The Cambridge Companion to the Violin offers students, performers, and scholars a fascinating and composite survey of the history and repertory of the instrument from its origins to the present day.

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 and to the violin and violinists as metaphors in literature and the visual arts.

A 16-ounce package of polished wood, strings, and air, the violin is perhaps the most affordable, portable, and adaptable instrument ever created. As congenial to reels, ragas, Delta blues, and indie rock as it is to solo Bach and late Beethoven, it has been played standing or sitting, alone or in groups, in bars, churches, concert halls, lumber camps, even concentration camps, by pros and amateurs, adults and children, men and women, at virtually any latitude on any continent.Despite dogged attempts by musicologists worldwide to find its source, the violin's origins remain maddeningly elusive. The instrument surfaced from nowhere in particular, in a world that Columbus had only recently left behind and Shakespeare had yet to put on paper. By the end of the violin's first century, people were just discovering its possibilities

As an encyclopedia of the violin, all aspects of the violin are covered: construction, history, and literature; violin playing and teaching; and violin virtuosos through the ages.

(Amadeus). Ayke Agus came to Jascha Heifetz as a violin student in his master class at the University of Southern California; after he made her the class pianist she soon became his private accompanist and ultimately his assistant and confidante. Her book is a loving yet unblinking testimony to a unique relationship between an aging master and his disciple. Always a difficult person, Heifetz imparted not only his art but his every belief and idiosyncrasy. The greatest violinist of the 20th century was a genius who was also insecure and unreasonable; in many respects the former prodigy had never had to grow up. This memoir is an extraordinary story of a truly unique friendship, told with honesty, understanding, and devotion.

The violinist Yehudi Menuhin recalls his life, from his captivation of the world as a child prodigy to his present international eminence, chronicling personal and professional crises, failures, and triumphs

The magazine celebrates and explores the creation, restoration and preservation of instruments in the violin family. Articles include all aspects of string instrument making, including building and repair techniques, history, care and maintenance, and the business of running a shop.