The Violin

Provides new perspectives on the violin’s beloved concert repertoire, its diverse roles in indigenous musical traditions on four continents, and its metaphorical presence in visual arts and literature.

With a colorful history that spans 450 years, the violin has proven to be one of the world’s most important and versatile instruments. Addressed to performing musicians, serious concertgoers, and collectors of recordings, The Violin offers insightful, up-to-date essays on a wide range of topics. Essays discuss beloved masterpieces from the violin’s solo repertoire, with individual chapters on the Italian Baroque, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and the violin concerto in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the evolution of performance styles and interpretation as documented in recordings. The volume also illustrates the broad cultural and geographic reach of the instrument, offering readers a taste of the traditional music of Argentina, Mexico, Norway, and India, in which the violin’s participation is an essential and characteristic element. Other chapters are devoted to American fiddling andto the violin and violinists as metaphors in literature and the visual arts.

CONTRIBUTORS: Chris Goertzen, Eitan Ornoy, Robert Riggs, Peter Walls, Peter Wollny.

Musicologist and violinist Robert Riggs (PhD, Harvard University) chairs the Department of Music at the University of Mississippi and is the author of articles on Mozart as well as the monograph Leon Kirchner: Composer, Performer, and Teacher (URP 2010).