Viola da gamba
The viola da gamba (Italian pronunciation: /ˈvjɔːla da ˈɡamba/) is a musical instrument belonging to the family of arc chordophones, provided with frets. It was widely used in Europe between the end of the 15th century and the last decades of the 18th century. The most widespread model has six strings tuned for fourths (with a major third between the middle ones), a cello-like appearance, an extension from D to D, and is played by holding the bow palm up. The performer is known as a violagambista.
Name
Its name, of Italian origin, means "leg viola". It thus opposes that of the conventional viola, called da braccio (arm), and that of the hand viola, plucked; and it is due to the way it is held by the musician, between his legs. Although the expression "viola da gamba" In Spanish-speaking countries, the instrument has been called in Spanish in many other ways throughout its history, such as "vihuela de arco" (Cerone, 1613), "arco vigüela" (Covarrubias, 1611) or "violon" (Ortiz, 1553). In French it is called viole, in English viol and in German Gambe.
Features
There is a great variety of historical models of viola da gamba; However, we can point out a series of typical construction characteristics that tend to coincide in most of them:
- Raven fingerboard with seven frets.
- Box with fallen shoulders and flat bottom, with talud towards the handle.
- Armonic board carved.
- Proud stools.
- C-shaped ears.
- Raven bridge.
- Triple strings (the most serious ones stuck with metal), in number between five and seven.
- Four-quarter tuning with a third-largest interspersed.
- Claver carved with figurative motives.
Similarly, the ways of playing the instrument usually coincide in:
- Hold the instrument between the legs, even the smaller ones (with the only exception of the very large violas, supported on the ground) and hold it vertically, with slight inclination of the handle to the left of the musician.
- Take the palm arch above having some finger in direct contact with the hills, technique similar to the traditional in the folk string instruments.
Types and tunings
In terms of size and, consequently, tessitura, the violas da gamba form a broad family. The sizes most in use are soprano, tenor and, above all, bass, but there is a wide variety of models. From smallest to largest, they are known:
- The Fifth French, instrument of mixed tuning between violin and Pardessus of viole: sun-re'-la'-re-sol."
- The Pardessus of viole French, refined sun-do'-fa'-la'-re-sol."
- She rapes her soprano, refined re-sol-do'-mi'-la'-re."
- She rapes her high, rarely used, refined La-re-sol-si-mi'-la'.
- It violates the tenor, of tuning identical to that of the Renaissance lute in sun: Sun-do-fa-la-re'-sol'.
- La lyra viol, English model of the centuryXVII the size was somewhat larger than the tenor viola and the one that applied various tunings to interpret tablature music.
- La division viol, English instrument described among others by Christopher Simpson (Simpson, 1659), of tuning similar to that of low but smaller rape, appropriate for solo use.
- The bastard rap, Italian name that could be identified with the division viol.
- She rapes her under, tuned Re-Sol-do-mi-la-re'. It is, with difference, the most used model of the family, from Diego Ortiz (S. XVI) to Abel (S. XVIII), and is today the basic model in the standard teaching of the instrument. Sainte-Colombe imposed in France of the centuryXVII a variant of seven strings, adding a more severe string (La,). Due to the sharp extension in the repertoire it usually reaches the re".
- The violone in Sun, tuned Sun,-Do-Fa-La-re-sol.
- The violone in Re, tuned Re,-Sol,-Do-Mi-la-re.
However, at all times there have been a large number of alternative tunings collected in historical treatises: thus, for example, in 16th-century France, violas used to be played in ensembles made up of five-stringed instruments tuned entirely by fourths, while as is the case with many later violins. We must also note the notable confusion of terms between lyra viol, division viol and viola bastarda.
Currently research is being done on the production of new viola da gamba models, some of them electric.
History
Origin
Already in the Middle Ages there are representations of stringed instruments, such as vihuelas de arco and rabels, which are played with a bow and held between the legs of the musicians. It is necessary to wait until the end of the XV century to register the first instruments with the characteristics of the viola da gamba, such as the fingerboard with frets and cut-outs. Abundant iconographic testimonies from ca. 1500 support the hypothesis that this instrument was created in the domains of the Crown of Aragon (Kingdom of Valencia, Balearic Islands, Sardinia, southern Italy) as an evolution of the vihuela de mano, as it is played with a bow following the Moorish technique of rabel, even then widespread in Valencia (Woodfield, 1984; Andrés, 1995). Written testimonies of the presence of the instrument in Rome and in the Hispanic court of Isabella the Catholic were collected very soon, and ca. 1514 is represented by Rafael Sanzio in his Ecstasy of Santa Cecilia. At that time, models of various sizes have already been developed and the instrument spread rapidly throughout Spain, Italy, Germany, France and England.
Development
Almost from its origin, the viola da gamba was used in ensembles, today called consorts, made up of violas of various sizes; polyphonic music (whether or not of vocal origin) was performed with them. But very soon treatises such as Diego Ortiz's also describe its virtuosic use in improvisation and diminution.
The specific repertoire for viola da gamba is created consecutively in the countries that were at the forefront of the instrument; thus, the main authors of the 16th century published in Italy: Silvestro Ganassi (Ganassi, 1542 and 1543), Ortiz and later Rognoni, with whom already at the beginning of the 17th century the repertoire of diminution for bastard viola reached a notable difficulty, full of great jumps, agility and passages in extreme tessituras.
