Sea winds on the track ‘Vandrere’.
Related Instruments
Another instrument which relies on the forces of nature to produce its sound are the tinkling wind chimes.
The triangular shape of the balalaika is universally recognised, but few people are aware of the importance of its role in Eastern European music; the balalaika is the Russian guitar. Lute-like predecessors were known from as early as the twelfth century, but it was a Russian nobleman called Vasily Andreyev, a virtuoso balalaika performer, who improved, modified and standardised the traditional instrument in the late 1800s.
Andreyev’s basic balalaika is characterised by the familiar shape: three strings and a fretted neck. The most common version is the ‘prima balalaika’, which unusually has two of the three strings tuned to the same note: despite this apparent restriction the instrument has a surprisingly large range. In addition the top two strings are set much closer together, allowing the bottom string to be plucked hard by the left-hand thumb, creating the typical strumming effect.
Another of Andreyev’s innovations was the creation of a balalaika family in a choice of sizes from piccolo to contrabass. This range means that entire balalaika orchestras can be created using the one instrument, often backed up by the bayan (a Russian accordion), tambourines and various flutes and pipes.
Repertoire
Anyone who has seen the film Dr Zhivago will be aware of the traditional balalaika sound used in ‘Lara’s Theme’. Classical composers have responded to its sound, notably Yuri Shushakov’s 1955 Balalaika Concerto. In some salsa line-ups the related tres can be heard in action, for example on the Fania All Stars’ ‘Soy Guajiro’.
Related Instruments
The balalaika is most closely linked to the lute, but the tres, a Latin American three-stringed guitar, has many of the same qualities.
In 1688 the physician and naturalist Hans Sloane came across an instrument in Jamaica which he noted down as the ‘strum-strum’. This was probably an early banjo, which had come to the Americas along with the shiploads of slaves transported from north-west Africa.
The banjo’s most distinguishing features are its circular vellum or skin a bit like a snare drum head and long neck; a standard issue banjo has five strings, usually made of steel, although any number from four to nine are known. One string carries the melody, while the rest are ripe for finger-picking. The instrument’s dry tone has a percussive penetrating power and so it proved useful in adding volume and crispness in unamplified bands.
After the banjo’s arrival in the New World, it accompanied spirituals, and thence became a regular ingredient in the Black Minstrel (and white pseudo-Minstrel) movement. In turn this led to its involvement in traditional Dixieland jazz; in the 1940s Bill Monroe introduced it to bluegrass music, from where it found its way into the 1970s country rock sound. The banjo also features in the music of countries as distant as Malawi and Morocco.
Repertoire
Earl Scruggs, one of Bill Monroe’s original Bluegrass Boys, added his lick-driven ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ to a car chase on the soundtrack of Bonnie and Clyde. Also listen to the famous banjo duet in the film Deliverance or Doug Dillard playing on ‘Banjo in the Hollow’. Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess includes the banjo on ‘I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin’, while Bela Fleck creates the closest thing to be-bop banjo on his album Flight of the Cosmic Hippo.
Related Instruments
The ngoni, a traditional rectangular lute with a vellum sounding board, found in the music of Mali and Guinea, may have been the origin of the banjo.
In 1951, guitar maker Leo Fender launched the first commercially available electric bass guitar, the Fender Precision. Compared to the cumbersome and often difficult-to-hear acoustic double bass, Fender offered an instrument that had many advantages. Not only was it louder because it was amplified and more portable it allowed for more precise intonation because the neck was fretted. Country-and-western players were among the first to adopt the Precision, and during the 1950s and 1960s the bass guitar became established as a mainstay of all styles of modern music making. Four strings tuned E, A, D and G are usual, although a few models with five or more strings are made.
