The Cipher for Viola da Gamba and Lute   Page 1   Page 2   Page 3  Page 4   Page 5   Page 6             Vihuela, Signorelli c.1500     There was one more trick the vihuela guitars were experimenting with that would later prove to be equally or even more important than simply adding frets. They were experimenting with ways of permanently embedding their frets (rather than using tied gut frets). The routine practice of embedding metal frets on European instruments may have happened first on instruments called citterns, and out of necessity. Citterns used courses of metal strings (bronze), and gut frets simply wouldn’t have held up, they would have been cut through quickly, sliced by the metal strings. Citterns were similar in some respects to vihuela guitars but one big difference is that many of them used diatonic fretting rather than chromatic. There were chromatically fretted citterns as well, and the two shown below are chromatic, but I just want you to know.       Cittern: 1570 Girolamo Virchi, Italian. [courtesy of Musée de la musique, France]       Cittern: chromatic, 1550, attributed to Augustinus or Franciscus Citaroedus, Urbino, Italy.           Below; just recently surfaced early cittern icon, Girolamo da Treviso, c.1530-40.       Below; an early example and image of a cittern, painted by Girolamo Dai Libri, at Church of St. Georgio, Verona, Italy, c.1520. Aside from it’s unusual shape, see the peg-head: nine pegs, 4 left, 3 right, and 2 dead center. Also note how the strings wrap over the bridge and terminate at the tail end. It is possible however that this simply an unusual 5 course vihuela-guitar, slab constructed, metal strung, on it’s was to becoming an orpharion.       Below; an earlier still cittern, looks full blown to me, by Giuliano da Majano. intarsia (inlaid wood), 1479-82, Italy, Ducal Palace at Gubbio.       Below; the very earliest cittern (cetra) I’ve found, pre-dating the dai Libri instrument by 85 years. Base-relief carving by Luca della Robbia, 1431-38. See the center pegs, small horns or wings at the body/neck joint, squared little tail extension. These might also have those odd tongue-depressor-like frets seen on some guitars circa 1460.       I’m begining to wonder though, if half of the pear shaped late medieval “gitterns” aren’t actually metal strung and cittern ancestors. There just seems to be too much redundancy in 14th century instruments  if all the small lutes and all of the guiternes are  gut strung and all tuned similarly. Here’s one for your concideration, some kind of gittern or guiterne. This is 1330 Spain, Master Juan Oliver, Cathedral at Pampelune. Note how the strings wrap over the tail edge of the instrument like all wire-strung instruments seem to do. Interesting too is chord voicing being grabbed by this player’s left hand -- this at a time when people were not playing chords (according to the “experts”). The shape of this instrument, if you ignore the smoke-screen of some of the 15th century cetra’s and other would-be cittern precursors, looks for all intents and purposes to be a cittern of 1530 vintage.  Anyhow, just a thought. For more Cittern info and iconography see Andrew Hartig’s Renaissance cittern site.         Below; guiterne, guitarra, or mandore, 1330 Spain, Master Juan Oliver, Cathedral of Pampelune       Another wire-strung and metal-fretted instrument even closer to vihuela-guitar-lutes, in both construction and tuning, is the Orpharion (or orpheoreon). These begin to appear at the late 1500s as six or seven course instruments using standard lute tuning. They were very popular and concidered a substitute or alternative to gut strung lutes and guitars. They would be analogous to modern 12 string guitars in fact (6 paired courses), steel strung, but their sound is a little more reminiscent of a harpsichord (to me), i.e. a thinner sound with faster decay. Some opharions had very angled bridges, fanned frets, and more courses. The festooned shape of the Italian 1550 Citaroedus cittern above looks to me to be well on it’s way to an orpharion. The dai Libri cittern (or metal strung vihuela) of 1520 may also be an early precurser to orpharions.     Below; orpharion and larger bandora, plate from Michael Praetorius’ Syntagma Musicum, 1620.       Below; surviving late 16th century orpharion by John Rose, said to have been a gift from Queen Elizabeth of England (who herself played lute) to Lord Tollemache..       Below; orpharion in a painting of a mixed or broken consort, David Vinckboon, 1610.       Below; detail of the orpharion in David Vinckboon’s 1610 painting.       Below; detail of another early orpharion in a painting attributed to Frans II LeJeune, c1581-1642.       Below; mixed consort, etchiing, Simon De Passe, 1612, including orpharion, cittern, bass viola da gamba, and violin (or possibly treble viol played on the arm), maybe a flute too, (the man in the background).       Below; orpharion or bandora, detail from a larger consort setting, Adriaen Pietersz, 1616.       