The Violin

September 24, 2012
A fragile music-box conquers the world in this entertaining if overstuffed history. Historian Schoenbaum (Hitler’s Social Revolution) focuses on the violin’s socioeconomics: its manufacture in every setting from Stradivari’s workshop to modern Chinese factories; its investment value to high-end connoisseurs; its accretion of prestige and recompense as violinists advanced in status from humble feudal artisans to conservatory-trained professionals and concert hall geniuses; its adoption as a vector of assimilation, knitting the continents together in a musical ecumene and giving minority violinists entrée into the cultural mainstream. There’s not much music in the book; the author never tries to explain exactly why the violin’s sound captivated the world’s ears, and instead emphasizes the evolving practicalities and logistics that underpinned its spread. He does layer on colorful anecdotes about the people making, trading, and playing violins, regaling readers with the fakery of shady collectors and dealers who labeled latter-day violins as Cremonese masterpieces, the histrionics and womanizing of virtuosos, and the motivational cruelties of teachers. Schoenbaum narrates the picaresque in a lively, lucid prose, but the themes sometimes get lost in a surfeit of notes. Still, there’s so much engaging lore that the violin’s legions of fans will find it an absorbing browse. Photos.

Starred review from October 15, 2012
Schoenbaum (The United States and the State of Israel, 1993, etc.) writes fondly and expansively about the instrument he plays for pleasure. Another subtitle for this massive exposition might well be: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the Violin--and More. In four sections, the author covers the creation and evolution of the instrument, its marketing and manufacture (from the 16th century), the biographies and skills of many notable players and, finally, how the violin has appeared in art, literature and films. The scope of Schoenbaum's research is astonishing. He's seemingly listened to every recording, read every biography and history of every major (and many minor) player and symphony orchestra and chamber group, read every novel with a significant violin presence and seen every TV show and film featuring a violin. He focuses principally on classical players; although he mentions Charlie Daniels, he does not write much about country music, jazz or other popular musical genres--though he does not neglect them entirely, either. He performs an important service to general readers by discussing makers other than Antonio Stradivari, and he enlivens his prose with occasional puns, colorful similes ("other quartets renewed themselves like deciduous trees"), sharp details (Dorothy DeLay had an "elegantly manicured right hand" and unexpected descriptions (he compares the salaries of members of the Cleveland Indians and the Cleveland Symphony). The literary summaries are somewhat excessive, and the many names and details may overwhelm some nonmusical readers. A long and richly textured love letter to an instrument, a tradition and an art.

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July 1, 2012

Jean-Jacques Rousseau said that no instrument matched the violin for universality and expressiveness, and given its use in everything from chamber music to klezmer to indie rock, he could well be right. A detailed history from a committed amateur violinist.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2012
Schoenbaum's immense collection of factoids may perhaps annoy as well as entrance, and for the same reason: it's a trivia trove. Its four big books are chock-full of stories about persons who built violins ( Making It ), traded in them ( Selling It ), played them ( Playing It ), and represented them in pictorial art, literature, and movies ( Imagining It ). Each book proceeds chronologically from the sixteenth century, in which the violin came from nowhere to near-completely supplant other bowed string instruments within two human generations, to the present and such hot phenomena as the all-female Bond quartet, who posed in the altogether behind a couple of their music makers (not including the cello). Schoenbaum lightly touches on the economic and social developments that enabled the making, selling, playing, and imagining but concentrates on biographical tidbits about the likes ofto note only the most glittering namesStradivari, Paganini, Kreisler, Heifetz, and Oistrakhand, at the end, descriptions of pictures, novels, and movies. For violin music, technology, and technique, look elsewhere while enjoying the gossipy pleasure Schoenbaum affords.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)