The design principles of the Fender bass guitars have stood the test of time remarkably well: a solid body, larger machine-heads to cope with heavier strings, one or two electro-magnetic pickups, and a bolt-on neck. Fender went on to introduce the Jazz Bass in 1960 and other less successful models. Apart from notable exceptions such as the Rickenbacker 4001S (1964) and the Gibson Thunderbird IV (1964), the electric basses of other big guitar companies never gained the broad acceptance of the Fenders. From the 1970s’ specialist bass makers such as Ampeg, Alembic and Wal began to cater for more discer-ning players.
The Fender-based style of construction went unchallenged until Ned Steinberger brought out his radical innovation in the early 1980s: a bass guitar with no headstock and a tiny body. He did this by using reinforced epoxy resin (claimed to be stronger and lighter than steel) instead of wood, and by putting the tuning mechanisms at the other end of the body.
Repertoire
The Fender Jazz is played fretlessby Jaco Pastorius on ‘Night Passage’ by Weather Report. Hear the technical twang of Chris Squire’s Rickenbacker on Yes’s The Yes Album. You can see and hear Paul McCartney play his Hofner ‘Violin Bass’ in the film Let it Be.
Related Instruments
The related acoustic bass guitar, which looks like an oversize acoustic guitar, is rarely played.
Through performers like Jacqueline du Pré and Paul Tortelier, the cello has created a position for itself within the orchestral string family as an emotional vehicle, less brilliant and showy than the violin, less mysterious than the viola, more heart-rending than the double bass.
The full name of the cello is ‘violoncello’, a small violone or bass viol. However its original name ‘basso di viola di braccio’ meaning ‘bass arm viol’ suggest that its roots lie more closely with the violin. The current tuning and size of the cello were pretty well fixed by the end of the seventeenth century, and the instrument established itself through continuous work in the Baroque period, asserting dominance over its closest challenger, the bass viol.
Surprisingly, despite its expressiveness, which appealed greatly to the Romantic movement, solo cello works were relatively infrequent until the arrival of the great soloists of the twentieth century such as Pablo Casals and Yo Yo Ma encouraged a cluster of works from the likes of Edward Elgar and Shostakovich. By contrast, Brazilian composer Villa-Lobos uses eight cellos and no other instruments to support a soprano voice in his ‘Cantilena’ from Bachianas Brasilieras No. 5.
Repertoire
The slow movement of Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 includes a solo cello theme considered bold by his contemporaries; both Elgar’s and Dvorák’s Cello Concertos have great emotional depth; and the Swan theme from Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals is pure melody. The Electric Light Orchestra introduced the rock cello on ‘Roll Over Beethoven’.
Related Instruments
The sarangi used in classical Indian music is also bowed and played upright, but players use their nails rather than fingertips to stop the strings.
The double bass was for a long time no more than a reinforcement at the foot of orchestral string arrangements, often merely echoing the cello part. It was rarely given a chance to shine by classical composers, but thanks to jazz the double bass found its voice with a vengeance, and was free to come out of the twilight into the limelight even helping to kick off rock‘n’roll on early Elvis tracks like ‘That’s All Right (Mama)’.
Of all the orchestral string instruments, the double bass is the most closely related to the viol, as a direct descendant of the sixteenth-century violone a heritage revealed in its steeply sloping shoulders. The bass viol carried six strings; over time the number of strings dropped to four, although some modern double basses have a fifth string for rumbling low work. The double bass is available in a number of sizes: for orchestral work the three-quarter size is more common than the awkward full-size version.
Lower metal strings on the bass are not far off the consistency of steel hawsers, and bass players’ fingers are usually topped off by a fine range of calluses. In jazz settings the bass is generally plucked rather than bowed, whereas in orchestral settings it is the other way around. Jazz players are sometimes amplified to compete with the volume of the other instruments.
Repertoire
Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 gives the double basses a minor theme to ‘Frère Jacques’; Saint-Saëns let them enjoy themselves imitating elephants in Carnival of the Animals. Jazz bassist Charles Mingus is dynamic on his 1959 ‘Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting’; Charlie Haden duets meditatively with guitarist Pat Metheny on the album Beyond the Missouri Sky.