Below; Orpharion (with simplified body contours, no festooning), Leonard Bramer, c.1630-40, Dutch       Below; Orpharion, Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrecht, Kopenhagen, 1672.       Below; detail from the title page of Thomas Ford’s 1607 London publication; Musicke  of Sundrie Kindes in four parts -- for Lute, or Orpharion, or Bass Viol. In other words, fretted fourths, plucked or bowed, gut or wire strung.       Below, Arpeggione Bowed Guitar with embedded metal frets. First built in 1823 by J. G. Staufer. Pictured is a reproduction. Franz Schubert wrote a Sonata for it.         The earliest examples of embedded frets on Vihuelas that I’ve seen pictures of used either iron or ivory. Later they turned to brass (like the citterns and orpharions had already) and that’s still what we use today, a nickle/brass compound that looks silvery in color because of the nickel content, but it’s still mostly brass. Embedding frets would make all the difference in the world in the ultimate evolution of the line, the greater lute/vihuela/gamba/guitar line. If the Viols had lasted a mere 50 to 100 years longer, by the early 1800’s I suspect that they too would have been “modernized”, outfitted with more frets and embedded frets and been redesigned for greater reach up the fretboard, just like the Guitars (you can see this in fact on the “Arpeggione”, a bowed guitar made in 1823 by J. G. Staufer). Meaning, they would have kept up with youngsters (the youngsters would have taken over by then and left them no choice). So in the same way that the lute had already begun to add frets, the entire lute/viol world, had they survived, would have eventually migrated to fixed embedded frets, and you and I might not be having this discussion because we would have known about the Gambas all along. We would have grown up playing them. The plucked Lutes never really did die entirely. They became guitars. But the Gambas, the bowed guitars, went poof — or did they. As an aside, and a nice piece of poetry in action; When the six course viola guitars stepped aside in the early mid 1500’s, letting the classic lutes do that job (being content to survive as 6 string viols) baby lutes in the form of 4 course Renaissance guitars all of a suddenly appear. I’ve said earlier that the 4 course guitars came back to fill a void, provide simpler machines for the music making of the masses. Embodying the 4-3-4 tuning kernel, one might guess where they were headed and what they would again become. So here’s the poetry, at the very second that the fathers were to die, i.e. the six string viols in the late 1700’s, the baby lutes had just jumped from 5 course Baroque guitars to 6 course Romantic guitars. The little princes were now to become kings in their own right (again) in the 20th century, being the guitars you and I play today, the machines that essentially defined music from the 1950’s to present, 2004. Lest we forget the mother; the viola/vihuela/guitar lutes owed a good part of their existence (at least) to the classic bowl back lutes. Baroque lutes and theorbos also passed away in the mid 1700s, exactly at the time the guitars were maturing to 6 string. So both parents probably witnessed their babies coming of age, or at least well on the road to. So again, getting back to a historical pattern of Western musical and cultural influence, the long unbroken line of fourths tuned fretted strings, think what’s happen since 1850. Have we had Guitars (and Ukulele’s and Basses) present and prevalent ever since then, e.g. in 1900, 1920, 1940, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2003? And haven’t they continued to be a dominant force in Western music, popular music at least (and where it counts the most)? So that pop quiz at the top of this page applies to a virtually unbroken line from 1200 (in early vihuela guitars and lutes) to 2000. A primary if not dominant force and training ground in European music has been the fourths tuned fretted guitar family, and particularly including the nearly forgotten bowed chords, and singing melody lines contributed by the bowed guitars, the Gambas (the one time King of the greater guitar family) that whole time! Out of sight out of mind. Consider, than the majority of the music history texts you’ve ever read were produced within the short timeframe wherein the few remaining Viols in existence have been locked away in vaults or exhibited as museum curiosities, seen by few, let alone heard. And the people who have seen them and heard them have been who?, the violin doctors, violin archaeologists, and violin appreciation societies, not guitarists. And perhaps most importantly consider how few living people  have ever actually sat down and mapped out the fretboards and chord voicings of Lutes or Gambas in an appropriately illuminating graphic format (modern guitar grid fashion), and rarer still then compared those along side other