A Duet With a Feathered Friend

About this drawing

Our singing princess with violin is making music two ways at once, and only one of them needs a very old Italian workshop. The violin as we know it took shape in northern Italy in the 1500s, and the town of Cremona became its home base.

Cremona's makers were the rock stars of their trade. The Amati and Guarneri families built instruments there, and so did Antonio Stradivari, whose violins still sell for millions of dollars. Soloists play them in concert halls today, more than 300 years later.

So how does a box of wood sing? The bow does the first job. Its horsehair is rubbed with sticky rosin so it can grip the strings and set them shaking. A small bridge passes that shaking to the hollow wooden body, which makes the sound big enough to fill a room. Press a finger on a string and the note goes higher.

Songbirds work on a similar idea, with a special voice organ called a syrinx. Many of them learn their tunes by listening to older birds, a bit like young music students. Some American backyard birds are real performers. The northern mockingbird can copy dozens of other sounds, so next spring you might catch one giving its own little concert.

• princesses
• music
• violins
• birds