Related Instruments
The violone, or bass viol, outmoded by the double bass, has been rediscovered as part of the authentic music revival.
Throughout its history, the guitar has perhaps more than any other instrument managed to bridge the gap between the often disconnected worlds of classical, folk and popular music. Its roots go back to Babylonian times, when reliefs reveal a plucked, guitar-like instrument; by the 1500s it was prevalent in Spain, and is still sometimes called the Spanish guitar.
Medieval versions like the lute sometimes sported rounded backs and paired strings: the 12-string guitar still exists (its ringing tone stands out on the Byrds’ ‘Mr Tambourine Man’). The standardised modern acoustic guitar has a flat back and sound board with a pronounced curved ‘waist’ to the body.
The acoustic guitar remained relatively unchanged until the twentieth century, when additions included steel strings for greater attack in dance-band settings, where it took over from the banjo. This marked the beginning of the guitar’s rise to a major role in popular music, leading directly to the development of the semi-acoustic and fully electric versions (see Guitar Electric).
Repertoire
Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez is one of the best-known examples of the acoustic guitar in a classical setting; Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra demands a virtuoso performance. The guitar is equally as comfortable in folk/blues settings (Blind Lemon Jefferson’s ‘Tin Cup Blues’), jazz (Django Reinhardt on ‘Lady Be Good’), the pop song (Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Mrs Robinson’) or even in the heavy metal world (Extreme’s ‘More Than Words’).
Related Instruments
The vihuela was a flat-backed plucked instrument popular in the sixteenth century, superseded by the guitar. The dobro steel resonator guitar, invented by the Dopera brothers in California in the 1920s, was designed to provide extra volume.
If one instrument can claim to be the twentieth century’s greatest, then the electric guitar is probably it. When the early pioneers, Adolph Rickenbacker, George Beauchamp and Paul Barth, experimented with electro-magnetic pickups to amplify the sound of a guitar in the 1930s, none could have foreseen what an impact this innovation would have on all styles of popular music.
In the mid 1930s, Charlie Christian was one of the first to see the potential as a soloist of playing a guitar that could be heard properly in a jazz band. He played an early ‘Electric Spanish’ ES-150 guitar made by Gibson. For generations of jazz players, the mellow clarity of the electric-acoustic guitar became a traditional and characteristic sound.
Early rock‘n’roll records, such as Bill Haley and the Comets’ 1954 hit ‘Rock Around the Clock’ kick-started the electric guitar’s mass appeal. Rock‘n’rollers like Chuck Berry exploited the chugging rhythmic capability of semi-acoustic instruments from the late 1950s into the 1960s. From the early 1960s, countless groups, led by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, based their music around the electric guitar. The advent in the late 1960s of very loud blues-influenced rock music saw the flowering of the solid electric guitar, led by the hugely influential Jimi Hendrix playing a Fender Stratocaster. The popularity of electric guitars was renewed in the 1990s with the success of groups like Nirvana and Oasis.
Repertoire
On his Electric Ladyland, Jimi Hendrix’s inspired experimentation with fuzz, feedback and wah-wah effects expanded the sound world of the electric guitar. Jazz maestro Joe Pass demonstrates his mastery on Virtuoso. The soaring blues of B. B. King is captured live on Live At The Regal.
Related Instruments
Guitar synthesizers enable a guitarist to trigger a synthesizer through a pitch-to-voltage connector. Notable models have been produced by Korg and Roland.
Since the 1930s, the history of the electric guitar has been one of enormous growth and variety. Here is a selection of classic models, treasured by players and collectors alike for their superior design and workmanship.
• Fender Stratocaster (1954): possibly the greatest and most emulated instrument, it features a vibrato arm and three pickups offering unrivalled tone variety.
• Fender Telecaster (1951): this simple solid two-pickup guitar has a distinctive bridge/pickup unit and its hard clear sound is a perennial favourite for country and rock players.