fretted string instruments past and present, guitar specifically, and understood what they were looking at (or perhaps even cared if they did see a pattern). At any rate, perhaps a fundament part of our historical picture and understanding of the guitar line and guitar legacy has been missing because one of the fundamental players in the guitar line (the gambas) has been missing and out of (guitarists) sight for too long. Aside from their being one key player, the Gambas, missing from our line of sight, for some strange reason even the guitar archeologists seem to have gotten it wrong. They apparently don’t even know who their kin are. By this I mean, people (scholars) in both camps, violin and guitar, have been viewing the vihuela/guitar line as being different instruments from lutes. Further, until just recently, the physical vihuela-guitar and viol links (vihuela d’arco to viola da gamba) have either not been made or have not been widely publicized and shared in a manner that would catch enough radar to make an impact (the radar of the guitarists and the impact it might upon them). I for one, wrote 90% of this page and had it on line before I had even had the vihuela d’arco connection to the viola da gambas! Meaning, among other things, that I had already been convinced enough for myself that gambas were guitars, and that in fact all lutes, gambas, and guitars are related, related by tuning pattern alone (the fretboard pattern genetics drawings and the pop-quiz drawing at the top of the page) And that fact alone was strong enough for me to come to all of the conclusions you’ll read in a minute. The vihuela d’arco and viola sine arculo connections puts it way over the top. There’s no need to have to almost contrive connections, connections via tuning line, which instrument archeologists and organologists would not  recognize or value let alone find cause to rejoice in. The string instrument archaeologists are apparently most concerned with judging books more by their covers rather than for their content — chord voicings and what I’m calling fretboard genetics here. They have been using body shape (and construction techniques inherent in body shape) and geography of origin as the primary criterion and determinant (even though we know just from the silk road, Moorish Spain, and Crusades cultural exchanges that geography and ultimate origin mean little in the end). They could have been using a more biological approach, a or even genetics approach,  tunings and resulting chords, in determining who was in the family! A truly organological approach. The organs of a guitar, and the organs of a lute, in my eyes, are their chord voicings, and those chord voicings are the result of the potential inherent in their genetic code,  their tunings and markers (frets, chromatic frets). Meaning fourths tuning with frets is the first key. Fourths tuning works perfectly fine for chords up to a point, that point being (at least) to four strings. If you use all fourths on a shorter scale treblely 4 string or 4 course instrument you’ll have more than enough music and musical potential (and chords) to last you a  lifetime. But at some point, for the line to evolve and grow, to be able to add strings low or high and still have lots of nice pretty and easy to finger chordable voicings you need to add some new blood to the line. You need to insert a Major 3rd interval in the tuning pattern, you need to evolve the 4th 3rd 4th tuning kernel. And that, that tuning kernel (plus chromatic frets) is the key, the key link between Lutes and Guitars, Lutes and Vihuelas, Vihuelas and Viola da Gambas, Lutes and Viola da Gambas, Viola da gambas and Guitars. If you have that tuning kernel and all-4ths relationships in any additional strings added high or low then you’re in the family. Once you recognize that the rest will fall into place. You will know, see, and remember who’s related to whom. The idea and existence of the 4th 3rd 4th tuning kernel is not new to people (it’s not my discovery) but somehow people just haven’t been making the links. In a nut shell, from a fretboard genetics perspective, as a rule of thumb, if you can isolate a tuning pattern from within the 7 string Viola da Gamba’s tuning pattern you’re looking at the same family of instruments, the same gene pool, same influential family of music making machines and players. It’s all the same stuff, they are all the same instrument, and we who played them are all the same people.                     Below: “Violin Family” according to 1972 Harvard Dictionary of Music Those Viols do not belong there --  they are Guitars, they are not in the violin family.         Below, Michael Praetorius, 1619, Theatrum Instrumentorum: Plate XX Viola da Gambas Plate XXI Violin family Two plates, two different families. He knew, we forgot.        . . . show um how it’s done, ladies . . .                     