A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres including classical music. Although violins and fiddles are synonymous, the style of the music played may determine specific construction differences between fiddles and classical violins. For example, fiddles may optionally be set up with a bridge with a flatter arch to reduce the range of bow-arm motion needed for techniques such as the double shuffle, a form of bariolage involving rapid alternation between pairs of adjacent strings. To produce a "brighter" tone, compared to the deeper tones of gut or synthetic core strings, fiddlers use steel strings; the fiddle is part of many traditional styles, which are aural traditions—taught'by ear' rather than via written music. Fiddling is the act of playing the fiddle, fiddlers are musicians that play it. Among musical styles, fiddling tends to produce rhythms that focus on dancing, with associated quick note changes, whereas classical music tends to contain more vibrato and sustained notes.

Fiddling is open to improvisation and embellishment with ornamentation at the player's discretion—in contrast to orchestral performances, which adhere to the composer's notes to reproduce a work faithfully. It is less common for a classically trained violinist to play folk music, but today, many fiddlers have classical training; the medieval fiddle emerged in 10th-century Europe, deriving from the Byzantine lira, a bowed string instrument of the Byzantine Empire and ancestor of most European bowed instruments. The first recorded reference to the bowed lira was in the 9th century by the Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih. Lira spread westward to Europe. Over the centuries, Europe continued to have two distinct types of fiddles: one square-shaped, held in the arms, became known as the viola da braccio family and evolved into the violin. During the Renaissance the gambas were elegant instruments; the etymology of fiddle is uncertain: it derives from the Latin fidula, the early word for violin, or it may be natively Germanic.

The name appears to be related to Icelandic Fiðla and Old English fiðele. A native Germanic ancestor of fiddle might be the ancestor of the early Romance form of violin. In medieval times, fiddle referred to a predecessor of today's violin. Like the violin, it came in a variety of shapes and sizes. Another family of instruments that contributed to the development of the modern fiddle are the viols, which are held between the legs and played vertically, have fretted fingerboards. In performance, a solo fiddler, or one or two with a group of other instrumentalists, is the norm, though twin fiddling is represented in some North American, Scandinavian and Irish styles. Following the folk revivals of the second half of the 20th century, however, it has become common for less formal situations to find large groups of fiddlers playing together—see for example the Calgary Fiddlers, Swedish Spelmanslag folk-musician clubs, the worldwide phenomenon of Irish sessions. Orchestral violins, on the other hand, are grouped in sections, or "chairs".

These contrasting traditions may be vestiges of historical performance settings: large concert halls where violins were played required more instruments, before electronic amplification, than did more intimate dance halls and houses that fiddlers played in. The difference was compounded by the different sounds expected of violin music and fiddle music; the majority of fiddle music was dance music, while violin music had either grown out of dance music or was something else entirely. Violin music came to value a smoothness that fiddling, with its dance-driven clear beat, did not always follow. In situations that required greater volume, a fiddler could push their instrument harder than could a violinist. Various fiddle traditions have differing values. In the late 20th century, a few artists have attempted a reconstruction of the Scottish tradition of violin and "big fiddle," or cello. Notable recorded examples include Iain Fraser and Christine Hanson, Amelia Kaminski and Christine Hanson's Bonnie Lasses, Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas' Fire and Grace. and Tim Macdonald and Jeremy Ward's The Wilds.

Hungarian and Romanian fiddle players are accompanied by a three-stringed variant of the viola—known as the kontra—and by double bass, with cimbalom and clarinet being less standard yet still common additions to a band. In Hungary, a three stringed viola variant with a flat bridge, called the kontra or háromhúros brácsa makes up part of a traditional rhythm section in Hungarian folk music; the flat bridge lets the musician play three-string chords. A three stringed double bass variant is used. To a greater extent than classical violin playing, fiddle playing is characterized by a huge variety of ethnic or folk music traditions, each of which has its own distinctive sound. English folk music fiddling, including The Northumbrian fiddle style, which features "seconding", an improvised harmony part p