• Gibson Les Paul (1952): the guitarist and inventor Les Paul contributed much of the design of this highly carved solid body guitar, prized for its full sustain.
• Gibson ES-335 (1958): a classic double-cutaway design, combining a hollow body with a solid centre block to give more sustain and less feedback.
• Gretsch White Falcon (1955): this ostentatious white model with two pickups and a Bigsby vibrato arm was one of many electric acoustic models produced.
• Rickenbacker 360-12 (1964): this distinctive 12-string guitar was featured on many recordings by The Beatles and The Byrds.
Repertoire
The Byrds’ ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ highlights the rich jangle of the 12-string Rickenbacker. With his Gibson Les Paul, Jimmy Page excels at extended rock solos on Led Zeppelin II. Jimi Hendrix displays the tender side of the Fender Stratocaster on ‘Little Wing’.
Related Instruments
Some vintage guitars produced by other manufacturers such as Epiphone, Guild, Vox and Hofner are rated as ‘cult’ classics by collectors.
The harp is an instrument of great antiquity, appearing with frequency in the art and literature of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Hebrews and Celts and during the medieval period. Common to all are an open frame, either curved or a two-sided angle later enclosed by a fore-pillar which contains strings vibrated by plucking.
The orchestral harp dates from the 1840s, a complex (and expensive) development of the simple frame harp. Expanding its range has been a challenge throughout its history, since all the strings are tuned to just one major scale C flat major on today’s harp. Awkward systems of hooks were tried out before a pedal system was developed in Bavaria and France. Seven pedals and a pin mechanism take the pitch of one set of strings up a semitone or tone.
The most commonly used harp techniques are the arpeggio the notes of a chord rippled quickly and successively and the glissando, the sweeping up and down of the strings that has unfortunately become a musical cliché. Harpists can in fact perform music as complex as that for the piano, although they can only play eight rather than 10 notes at one time, since the little finger is not used.
Repertoire
One of the best-known harp pieces is the introduction to the ‘Waltz of the Flowers’ in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite; Benjamin Britten’s interlude in A Ceremony of Carols is spare and wintery. Gabriel Fauré’s Impromptu Opus 86 shows off a wide range of techniques. The harp’s seductive washes of colour were marvellously deployed after the First World War, such as in Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloë.
Related Instruments
The clàrsach is a small Celtic harp. An orchestral player would call this pedal harp a ‘telyn’. The lyre and kithara are close relatives of the harp.
A strong visual reminder of medieval music, the lute was a predominant instrument between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, it eventually lost out to the guitar as the most used of the portable plucked instruments: the guitar proved more brilliant and more versatile, but the musical world was deprived of the shimmering subtlety and persuasive charm that had made lutenists hypnotic performers.
Probably of Middle Eastern origin, derived from the Arab ‘ud (which is still in use today), the lute gained wide coverage in Europe, from the French luth to the Romanian quitara it was this European version that sported the body shape of a pear sliced in half. Other elements which set it apart from the guitar included the lack of a bridge, an ornate rose soundhole and the peg-box head at the top of the neck.
The lute contained a number of variations on the theme, including the large, double-necked arch-lute and the longer-necked theorbo.
Lute music was not read from classical musical notation but employed ‘tablature’, a graphic representation that indicated the frets to be used. Within the music, the lute player plucking with his or her fingers and in direct touch with the strings had room to explore beautiful, gentle improvisations, either as a solo performer or accompanying dance or song.
Repertoire
John Dowland’s My Thoughts are Wing’d with Hopes is just one of his extensive output of solo lute pieces; his Lachrimae (or Seven Teares) is a mournful lament. Baroque compositions include David Kellner’s Fantasia in C Minor and J. S. Bach’s Suite for Lute in G Minor.