Viola da Braccio -- the early history . . or . . The first 130 years of small viols; what they looked like, and how they were held and played As long as we’re talking about shapes, sizes, and configurations of bowed guitars, instrument iconography in general, and interpreting them; there’s one more item that’s been completely glossed over, largely ignored, by both violin and viol archaeologists alike (of the former you can be sure ;’), an item that’s been omitted from pretty much every book and every web site to date dealing with the history of viols and violins (check for yourselves, todays date is 4-22-05 but I’ve had this sketched out and online for 5 months already), namely the documented existence of a whole family of 4 string, fretted, lute tuned, viol fiddles (4-4-3 GCFA, and 4-3-4 CFAD), in Martin Agricola’s Treatise of 1529-45, Musica instrumentalis deudsch. The respective plates from that treatise are reproduced here below. These instruments (and all viols of any string count played on the arm) were  the original “viola da braccio”, members of the same plucked fretted viola family we’ve focused so much attention on here. These were 4 string, 4ths tuned (or lute tuned) fretted fiddles, one of a number of instruments that eventually merged in the early mid 1500’s to give us violins. [the other proto-violins being the small narrow-bodied, pear-shaped, three string, rebec-like, fretless, 5ths tuned bowed instrument, the Renaissance fiddle, and the lira da braccio. As those instruments merged into one, they still had to evolve sound-posts, and bass bars, and gut strings that could do consecutive 5ths across 4 strings without breaking before we get true violins. So all of these early instruments are in one way or another pre-violins.] Before we go any further, I want to get one part of our discussion out of the way by showing you some examples of lira da braccio, a type of fiddle that we’ll be avioding here, and the only real competition we’ll have when hunting through iconography for arm viols -- violins are barely even the running (as it turns out).       below; close up detail of a lira da braccio, Giovanni Bellini, San Zaccaria Altarpiece, 1505. This is the most common configuration, four or five strings on the fingerboard and two off the side, said to be used as drones. Liras have short, narrow, fretless, necks, long tails, thin ribs, and almost always have leaf or heart shaped peg-boxes.       below; as this anon 1515 Italian picture shows, liras usually, but not always, had leaf shape peg boxes. This instrument is four strings on, two off.       below; composite sheet of lira da braccio. The majority of these are circa 1500-1540.       Now that we‘ve got that out of the way, the instrument we’re not looking for, but most often comparing against, we’ll return now to small, fretted,  lute tuned, fiddles, viols (bowed guitars), played on the arm . . . The following three plates are from Agricola’s chapters 8, 9, and 10.  In chapter 9 he introduces his . . . “second type of large or small fiddles, which are found only with four strings (and frets), and how they should be tuned.” For context; the first type of fiddles (geigen) Agricola discusses are the 5 and 6 string fretted viols in lute tuning. His third and final type of small fiddle only are: three string, 5ths tuned, fiddles -- which, it should be noted, he takes extra pains to advise should be learned using frets first. Later, if desired, the frets might be cut off. I have a particular fondness for Agricola, if only for the frank no-nonsense attitude and language he uses in his treatise when addressing at least some of his learned colleagues, things like this, for example, opening his chapter eight, and in reference to his there to be introduced and discussed innovation and proposed practice, that of adapting lute tablature to viols (what a stretch!, and for that he must defend his actions beforehand from the likes of any probable and anticipated detractors. My, how history repeats itself ;’)  . . . Martin wrote; “Since I have spoken about the lute, and have set down a second tablature arranged adroitly for the neck of the lute, I have reflected even further that I could apply this tablature appropriately to fiddles without causing an uproar. But it would not proceed simply, for I must receive some censure for it, although I expect it not from skilled people but from uneducated, lazy good-for-nothings who do not know what things mean. Off to the rubbish-heap with these people! Why should I waste many useless words? They will only laugh themselves to death at them.” Martin is my kind of man! ;’)           Martin Agricola plate of 1529             Four string lute tuned fretted fiddles, Martin Agricola plate of 1529       Martin Agricola plate of 1529       detail of tunings of four string viols, open strings}         Please let there be no question about the tunings of these instruments. This is one of the keys to the history of 16th century bowed string instruments, distinguishing viol family from violin family instruments. [In his ground breaking book, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, page 22, Peter Holman describes the tunings documented in these plates as being “four strings tuned in fifths, fourths, and a third”. Sorry Peter, not so.]  