String Instruments

The principal instruments in Baroque music are the bowed, unfretted, string instruments of the violin family. During the Baroque period Violin making was at its highest point . The best violins in the world today were made then in a town in northern Italy called Cremona. These instruments made by the Stradivari and Guarneri families continue to be prized by the greatest violinists. The violin, viola, cello and double bass(all the modern members of the violin family) were available to Baroque composers.
The Baroque period inherited fretted, bowed instruments from the Renaissance . The most important among these was the viola da gamba, or gamba, an instrument with a range similar to a cello. The gamba disappeared by the end of the eighteenth century.