Related Instruments
Lute-like instruments appear in many cultures including the Egyptian gurumi, the Indian tambura and the Japanese shamisen
The mandolin has some of the aspects of the guitar, violin and the lute but unlike the lute it experienced a revival in the twentieth century in country and bluegrass.
The mandolin received an unexpected boost in public awareness thanks to the best-selling novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières, himself a mandolin enthusiast. The instrument’s name, derived from the Italian diminutive for an almond, refers to the shape of its body, which is often constructed from rosewood and inlaid with tortoiseshell.
Descended from the mandola, a fifteenth-century lute, the mandolin, or mandoline, has frets and a bridge like a guitar, but its strings are set in pairs tuned to the same note. The main technique involves playing these with a rapid tremolo, using a plectrum, to achieve a strongly percussive sound. Given the instrument’s relatively small size, great dexterity is also required because the frets are so close to one another.
The mandolin has long been a popular instrument in southern Italy for serenaders in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the Don serenades Elvira’s maid on the mandolin in ‘Deh, vieni alla finestra’ and featured in mandolin orchestras through to the beginning of the twentieth century. Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass music, gave it another lease of life when he introduced the instrument to American country music in the 1940s.
Repertoire
The mandolin makes a few appearances in classical music: Vivaldi wrote a Concerto For Two Mandolins, while a more unusual occurrence is in the third movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 7. The Eagles’ Bernie Leadon adds his mandolin skills to their ‘Hollywood Waltz’. Mandolin master David ‘Dawg’ Grisman guested on the Grateful Dead’s ‘Ripple’.
Related Instruments
The long-necked bouzouki from Greece also relies on the tremolo technique its sound best known from the film Zorba the Greek.
To Western ears the sitar became the quintessential sound of Indian music following its somewhat faddish promotion by The Beatles (through their collaboration with Ravi Shankar), The Rolling Stones and Traffic in the late 1960s though its haunting sound has been a central part of Indian classical music for centuries.
Developed in the thirteenth century, the bulb-like body of the sitar, with something of the lute about it, is balanced by a thick fingerboard and extended neck. There are two sets of strings: four strings which play the melody line along with two or three drones, and a separate group of a dozen or more ‘sympathetic’ strings which resonate in performance. A set of brass frets are both movable and curved, producing the instrument’s distinctive bending, portamento sound.
Played in the lotus position, the sitar forms part of the classical Indian group, including the tabla, sarangi (a cello-like instrument) and shahnai (a relation of the oboe). Together they work around the complex improvised patterns of the raga, still alien to Western audiences: at the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971, Ravi Shankar received a rapturous ovation after several minutes, only to explain that he had in fact just been tuning up.
Repertoire
George Harrison played sitar on ‘Norwegian Wood’, Brian Jones followed suit on ‘Paint it Black’. By contrast, Ananda Shankar, nephew of Ravi, created a crossover version of the Doors’ ‘Light My Fire’. An electric sitar, which helps guitarists approximate the authentic sound, is used by Steely Dan’s Denny Dias on ‘Do it Again’.
Related Instruments
The dilruba is a smaller version of the sitar, played with a bow; the surbahar is effectively a bass sitar.
The ukulele, identified so closely with Hawaii, arrived on the island literally out of the blue, on a boat that arrived in Honolulu one day in 1879. One of the passengers produced a ‘braguinha’ (a small Portuguese guitar) and the locals were smitten, adopting the instrument and calling it after a Polynesian word for a jumping flea maybe referring to the movements of the player’s fingers.
The tiny body of the braguinha was slightly enlarged though not by much and was strung with gut rather than steel. The native koa, an acacia, provided wood for the body. The versatile, and portable, ukulele was promoted by the Hawaiian royal family (one of whom wrote the classic ‘Aloha Oe’), and then unleashed in the US after Hawaii took a stand at a San Francisco exposition in 1915. As things from the South Pacific came into vogue following the Second World War, the instrument enjoyed another burst of popularity, particularly led by Arthur Godfrey, who performed on a cheap plastic version. British audiences associate the ukulele with the toothy, winsome George ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’ Formby, although he most often used a banjulele, a cross between the banjo and the ukulele.