Running left to right, the open string tunings for three sizes of four string lute tuned fiddle instruments (viols) are given : Martin Agricola, 1529: Bass   GCFa =  4-4-3 Tenor  CFad =  4-3-4 Treble Gcfa =  4-4-3   We get much the same from Ganassi as well, in his Book II: titled "Lettione Seconda" (Venezia, 1543) Chapter 22: four string fretted lute tuned viols: Bass   FADG =  3-4-4 Tenor  CEAD =  3-4-4 According to most all current sources, books and web sites, you’d think there was no such thing as four string viols! For hundreds of years this notion  has been at the foundation, a key-most defining distinction, between viols and violins. Actually, there’s three things: four strings,  anything played da braccio (on the arm), and thin ribs, are the supposed distinguishing definers that have allowed violin, viola, and cello enthusiasts to declare they have no shared ancestory, and are not descendant, in any way shape or form, from viols. This is what they have been trying to do and prove for the last 150 years. And they have succeeded at least in part because of these three key missing bits of evidence to the contray (that viols ever had four strings, were ever played da braccio, or ever had thin ribs). This is what has allowed all four string bowed instruments seen in 16th century iconography to be classified as violin family, and a big part of the assumptions that have allowed  the recent declaration of so called early sets or consorts of violins needed and present in the early and mid 1500s -- see the book “Four and Twenty Fiddlers”. I think we might have reason revise quite a few definitions, books, and websites that deal with the history of string instruments. These viola da braccio that I’m about to show you were four (five, or six) string bowed guitars, not violins. They also coincide with plucked four course Renaissance Guitars -- which were also tuned 4-3-4 ;’) And it’s not only the four string viols that were played da braccio. Five string treble and alto viols were also played da braccio, and often (the pictures, iconography, will show). So armed with this interesting tidbit, that of 4 string fretted lute-tuned fiddles, large and small, keep them mind the next time you see an instrument in the iconography which most would assure you were violins or bass “viola da braccio” violins tuned in 5ths. Is that sooo? hummm. Below I’ll offer some contenders for these instruments, early viola-family viola da braccios or simply guitar-family “fiddles” in general. Understand that 99% of the time you hear or see the phrase “viola da braccio” it is used as a synonym for the baroque violin family or it’s immediate predecessor, i.e. early violins in general: four-string frettless 5ths tuned instruments. Yet the same writers are then cautious to add that viola da braccio and violins are two different things. So what the frell were viola da braccios? They usually avoid putting  a face to them. They apparently just were. Here I’ll take the term literally, as arm viola (da braccio) rather than leg viola (da gamba) yet still being of the same family, bowed viola lutes, and see what we can come up with. Similarly, these could be thought of as arm vihuelas or vihuela da braccios, vihuelas played at the arm (guitar-fiddles, of any string count, remembering of course that all viola da gambas are also literally and definately guitar-fiddles). I’ll also include here instruments that are bowed 4 string fretted regardless of size or position of playing. Origianlly, I wrote here; “the more I think about this, and the more iconography I see, this is in some ways a dead end -- because we know what happened in the end.” By around 1550-60, we have 4 string, 5ths tuned, fretless, early violins. Meaning; the small, fretted, 4 string, 4ths tuned, waist-cut, arm violas, did not last long in any event (perhaps a 75 year window?). Five string, 4ths tuned, waist-cut, arm violas, however, were also common, and lasted quite a long time. Thus, we have more opportuinty and likelyhood of seeing those.  