the difference between a violin and a fiddle

[Nancy Elliott]

> ------Original Message------
> From: James Smith <jsmithjamessmith at YAHOO.COM>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Sent: October 17, 2000 7:29:27 PM GMT
> Subject: Re: the difference between a violin and a fiddle
>
>
> (snip)
> supporting the instrument on their knee like a viola
> di gamba, predecessor of the modern viola: picture a
> small cello supported on the knee rather than the
> floor.
>

The viola da gamba (which the English called a viol) isn't the predecessor
of anything today, except
(sort of) the orchestral double bass; the viol is a member of the guitar and
lute family rather than the violin family, and came in many sizes. Small
ones were
supported just below the knees (plural) and larger ones were supported
on the calves. The largest ones (violones = 'big viols') were supported on
little footstools or endpins and were played standing up.

Of course, 'viol' and 'fiddle' come from the same word; linguistically a
violin is just a
little viol, though violins didn't come from viols (in fact, they competed
in the Baroque period, and the violin family won). The Spanish word,
vihuela, refers also to a strummed instrument that greatly resembles a
guitar. Spain had the vihuela de arco (bowed viol) and vihuela de mano
(strummed flat-back guitar-shaped instrument).  Early Music people use
'fiddle' (also vielle, the French for viol) to refer to an instrument played
in the Middle Ages, and 'violin' to refer to what developed in Italy at the
beginning of the Baroque. For more on fiddles (as opposed to violins), look
in Ian Woodfield's The Early History of the Viol.

Viol players today often playfully refer to their instruments as 'celloids,
because the common folk usually mistake the most common size, the bass viol,
for a 'cello (violoncello = 'little big viol').

Also, the space around the player within which it is dangerous to come if
you don't want to get hit with a bow is called the bowzone.


--Nancy Elliott


>
> --- Johanna N Franklin <johannaf+ at ANDREW.CMU.EDU>
> wrote:
>> I always heard that the difference between a
>> violin and a fiddle was
>> that a violin has a case.
>>
>> Johanna, who has to finish transcribing a
>> conversation now
>>
>> Excerpts from mail: 16-Oct-100 Re: the psychology of
>> Gray/.. by "Peter
>> A. McGraw"@LINFIE
>>> The best example I ever heard of a similar
>> phenomenon was on a music
>>> program on NPR co-hosted by the conductor of the
>> Baltimore Symphony (I
>>> think that's the orchestra--and I can't remember
>> the conductor's name, but
>>> I think it starts with Z).  Speaking of how
>> professional violinists refer
>>> to their instrument as a "fiddle," and also
>> discussing the difference in
>>> style between country fiddling and classical
>> violin playing, he recalled
>>> once asking a class what they saw as the
>> difference between a violin and a
>>> fiddle.  One student answered: "A violin has
>> strings; a fiddle has strangs."
>
>
> =====
> James D. SMITH                 |If history teaches anything
> SLC, UT                        |it is that we will be sued
> jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com     |whether we act quickly and decisively
> |or slowly and cautiously.
>
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