Repertoire
Eccentric New Yorker Tiny Tim had a ukulele hit with ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips With Me’ in 1960; Arthur Godfrey, the front man of the 1950s revival in the USA made his mark with ‘Making Love Ukulele Style’; current performers include the Ka’Au Crater Boys (‘On Fire’) and the delightful Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain.
Related Instruments
The cavaquinho, another Portuguese relative, is an essential ingredient in the morna music of the Cape Verde islands.
Partly because of the similarity of the names involved, viols are often assumed to be a variation of the orchestral string family. In fact, the viol family is a completely separate range of instruments (and indeed the first of the two to develop a distinctive identity) which were among the most important in Renaissance and early Baroque music.
The significant characteristics of the viol family, which probably originated in North Africa and reached Europe via Spain, are their completely flat back, sloping shoulders and fretted neck. Most viols have six gut strings difficult to tune and were always played in an upright position gripped between the knees.
The viol was particularly popular in England and France in the 1600s households might own a chest of viols in different sizes, from treble to bass, and whole families played together. Charles I had his own consort, as did Oliver Cromwell. However the viol had effectively disappeared by the time the classical orchestra was established, and it was only in the 1890s that the instrument maker Arnold Dolmetsch promoted its revival.
Repertoire
Five viols are required for the 1599 pavan The Countess of Pembroke’s Funerall, by Antony Holborne; Purcell’s Complete Fantasias proved to be one of the last important works for the Renaissance viol. Marin Marais’ Pièces de Viole are fine examples of the French school of viol music; J. S. Bach’s Sonata in G Minor is a Baroque masterpiece. The 1992 film Tous les Matins du Monde tells the life-story of seventeenth-century violists Saint-Colombe and Marais and includes many of their original compositions.
Related Instruments
The viola d’amore, of which Vivaldi was a fan, had the same back and shoulders as a viol but no frets, was played on the shoulder like a viola and sported sympathetic resonating strings.
The viola has been described as the Cinderella of the string section, frequently ignored and derided as something of a makeweight. However, its rich, mellow sound is a treat for the cognoscenti, who appreciate its value as a gastronome might savour a particularly exquisite truffle indeed, woody and nutty are adjectives often applied to its tone.
Of all the strings, it is the one that bears the Italian name for the whole family but by the end of the sixteenth century it had specifically come to mean the alto partner of the violin, tuned a fifth below its showier cousin. To correspond to that drop in pitch, it should be half as long again as the violin, making playing under the chin impractical; a compromise was reached, but even so the size of the instrument makes it difficult to hold.
Just as the double bass originally tended to echo the cello line, the viola had much the same role, shadowing the violins or even the bass; there are still few concertos or sonatas for the viola which is something of a shame when you learn that many great composers were violists, including Mozart and J. S. Bach.
Repertoire
The unfinished Béla Bartók Viola Concerto was championed by Yehudi Menuhin; Berlioz’s viola solo from Harold in Italy was commissioned by Nicolo Paganini, who in the end never performed it himself. Vaughan Williams also gave the viola a fine solo in his suite Flos Campi (known to irreverent musicians as ‘Camp Flossie’).
Related Instruments
The viola alta was a full-sized, five-stringed viola introduced in the 1870s, constructed in proportion to its pitch and extremely arduous to play.
The violin is perhaps the most familiar part of the classical orchestra and it is surprising that despite the scrolled head and horsehair bow that hark back to ages past, it is still the dominant orchestral instrument as well as a major force in folk, county and ethnic music.
Although there have been modifications to the instrument over the centuries, the violin of the 1600s is to all intents and purposes the same used today, including the f-shaped sound holes, the polished body with separate front and back, and the wooden tuning pegs. A straight and adjustable bow, the use of metal strings and the addition of a chin-rest were all in place by the nineteenth century.