But now, almost two months later, I can report that this has been a very fruitfull hunt indeed, much has been recaptured, I believe. All we really need to find in the iconography is two examples of small arm viols at the beginning of the time-line, two at the end, and two somewhere in the middle, to know without question that these instrumetns and playing posture existed. I’m about to give you 50 to 60 examples (possible, probable, or definate) to choose from. If you can find six example therein that satisfy you, well  there you go, it was worth the effort. That said, we still don’t know much about 4 and 5 string Renaissance Fiddles, an immediate earlier instrument, having C-holes, and without waist cuts, and a body contour that can best be described as vihuela-like, smooth-curved figure-eight-ish. Most of those instruments have more than four strings, usually 5, sometimes with one string hanging off the side of the fretboard as a drone or thumb plucked, and they are usually fretted. The lira-type  instruments with 5, 6, or 7 strings (with one or two strings off the fretboard), commonly called lira da braccio today, go all the way back to the Catigas de Santa Maria instruments (1260 Spain) and reach into the early 1600s. But of the four string Renaissance fiddles, we do have one very interesting bit of evidence, the U.C. Berkeley manuscript dating from the mid-1300s, giving the tunings for 4 course gittern-lute and 4 string fiddle or veile, being, respectively, 4-4-4, and 2-4-4. That is to say, fiddles existing just 100 years before 1475  tuned largely in 4ths. This manuscript has largely been ignored by musicologists (since being alreted to it 25 years ago), hence Jerome tuning is all most people have ever heard about. One thing we can say with good confidence is that any four string fiddle existing prior to 1550 (or there abouts) was not tuned in 5ths, and those existing between 1475 and 1550 were the original viola da braccio (i.e. small viols played on the arm). In Jerome tuning there may have been one or two 5ths somewhere in the tuning pattern, but never two 5ths in succession. Straight 5ths tuning was the sole domain of the 3 string Rebec, transfered to 3 string viola-violin body shapes and construction sometime in the early mid 1500s, and finally to 4 strings in 5ths by the mid 1500s. What ever these instuments I’m about to show you are (and their true identity is now clear), most of them have fallen between the cracks because they’re not easily classified or have no ready names (that is, ready names that haven’t been userped by the violin enthusiasts). Violin archiologists and enthusiasts only want to see violins everywhere they look, and hear only of 5th intervals existing in any tuning, and to see no visable frets. So they cherry-pick and exhibit only the most violin-looking instuments from the early iconogrophy, and only those tunings that contain at least one 5th interval in them, and discard and discount everything else. I, on the other hand, want to see guitars, so I see guitar shapes, frets, and 4ths tunings. I cherry pick those -- and low and behold they are there. And that approach was indeed fruitful enought to recalim viols as the guitars they truly are, i.e. the approach provided more than enough validation. And, as you’ll see below, it has now proved out again,  as the guitarists can now reclaim at least one kind of early viola da braccio as theirs as well. The history of string instruments gets murky very quickly from around 1475 back, but there’s probably still be more to reclaimed and recaptured for the guitar enthusiasts, e.g. all those guitar-like instruments, plucked and bowed, seen carved in stone on countless medieval cathedrals. If you don’t see frets in stone-work that doesn’t mean they weren’t there. It just means they were too hard to carve (a deep-relief checker-board on every neck) in stone, and not worth the time and effort. So,  to recap, here I’ll take the term viola da braccio literally, as arm viola (da braccio) rather than leg viola (da gamba) yet still being of the same family, viola lutes, and see what we can come up with ;’) Fiddles that are not violins -- or -- Early Viola da Braccios were also Bowed Guitars ;’)     I think we’ll begin as early as possible, looking for likely suspects (i.e. bowed lutes played da braccio). Below is a Renaisance fiddle of a sort. It’s unusual in many respects, and looking very much akin to the lute it’s here mated with. I’ve seen enough small lutes or gitterns bowed da braccio in 15th century iconography to believe that’s where it all started, just proir to jumping to waist-cut viola bodies and to much larger sized instruments in general as well. This image is a detail of an illumination in an anonymous 15th century French manuscript.       Below; this would really be pushing our luck, but this is c.1400, Mariotto di Nardo, Italian. It just seems to me that there’s a very frequent pairingg of instruments in 15th century pictures, a lute and a bowed da braccio instrument, the later alway seeming to take extra pains to distinguish itself visually from other types of fiddles, and always seeming to give a deliberate nod to the lute it’s there mated with. The round rosette(s) in particular might be the most telling feature, the association that’s being evoked, perhaps intentionally, not by accident. As I said, it’s puching our luck, including something of such an early vintage, but there you go. If nothing else, it’s pretty to look at ;’)       Below; here’s another example of lute and “something” being linked in some way, with the bowed “something” appearing again to give a nob to the lute it’s mated with. Benedetto Bembo, Castle Sforzesco, Milan, Italy, 1462. I think? I can see frets on this one too, not sure. Is it just coincidence, in these first three pictures, the mating and feature nods being given to lutes and guiterns by these bowed instruments?       