Fiddle or violin? Usually the same instrument, played for different ends
A fiddle and a violin are usually the very same object. What separates them is how they are played: fiddlers chase a danceable beat, quick note changes and improvised ornament, while classical violinists hold sustained, vibrato-rich notes and stick to the composer's page. Some fiddlers even flatten the bridge to change the instrument itself.
The instrument's roots run back to the Byzantine lira, a bowed string instrument that spread west and gave rise to the medieval fiddle in 10th-century Europe. Writers in the 11th and 12th centuries treated the words fiddle and lira as near synonyms for anything played with a bow. The medieval fiddle usually carried four strings but came in many shapes, and a separate family, the viols, was held upright between the legs and had frets on the fingerboard.
The modern violin took shape in northern Italy early in the 16th century; the first images, around 1530, show a three-stringed version. A 1556 book printed in Lyon, the Epitome musical by Jambe de Fer, gives one of the earliest clear descriptions, tuning included. In 1560 the French king Charles IX commissioned 24 violins from Andrea Amati, and one of them, known as the Charles IX, is the oldest violin still in existence.
Where the word fiddle comes from is uncertain. It may descend from Latin fidula or have native Germanic roots, and it seems linked to Icelandic fiðla and Old English fiðele. The social split may also be old: orchestral violins sit in sections because big concert halls needed many instruments before amplification, while fiddlers served dance halls and homes, where one or two players pushing hard on the beat could fill the room.
Fiddling today splinters into many regional styles. In Northumbria a second player improvises a harmony line known as seconding; Shetland players favour ringing strings and syncopation; Donegal fiddlers play fast with staccato bowing, while Galway tempos run slower with heavier ornament. In Hungary a three-stringed viola with a flat bridge, the kontra, supplies chords behind the tune. Plenty of fiddlers, Alison Krauss among them, also have classical training.
Source: Fiddle
