cover image The Violin: 
A Social History of the World’s Most Versatile Instrument

The Violin: A Social History of the World’s Most Versatile Instrument

David Schoenbaum. Norton, $39.95 (672p) ISBN 978-0-393-08440-5

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. (Dec.)