Notochthamalus scabrosus, the only species in the genus Notochthamalus, is a species of barnacle found along the south-western and south-eastern coasts of South America, from Peru to the Falkland Islands. The species is found exclusively higher in the intertidal zone than the mussel Perumytilus codistributed with the confamilial barnacle Chthamalus cirratus and Balanus flosculus. Notochthamalus is composed of 6 compartmental plates, composed of a carina and paired carinolatera and rostrolatera. Sutures between plates made up of poorly developed oblique folded laminae with membraneous basis. Plates are colored dull purplish brown. Free-growing shellis are conic, crowded colonies become cylindrical. Opercular plates are narrow and interlocked; the interior of the tergum shows a tergal depressor muscle pit with overhang and no crests, or only relics thereof. Neither shell nor opercular plates show secondary fusion with age; the best character for field identification are the undulations along the tergal-scutal margins.

Given the overall appearance of the operculum of Notochthamalus, it is sometimes called the "vampire barnacle". Notochthamalus Foster & Newman, 1987. Type species: Chthamalus scabrosus Darwin, 1854: 468, original designation by Foster & Newman, 1987, by monotypy. Chthamalus scabrosus Darwin, 1854. Notochthamalus scabrosus. Foster & Newman, 1987,: Poltarukha. Type locality: Not given in Darwin, 1854, or Pilsbry, 1916. Type specimens: Not given in Darwin, 1854. Pilsbry's 1916 reference specimens from Valparaiso, Chile are USNM No. 48089.323 Notochthamalus scabrosus prefers exposed upper littoral habitats, can be found on the South American coastline from Peru through Chile, Chiloe Archipelago, Tierra del Fuego. It co-occurs there with Chthamalus cirratus. In the Atlantic Ocean, it is common on the Falkland Islands.468 Data related to Notochthamalus at Wikispecies

Robert Starer was an Austrian-born American composer and educator. Robert Starer began studying the piano at age 4 and continued his studies at the Vienna State Academy. After the 1938 plebiscite in which Austria voted for annexation by Nazi Germany, Starer left for Palestine and studied at the Jerusalem Conservatory with Josef Tal. In World War II he served in the British Royal Air Force, and in 1947 he settled in the United States. He studied composition at the Juilliard School in New York, studied with Aaron Copland in 1948 and received a postgraduate degree from Juilliard in 1949. Starer became an American citizen in 1957. Robert Starer taught at the Juilliard School, Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York where he became a distinguished professor in 1986, he was married, had one child and resided in Woodstock, NY until his death. He lived with writer Gail Godwin for some thirty years. Starer was prolific and composed in many genres, his music was characterized by driving rhythms.

His vocal works, whether set to English or Hebrew texts, were praised. He composed the score for Martha Graham's 1962 ballet Phaedra, he wrote four operas, The Intruder, The Last Lover, Apollonia. Notable concertos include Violin Concerto, written for Itzhak Perlman and recorded by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa and his Cello Concerto, commissioned by Janos Starker and recorded by Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, Leon Botstein, conductor. One of Starer's better-known pieces is "Odds" for young pianists, he is known for his pieces entitled "Sketches in Color", as well as his sight-reading training manual, "Rhythmic Training." He died on April 2001 in Kingston New York. He is buried in Artists Cemetery, Ulster County, New York. Jaques Cattell Press: Who's who in American Music. Classical. First edition. R. R. Bowker, New York 1983. Darryl Lyman: Great Jews in Music. J. D. Publishers, Middle Village, N. Y, 1986. Stanley Sadie, H. Wiley Hitchcock: The New Grove Dictionary of American Music. Grove's Dictionaries of Music, New York, N.

Y. 1986. Robert Starer's Website Gail Godwin's Official Website Robert Starer interview by Bruce Duffie, March 21, 1987 David Dubal interview with Robert Starer, WNCN-FM, 7-Oct-1984