The whole system by which the sound-waves are set in motion in the inside of a violin and the way they cross each other and issue forth from these sound-holes is strange in the highest degree. It is a miracle!
Altogether, the violin is a very charming, fascinating, mysterious, romantic, delightful, and lovable instrument.
Although the violin may appear to your eyes as a very simple instrument, it is really a very complex one.
If I asked you to describe a violin you would probably tell me that it has a back and front, sides and strings. Perhaps you might mention the bridge and, perhaps, you would not think about this small article. Perhaps, too, you might mention the f-holes on either side of the bridge. And there you would stop.
You know very little about a violin, or you would speak of the belly and not the “front” and of the ribs and not the “sides.” And you have not mentioned anything inside the violin. Perhaps you think it contains nothing!
A violin consists of seventy different pieces.
Fifty-seven belong to the construction and thirteen are moveable fittings.
The back (sometimes in two pieces), the belly (sometimes in two pieces), the blocks (six), the ribs (six, sometimes five), the linings (twelve), the bass-bar, the purfling (twenty-four pieces), the nut, the fingerboard, the neck, and the head and scroll (sometimes called the lower nut).
The thirteen moveable fittings are: the tail-piece, the loop, the button, or tail-pin, the screws, or pegs (four), the strings (four), the sound-post and the bridge.