The Art Behind the Baroque Violin

Since the age of three, I have been playing the violin; however, I was uninformed about the history of the violin or how the instrument works in a mechanical sense. Inspired by my love of the music of the 1700s, I chose to study how violins were made, how their physical properties affected performance practice, and how to play Baroque violin—a project that allowed me to combine elements of my two majors, Music History and Cultures and Violin Performance. I narrowed my area of focus to the late Baroque (1700-1730) because renowned violin-maker Antonio Stradivari was considered to be in his prime during those years. During the late Baroque period, the design of the violin significantly changed, and one of the questions I investigated in this paper is who initiated the changes in violin design, the performer or the luthier (violinmaker), a topic I researched during a research trip to Italy in the summer of 2015. I came to the conclusion that though performers and luthiers had a symbiotic relationship, the demands made by virtuosic performers caused the design to develop into its modern form. Because I learned to play the Baroque violin, I used practice-based research to create and analyze the Baroque ornamentation I discuss in my paper. Additionally, my scholarly research informed how I played the instrument, and this influence was most notably heard at my recital. My Baroque violin recital on February 26, 2016 showcased the dual nature of my Senior Capstone Project—the combination of performance with scholarship. On this recital, I performed Corelli’s Violin Sonata No. 9, Op. 5 and Vivaldi’s Violin Sonata No. 10, Op. 2. Analysis of this Corelli violin sonata is found in this paper, along with a discussion of the ornaments I performed on the recital