Below; unidentified mid 15th century picture       Below; vihuela-viola (I have to assume, but it’s extremely early), Arion (Arione) and the Dolphin, Andrea Mantegna, fresco, 1467-74, Wedding Chamber (Camera degli sposi) Ducale Palace, Mantova, Italy. This is an extremly rare and unusual image, both the date (very early) and shape of the instrument.       Below; larger sample context detail from whch the above was taken -- Andrea Mantegna, fresco, 1467-74, Wedding Chamber -- Arion is at lower left       Below; Base Relief sculpting by Augustin Di Duccio, in Church of Saint Francisco, Rimini, Italy 1450-55. One plucked and two bowed lutes.       Below; betail of bowed lutes, base relief by Augustin Di Duccio, in Church of Saint Francisco, Rimini, Italy 1450-55. These are 4 string or course, flat back, lute bridges and tails, lute style peg boxes, round rosettes, apear to have two standard lute-rib sides.       below; bowed-gittern da braccio, single course, 6 string?, Stefano da Verona, lived 1375-1451, Italy.       below: the Muse Cleo, French manuscript, 15th century I believe, with bowed lute.       BINGO! Below; 15th century Italian, viol played on the arm. I don’t have an exact date on this picture, but it’s at the perfect time, place, and shape. I’d guess c.1460-80. See all the small vihuela guitars further down on this page for size and shape comparsons. P.S. This image came late to me, on 11-28-05, months after I had essentially wrapped-up this arm-viol section and associated hunt. A nice little surprise ;’)       Below; c.1490, Italy, detail from an illuminated “Sforza” Book of Hours (another new find, 9-2006, almost a year later), again pointing to parity amoung a bowed and plucked instument, both being of the same size and particulars, lute-like smallish oval bodies, clearly fretted necks, one at least (bowed on the arm) has a flat back, the other may too.       Below; from the same manuscript as the above, the Sforza Book of Hours, c.1490 Italy, a composite of three details from three differnent plates therein, three iterations of the exact same instrument (and there are two or three more similars that I haven’t included here as well): small, thin ribbed, waist-cut viola, fretted, four string, played on the arm, two pegs to a side. Arm viols or viola da braccio, descant size of the viol family but “viola” in size or string-length relative to modern-day instruments.       Below; small viol and it’s bow (lower left), Garofalo, Italy, c.1490-1510. Interesting pointed shoulders and short wide neck. I believe this picture matches another Garofalo fresco, show at the bottum of the next page, a picture containing an instrument many assume is an early violin, but it may be a small four string viol.       Below, supposedly the oldest known viol (and only recently declared so by the folks at the Orpheon in Austria), from a fresco in Valencia Spain, c.1475-85. It’s a five stringer. Understand though, that people have latched on to this picture because it’s what moderns want and need to see; thicker ribs and held vertically, waist-cuts too, etc. Also understand that all dating of these early pictures is probably on the conservative side, and that many of the other early guitars/violas/vihuelas shown below, plucked and bowed, could actially be more like 1460-80, but people are conservatively dating them at c.1500. Point being, there’s simply too much, too many specimens and varriation types that are all being dated c.1500 (I believe). The fresco from which this image comes has also only recently been very heavily restored (the state shown below reflects the restorations). The original state was extremely deteriorated. Note too on this instrument; it has a leaf-shaped peg-box with pegs inserted perpendicular to the neck. One such red-dart peg is visible in the blow-up. Keep this in mind when anyone tells you the viols never used leaf-shape peg boxes and  therefore any instrument seen anywhere anytime that did have them could not have been a viol but was something else, a lyra for example.       Ok, so now (9-2-06) I have to come back to this picture yet again and question it some more, it’s dating that is. The problem is, this instrument does have “all the right stuff” for a later instrument. But there is no precedant for any of it’s design features and construction particulars in any well and firm date-documented instrument plucked or bowed! Orpheon states “around 1475-85”. 