A True Story: The Violin

Written By Nicholas Stocco

This story was originally shared by Sarah Werner Andrews at the 2023 AMI-USA Montessori Experience and Refresher Courses.

The Story of The Violin

The violin is the name of a music instrument that is part of the “String Family”. All of the instruments in the string family make music with their strings! The violin can make many interesting and different kinds of sounds with the strings. The strings can be played by plucking them, or by drawing a bow across them. This makes the strings vibrate and produces a sound. This is rather like the sounds you can make when you stretch a rubber band and pluck it to make a sound. The tighter and thinner the rubber band, the higher the sound; the looser and thicker the rubber band, the lower the sound.

The strings of the first violins were made out of sheep’s intestines, which were stretched out, dried, and twisted. Modern violins don’t use sheep’s intestines anymore; now the strings are made of very thin steel, sometimes mixed with other materials to “warm” the sound, and make it more pleasant to listen to.

The first violins came from Italy around the year 1550. Today the year is 2023 (I wonder how many years ago the first violins were made...) The first violins were very similar to another instrument called a “viol”, but viols had six strings and were held between the knees. Violins have only four strings and are played held under the chin.

Here is a picture of two men who play music together in a group called Black Violin.

This is Wil B and he plays the viola, and this is Kev Marcus, and he plays the violin. They met when they were in a high school music class together, and they both started learning to play the violin. They found they loved playing music together and challenging people’s ideas about what kind of music violins could make, so they began to combine hip hop music with classical, and formed a group called Black Violin. This is a recording of a piece of music called “A Flat”.

This is another recording of a violin player, named Joshua Bell. He is playing a piece of music written by an Italian composer named Giacomo Puccini. The name of this piece of music is “O Mio Babbino Caro”, which means, “Oh my dear papa”. This music sounds like the composer loves his papa very much.

Nicholas Stocco
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