History of the violin

The violin emerged from northern Italy in the early 16th century, preceeded and evolving from three likely fretted and non fretted, stringed instruments : the rebec, the Renaissance fiddle, and the lira da braccio. The rebec derived from the Arab rebab had been in use since the 10th century . The earliest explicit description of the violin, including its tuning, was in the Epitome musical by Jambe de Fer, published in Lyon in 1556. By this time the violin had already begun to spread throughout Europe by the popularity of the court dance and street musicians. In the first half of the 16th century some of the early violins are attributed to Gasparo di Bertolotti da Salò (c.1540-1609) of Brescia, founder of the school of violin making in Brescia. However more convincingly the first violins were by Andrea Amati (1500-1577) of Cremona.

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