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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
violin
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
case
▪ The edge of the violin case cut into her leg.
▪ Musicians were so desperate to hear Michelangeli that they borrowed violin cases and sneaked in through the stage door.
▪ She came out of Miss Lucchesi's gate holding her violin case as if it were a weapon.
▪ She had a satchel by her feet and a violin case on her lap.
concerto
▪ Bach's violin concertos have been well-treated on record, but this new version from Hyperion using period instruments is exceptional.
▪ David Oistrakh recorded the Brahms and Tchaikovsky violin concertos many times.
lesson
▪ It frees him from the awkward contortions of hand and wrist that make violin lessons and practice all too necessary.
▪ Born and raised in Tokyo, Komuro started violin lessons at age 3 and began learning keyboards in elementary school.
▪ And I've got to have violin lessons.
■ VERB
play
▪ William With a goat playing a violin.
▪ Later, he taught himself to play the violin and cello, all on the stage at Millers.
▪ Jeanne played the violin more than competently.
▪ Everyone who could play the violin was summoned to come and play for a camp officer, this witness recalls.
▪ In his spare time he became more and more interested in amateur dramatics, as well as teaching himself to play the violin.
▪ He loved music and spent hours playing the violin, although not well.
▪ I just thought you might like to know about playing the violin.
▪ Brown learned to play guitar, violin, harmonica, piano, mandolin, viola and drums.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A cacophony of violins, clarinets and trumpets fills the air.
▪ And the sound of Beethoven's Second Romance for violin and orchestra, coming from the stereo speaker in his bedroom.
▪ Born and raised in Tokyo, Komuro started violin lessons at age 3 and began learning keyboards in elementary school.
▪ He holds his violin low down, the bow fastidiously poised above it.
▪ Not a note seems superfluous in this essay for flute, clarinet in A, vibraphone, piano, violin and cello.
▪ She was too wound up, too much on edge, her nerves as taut as violin strings.
▪ While the woodwind and low strings were reasonably well replicated, the violins, timpani and brass left much to be desired.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Violin

Violin \Vi`o*lin"\, n. [It. violino, dim. of viola. See Viol.] (Mus.) A small instrument with four strings, played with a bow; a fiddle.

Note: The violin is distinguished for the brilliancy and gayety, as well as the power and variety, of its tones, and in the orchestra it is the leading and most important instrument.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
violin

1570s, from Italian violino, diminutive of viola (see viola). The modern form of the smaller, medieval viola da braccio.

Wiktionary
violin

n. 1 (context musical instruments English) A musical four-string instrument, generally played with a bow or by plucking the string. Pitch is set by pressing the strings at the appropriate place with the fingers. 2 (context music English) A violinist.

WordNet
violin

n. bowed stringed instrument that is the highest member of the violin family; this instrument has four strings and a hollow body and an unfretted fingerboard and is played with a bow [syn: fiddle]

Wikipedia
Violin

The violin is a wooden string instrument in the violin family. It is the smallest and highest-pitched instrument in the family in regular use. The violin typically has four strings tuned in perfect fifths, and is most commonly played by drawing a bow across its strings, though it can also be played by plucking the strings ( pizzicato). Violins are important instruments in a wide variety of musical genres. They are most prominent in the Western classical tradition and in many varieties of folk music. However, violins are also frequently used in jazz, in some forms of rock music, and genres of folk including country music and bluegrass music. Further, the violin has come to be played in many non-Western music cultures, including Indian music and Iranian music. The violin is sometimes informally called a fiddle, regardless of the type of music played on it.

The violin was first known in 16th-century Italy, with some further modifications occurring in the 18th and 19th centuries. In Europe it served as the basis for stringed instruments used in western classical music, the viola and the violin. Violinists and collectors particularly prize the instruments made by the Stradivari, Guarneri and Amati families from the 16th to the 18th century in Brescia and Cremona and by Jacob Stainer in Austria. According to their reputation, the quality of their sound has defied attempts to explain or equal it, though this belief is disputed. Great numbers of instruments have come from the hands of "lesser" makers, as well as still greater numbers of mass-produced commercial "trade violins" coming from cottage industries in places such as Saxony, Bohemia, and Mirecourt. Many of these trade instruments were formerly sold by Sears, Roebuck and Co. and other mass merchandisers.