1475 is out of the question, 1485 is still very wishfull thinking I believe. Either this picture’s recent dating is wrong, or the dating of everything else, all other pictures of plucked and bowed string  instruments in Spain and Italy c.1450-1510 is wrong (the dates of many pictures would have to be moved back to c.1460, which BTW might help explain a few other things). In 2004, a new picture surfaced, a bit of iconoraphy, evidence, a fresco hidden for the last 300 years behind a false ceiling in the Valencia cathedral, firmly date as being exicuted between 1472 and 1481. This fresco contains many musician angels, among them a very exciting, early,  and unique, plucked waist-cut vihuela/viola (the painters were Italian). That instrument stands now, as far as I can tell, as being the oldest plucked waist-cut vihuela on record. It shows the in pieces or slabs technique of vihuela construction itself fully developed (again, being the earliest well-dated graphic documantation we have of it so far, I believe). Raphael’s small viol of 1510 (35 years later) for example exhibits a state of perfection in vihuela/viola constructiuon technique now clearly visible in the newly discovered Valencia cathedral waist-cut plucked vihuela/viola -- 35 years earlier. The Borgia apartment waist-cut plucked viola-vihuela  of 1492 is another and earlier fine example of the state of the art. But our new plucked instument from Valencia is at least 15 years earlier still than the Borgia apt specimen.       Below left; the newly discovered plucked and waist-cut vihuela-viola from the Valencia cathedral fresco, firmly dated as painted between the years 1472-81. At right is S. Virdung’s bowed vihuela-viola illustrated in his 1510 treatise. Here, we have a believable progression, an evolution, it makes sense.       Now concider what the instrument above (our supposed oldest viol in iconoraphy) includes and contains in that one picture and one instrument, all of the developements it embodies (and each and every one of them essentially out of the blue!): - vihuela construction techniques fully developed already (and out of nowhere, out of the blue!) - waist-cut vihuela construction fully developed (let alone without waist-cuts) and again out of the blue, no precedance. - an already developed single-string bowing technique and desire/need for it -- note the bridge is high, wide, and very arched, string spacing. - fully developed arched bowing bridge - full and complete sucess and development at porting “lute-ness” (fretted 4ths) to a bowed string instrument - already has a very large sized body, deep ribbed body, AND played upright or vertical to boot. it’s too good, something is missing -- many things are missing. It doesn’t fit within the surrounding existing evidence and time-line (as things are currently dated that is). Below; vihuela de arco, stone carving on Spanish Cathedral, mid-late 1400s. A bow in his right hand is indicated. The overall size, proportions, and configuration of this instrument is the thing to note (returning now to our arm-viol investiations). It wouldn’t be much of a trick to throw this instrument up on your shoulder, or put it’s but end up into your solar plexus, or left or right shoulder or forearm. Also note that this instrument makes sence as existing in c.1475. It concievably and believably fits (where-as the above claimed “oldest viol” does not).       below; another early guitar to compare with some of these early viols. Vihuela de penola (= Viola de penola) late 1400s Valencia Spain, detail from "Virgen con nino y angeles musicos", Retablo/Alterpeice, Colegiata de Xativa.       below, is that Toledo Cathedral instrument again. I don’t have a date for it, but I’ll guess late 15th century. In any event, the more I look at it I think it might be a small four string bowed viol, not a plucked viola. I’ve never seen “S” holes on a plucked viola and the right hand is out in the air, so it may originally have held a bow. The kind of tail this instrument has is further indication of the type of instrument it might have been. Compare it to the other Spainish Cathedral viol seen two pictures up, and also with the instruments in the next three images.       Below; Gerard de Saint Jean, Virgin in Glory, Dutch, 1490. Lute-fiddle, vihuela d’arco da braccio. Note the bend-back lute-style peg-head, long narrow neck, lute-style tail bridge glued to face. Most would call this a Renaissance Fiddle -- which takes us into murky waters. [full image here]           Below, for comparison with the above; small, four string, small bodied, shallow ribbed,  fretted, bowed viola, bent back lute-style peg-head Sardinia Italy c.1500.       late 1400s, Vihuela d’arco, Valencia Spain, bent-back lute-style peg-head, 4 string       Below; far right top, Vihuela de Arco (da braccio), 1496, Franchinous Gaffurius Practica Musicae (cover page of), Milan, Spain. In this famous work and rendering, the small bowed arm viola/vihuela clearly has lute-style peg-box and bridge.             below; viol (vihuela d’arco, ), Spanish, sculpture, c.1500, Valencia Cathedral. Compare it’s overall proportions to the above. This instrument no doubt had the same bent-back lute style peg-box, (now broken off).