Kit violin

The kit violin, dancing master's kit, or kit, is a stringed instrument. It is essentially a very small violin designed to fit in a pocket—hence its other common name, the pochette (French for small pocket). It was used by dance masters in royal courts and other places of nobility, and by street musicians, until around the 18th century. A common misconception is that pochettes were for children. They were actually made for adults; their small size allowed them to be used in where full-sized violins were too large to carry, or too expensive to own. The instrument's body is very small, but its fingerboard is long relative to the instrument's overall size, to preserve as much of the instrument's melodic range as possible. The "pocket fiddle" or "pochette" should not be confused with a saddle fiddle, the latter being a proper fiddle or violin with a nearly full-sized fingerboard and a full-sized violin body. Occasionally, the rebec was used in the same way.
==History==
The word "kit" probably arose from an abbreviation of the word "pocket" to "-cket" and subsequently "kit"; alternatively, it may be a corruption of "cittern" (). Trichet is said to have described the kit's leather carrying case as a poche, hence, "The Pocket Violin". Similarly, Mersenne wrote that it was common practice among kit violin players (such as traveling minstrels or dance teachers) to carry the violin in a pocket. "Kit" is believed to have first been used in the first quarter of the 16th century England where it was mentioned in Interlude of the Four Elements, 1517.
Due to being an essental feature of court entertaintment and dance pochettes were often made of expensive materials such as exotic woods, tortis shells or ivory, as well as being decorated with elaborate carvings.
Many violinists in the eighteenth century used pochettes because of their portability. The pochette or pocket fiddle was used by dance masters—not during dances, but when teaching. Niel Gow is known to have played a pochettes, and reportedly carried one in his pocket whenever he walked from his house in Inver to Blair Castle, where he worked. Thomas Jefferson also owned at least two pochettes.
The great violin maker Antonio Stradivari is known to have made only two pochettes in his career, one possibly lost, and the other on display at the Paris Conservatoire Museum.
==Sound==
The pochette is tuned one octave above a regular violin. Claudio Monteverdi used the shirp sound of the pochette to infer bird song in his aria "Ecco pur ch'a voi ritorno" from the 1607 opera L'Orfeo. In the opera they are called violini piccoli alla francese ("small French violins").The Ultimate Encyclopaedia of Musical Instruments, , p85
==Gallery==
==References==
==External links==
* Pochette
* Pocket Violin, played by Tim MacDonald
Category:Violins
Category:Bowed instruments
Category:Alphabet instruments