A person who makes or repairs violins is called a luthier. The parts of a violin are usually made from different types of wood (although electric violins may not be made of wood at all, since their sound may not be dependent on specific acoustic characteristics of the instrument's construction), and it is usually strung with gut, Perlon or other synthetic, or steel strings.

Violin (novel)

Violin is a novel by American horror writer Anne Rice, released on 15 October 1997. It moves away from her previous stories about vampires and witches to tell a ghost story.

Violin (album)

Violin was the first album released by violinist Vanessa-Mae. It was recorded in October 1990, near her 12th birthday, and released shortly afterwards in March 1991. Vanessa-Mae contributed her royalties from the album to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

For the recording, she performed with the Mozart Players as conducted by Anthony Inglis.

Violin (disambiguation)

A violin is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths.

Violin may also refer to:

Violin (film)

Violin is a 2011 Malayalam musical romance film directed by Sibi Malayil. It stars Asif Ali and Nithya Menon in the lead roles, and Vijayaraghavan, Nedumudi Venu, Sreejith Ravi, Chembil Asokan, Lakshmi Ramakrishnan and Reena Basheer in other major roles. The film is about two youngsters who are brought together by their fondness to music. A musical romance film by genre, it features music composed by Bijibal and a song composed by Bollywood composer Anand Raj Anand. Rafeeq Ahmed writes the lyrics while Manoj Pillai is the cinematographer. Sakhi Thomas was the costume designer for this movie. Having filmed the major parts from Fort Kochi, the film released on 1 July 2011. Violin Dubbed to Telugu As Dilse in 2012.

Usage examples of "violin".

Beethoven adagios, of which we find the most beautiful specimens naturally among the orchestral pieces and in the chamber music, where he could depend upon the long phrases and sustained tones of the violins.

They are like the colossal strides of approaching Fate, and this awfulness is twice raised to a higher power, first by a searching, syncopated phrase in the violins which hovers loweringly over them, and next by a succession of afrighted minor scales ascending crescendo and descending piano, the change in dynamics beginning abruptly as the crest of each terrifying wave is reached.

The violin was in the grape arbour, singing a perfect jumble of everything, poured out in an exultant tumult.

The musicians were sitting cross-legged on a raised platform behind the buffet, a live ensemble of oboists, percussionists, bagpipers, and one-string violin players in the plaid tribal robes of the Islamic Kingdom of Scotland and Wales.

The Bailo Dona sent one of his men who played the violin well enough for dancing purposes.

Tach was sitting slumped in a chair in his apartment in a maroon smoking jacket and semidarkness, listening to Mozart in violins, bibbing brandy, and getting far gone in maudlin when the phone rang.

But Bott, having the soul of a true musician, cared but little for money and was happy enough so long as he could smoke his old meerschaum pipe and draw the bow across the cherished violin held lovingly to his cheek.

Moreover, he was able to describe the markings of the Bott violin even to the label inside it.

Frederick, a violin maker, who testified that he was familiar with the Bott Strad.

Being, at the same time, in funds, and able to satisfy his taste as a virtuoso, he felt the need of and bought a violin for ten dollars, but, Fox urging upon him the desirability of getting a good one while he was about it, was finally persuaded to purchase the Bott violin for twenty dollars in its stead.

She played the cadenza from the Fifth Violin Concerto, to demonstrate the influence of the earlier composer, and Everard nodded.

The prodigious feat had been noted in the Press of all countries with every circumstance--the five violins he had tired out, the invitation he had received to preside over a South American Republic, the special steamer he had chartered to keep an engagement in North America, and his fainting fit in Moscow after the Beethoven and Brahms concertos, the Bach chaconne, and seventeen encores.

What did it matter that the cimbalom, second violin, and clarinet had been taken over by different musicians and I was the only one left of the old crowd?

I took a violin, and played the forlana, but, even if the partner had been found, I could not play and dance at the same time.

The harp has always been their principal instrument, and for many centuries a rude kind of violin called the crwth, of which there will be occasion to speak in connection with the violin, at a later period in this work.