Today is National Violin day,

a musical instrument with four strings,

draw a bow across it

and the music it plays sings .

The violin is the smallest yet highest pitched instrument of the string family, the word violin comes from the Medieval Latin word vitula, meaning stringed instrument. In the 16th century the Medici family from Italy asked famous lute maker Andrea Amati to build a small wooden stringed instrument that would be easy to carry about, this was as an alternative to a lyre. Andrea was also the founder of the Cremonese School of Violin Making where Antonio Stradivari himself became a pupil in the late 1600's.