It is still possible to find old books which explain cheerily that the viol was an early version of the violin, now superseded. It is worth saying straight away that this is not true. These two related but different families of instruments both evolved from the early sixteenth century in northern Italy, but made different sounds and were played ...
One of the most popular instruments in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the viol, or viola da gamba, developed alongside the violin family. It has been central to the development of western art music. It is thought that the viol developed from the vihuela, a Spanish guitar-like instrument. At some point a bow was used with the ...
A bowed string instrument, the arpeggione was invented in Vienna by J. G. Stauffer in 1823–24. A kind of bass viol, with soundholes like a viol, it is waisted, but shaped more like a large guitar than a viol or double bass. Six-stringed and with metal frets, it was tuned E, A, d, ...
A baryton is a bass string instrument, similar in appearance to a viol. It is held between the performer’s knees and played with a bow; it usually carries six strings which the bow sounds directly. It has a number of strings (up to 40) which are concealed and which can be plucked by the thumb or allowed to vibrate in ...
the viols and the bass members of the violin family began to emerge at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Styles & Forms | Medieval Era | Classical Instruments | Viol & Violin | Renaissance | Classical ...
upshot of this was that when a new instrument was invented, it was often swiftly followed by different-sized versions of the same design. In the sixteenth century, the viol family was developed like this, consisting of treble, tenor and bass viol, as were the violin family, the recorder family, the lute family and the ...
The cittern was a plucked stringed instrument of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was strung with wire and played not with the right fingers but by using a quill plectrum, rather like the cittole and gittern of the medieval era. The body was flat both back and front, with a pear-shaped face. The fingerboard lay on the front ...
The double bass is the only survivor from the viol family to have found a regular place in the orchestra. Like other members of the viol family, it initially carried frets – tiny knotted pieces of gut that measured out the fingerboard. As it was adopted into the violin family, it settled down as a four-stringed instrument, shed ...
among academics, performers and instrument makers. Nowadays, Baroque, Renaissance and medieval chamber music is almost always professionally performed on authentic instruments. Examples of reconstructed ensembles include the viol consort (usually six viols: two trebles, two tenors, two basses), the recorder consort (of four to six recorders of varying sizes) and the trio sonata, in which ...
In the Renaissance, both four- and five-course (eight- or 10-stringed) guitars were played, both of them notably smaller than the modern instrument and with only a shallow waist. In the Baroque period, players seem to have switched over to an instrument with six courses (six or 12 strings), which remains the standard guitar configuration. The instrument at this ...
to kick off rock’n’roll on early Elvis tracks like ‘That’s All Right (Mama)’. Of all the orchestral stringed instruments, the double bass is the most closely related to the viol, as a direct descendant of the sixteenth-century violone – a heritage revealed in its steeply sloping shoulders. The bass viol carried six strings; over time the number of strings ...
The theorbo’s neck was straight and the peg box at the end was not set at an angle. The theorbo was an important continuo instrument, playing with the bass viol, cello or keyboard player’s left hand. Styles & Forms | Renaissance | Classical Instruments | Cittern | Renaissance | Classical ...
today in some historically informed (early music) performances of the music of Purcell and Couperin. Few words in the musical lexicon are more confusing than ‘violone’. Meaning simply a double-bass viol, the direct ancestor of the modern double bass, the term can be found in different documents referring to a surprisingly wide variety of different bass bowed stringed instruments ...
winding a silver thread around them in a spiral. Particularly on the deeper instruments in the violin family, a covered-gut string is easier to play. Playing Position The related viol was fretted and was held vertically either between the knees or on the lap by a seated performer. In general, it seems that fiddles were fretted for beginners and ...
was applied to shawm, flutes and recorders, but the first decade of the sixteenth century saw the first fiddle ensembles develop: the violin family was born. Violin versus Viol To begin with, the violin was less popular than its cousin the viol. Although similar techniques were used to perform on both instruments – and many professional musicians in ...
AUTHORITATIVE
An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...
CURATED
Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.
David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.