Virtuosos such as Paganini could delight in the violin’s instant and agile response and exploit its armoury of techniques, including pronounced vibrato, staccato and pizzicato and more arcane techniques like striking the strings with the wood of the bow (‘con legno’) or bowing tight up to the bridge to create a deliberately harsher tone (‘sul ponticello’).
Repertoire
The great violin concertos include the Brahms D Major and Felix Mendelssohn’s No. 2 in E Minor; Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade uses the solo violin to voice the role of the work’s alluring narrator. Paganini’s Caprices and Bach’s D-Minor Partita (both for solo violin) remain a challenge to all but the most gifted. A lack of formal restraint is nonchalantly displayed in jazz violin by Stephane Grappelli on ‘I Got Rhythm’ and in the Celtic idiom by Máire Breatnach on the soundtrack to Riverdance.
Related Instruments
The fiedel a medieval precursor of both violins and viols is the origin of the violin’s nickname of ‘fiddle’.
In one small corner of Italy the Lombardy town of Cremona three families dominated the world of violin manufacture for the best part of two hundred years: Amati, Guarneri and Stradivari. Their craftsmanship lives on, since the finest examples of their work have become iconic, highly collectable and extremely expensive items, much sought after by leading violinists.
• The earliest of these dynasties of violin makers were the Amati, founded by Andrea Amati, whose first known instrument is dated 1564. His two sons and his brother continued the tradition, but it was his grandson Niccolò who garnered the most fame, and passed on the heritage of his family’s skills to both Andreas Guarneri and Antonio Stradivari. Amati violins set a benchmark for the shape of the violin, and are noted for their delicacy and elegance, perfect for chamber music.
• Andreas Guarneri also had two sons and a grandson to develop the Guarneri legacy; and again it was the grandson, Giuseppe Antonio Amati (16981744), who was the most highly regarded he was known as Giuseppe del Gesù, since his signature on each completed violin was rounded off with the letters IHS (the Greek abbreviation for Jesus). Eschewing precise craftsmanship, all the Guarneri violins were highly individual, giving each a distinct personality.
• It was Antonio Stradivari (16441737), better known by the Latin form of his name, ‘Stradivarius’, who developed the Cremona violin to the version many players consider most perfect adding power and brilliance to impeccable design standards. Stradivarius’s sons followed him into the business but they were unable to match the talent of their father, who created some 1,000 instruments including violas and cellos over 70 years of work.
The zither is part of a group of instruments which are linked by the fact that sets of strings run parallel to their main body, and that unlike, say, the lute, lyre or harp they can still be played even without the presence of a resonating device. In the concept’s least advanced state, native instruments exist which are little more than a stick carrying strings along its length.
Closely identified with the Alpine region of Europe and particularly the Austrian Tyrol the zither is a closed wooden box which has anything from 30 to 40 strings lying across its surface. A number of these strings are placed over frets and can be stopped by the thumb of the left hand, while the right plucks the strings with a plectrum to pick out melodies or chords. In performance, the zither is usually placed on a table or on the knees of the performer.
Because the construction of the zither resembles keyboard instruments such as the harpsichord, it is sometimes seen as a relative of theirs. Other variants include:
• The dulcimer: struck by small wooden beaters, and popular in Hungarian and Romanian folk music.
• The cimbalom: a concert version of the dulcimer used for orchestral purposes.
Repertoire
The ‘Harry Lime Theme’, written by Anton Karas for the film The Third Man, is a haunting piece of zither music; Johann Strauss added its colour to Tales from the Vienna Woods. The cimbalom is requested in Stravinsky’s Rag-Time, and also features memorably in Zoltán Kodály’s folk-based Janos suite.
Related Instruments
The psaltery, an instrument used in the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, the vina of Indian classical music and the 13-stringed koto of Japan are all based on the same principles as the zither.