The violin Joshua Bell can’t let out of his sight has twice, and for many years, been in the hands of thieves. Yet it helped save the lives of 1,000 people.

The French poet, dramatist, novelist, writer, journalist, and critic Theophile Gautier is credited for birthing the phrase, “All passes, art alone endures.” Technically, it was “enduring” within a longer passage (“All passes, art alone enduring stays to us; the bust outlasts the throne, the coin, Tiberius…”). But a tour of…

The smaller of the two parts of stringed instruments, the bow, is remarkably complex and made of several parts, historically derived directly from nature.

To understand the parts of the bow used in stringed instruments – in Western music, the violin family (violin, cello, viola, bass, and the viola da gamba) – it helps to understand what is provided by nature. The bows both ancient and modern are an assembly made of animal, vegetable, and mineral origins.

But…