After the Italian Alfonso Ferrabosco emigrated to England, the work of his namesake son began the prolific English school: during the XVIIth century there is a great flowering of the repertoire for consort with authors such as John Dowland (Lachrimae or Seven Teares, 1604), Gibbons, Coprario, Lawes and, finally, the Fantasies by Henry Purcell. Simultaneously, the repertoire of variations on grounds for division viol (Simpson, Poole, Jenkins) and the pieces for lyra viol (Ferrabosco) were developed there. son, Hume, Sumarte, Corkine), disseminated through tablature manuscripts for home use.
Maugars' visit to England originated the French school of the 17th and 18th centuries, which would lead the instrument to its maximum solo development thanks to Hotman, Sainte-Colombe, Marin Marais and the Forqueray. The French repertoire was usually organized in the form of suites for viola da gamba bass (with seven strings) and basso continuo. If the five books published by Marin Marais have achieved the greatest musical prestige, the instrument reached its highest historical degree of technical difficulty and wealth of resources in the pieces by Antoine Forqueray, published by his son Jean-Baptiste Antoine in Paris (1747).
It is also in the 18th century when its main virtuosos (such as the Dutch Johannes Schenck and the Abels) worked in Germany., writing leading authors such as Buxtehude and Telemann for the viola da gamba. Johann Sebastian Bach created for Christian Ferdinand Abel his three Sonatas for viola da gamba and obligatory harpsichord (in G major, D major and G minor, respectively BWV 1027, 1028 and 1029), and also used the bass viola da gamba in several interventions in the Passions according to San Juan and San Mateo. Carl Friedrich Abel, son of Christian Ferdinand, is considered the last great viola gamba player of the historical era, achieving legendary fame for his London improvisations, collected in manuscripts of pieces for solo viola da gamba.
Decay
Associated with the aristocratic world of the Ancien Régime and lacking the sonorous power of its rival the cello, the viola da gamba gradually lost its way during the century XVIII its predominant position as the main instrument among string basses. Despite its claim among the French, by authors such as Hubert Le Blanc (Le Blanc, 1740), as a representative of their music against the invasion of Italian taste, the viola da gamba practically disappeared from musical practice around 1800, after an ephemeral resurrection embodied in the bariton, a variant with added resonance strings.
Recovery
During the first half of the 20th century the most prominent pioneers in the recovery of the viola da gamba were the Dolmetsch family (Specifically Arnold Dolmetsch) and August Wenzinger. Already in the second half of the XX century the instrument regained its place in the concert world, always in the context of the so-called & #34;historically documented interpretation", a movement to recover early music interpreted with historicist criteria, with particular prominence of educational centers such as the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (Switzerland) or the Dutch conservatories. Outstanding gamblers from the second half of the XX century include Wieland Kuijken, Jordi Savall, Vittorio Ghielmi and Paolo Pandolfo. Since the eighties, the instrument has normalized its presence in academic musical life, and can currently be studied in all levels of education in most European countries, such as France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Institutions and associations have also emerged that promote the recovery of the viola da gamba, such as the Viola da Gamba Society, founded in 1948 in Great Britain, or the Orpheon Foundation, led by Professor José Vázquez and which has a collection of more than fifty historical violas da gamba in a state of use. The popularity of the instrument received a great boost thanks to the film All the Mornings of the World, by Alain Corneau (1991), loosely based on the lives of Marin Marais and Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, whose soundtrack, directed by Jordi Savall, was a huge sales success.
In the last decades of the XX century and the first of the XXI century, the viola da gamba has also normalized its musical life. Although their basic repertoire continues to be historical, various ensembles and soloists have encouraged the composition of new works for the instrument and for consort of violas, commissioned to authors such as Ernst Reijseger, George Benjamin, Michael Nyman, Elvis Costello, John Tavener, Gavin Bryars, Ivan Moody or Barry Guy, among many others.
Contemporary performers
Some of the most outstanding current viola gamba players (in alphabetical order) are:
- Fahmi Alqhai
- Calia Alvarez
- Nikolaus Harnoncourt
- Carles Magraner
- Paolo Pandolfo
- Jordi Savall
- Jaap ter Linden
Historical treaties
We can find representations and illustrations of violas da gamba in many German treatises from the early XVI century, such as:
- Sebastian Virdung: Musica getutsch1511.
- Hans Judenkunig: Ain schone kunstliche Vunderwaisung1523.
- Martin Agricola: Musica instrumentalis deutsch1528.
- Hans Gerle: Musica Teusch1532.
In addition, several treatises specifically dedicated to the instrument were written in Italy in that century: those by Ganassi and Ortiz stand out, which teaches how to improvise diminution either from the voices of a madrigal or from a basso ostinato (the ones he called Italian tenors):
- Silvestro Ganassi: Blond castorVenice, 1542.
- Silvestro Ganassi: Lettione secondaVenice, 1543.
- Diego Ortiz: Gloss treaty on clauses and other genres of dots in the music of violons again laid in light, Rome, 1553.
At the beginning of the XVII century we can find valuable information about the viola da gamba in various general European musical treatises, such as:
- Pietro Cerone: The Melopeus and Master. Tractado de musica theorica y pratica. Naples, 1613. Ed. Facsimil by Franco Alberto Gallo, Bologna, 1969.
- Michael Praetorius: De Organographia. Wolfenbüttel, 1619. Reed. Neudruck, Kassel, 1929.
- Marin Mersenne: Harmonie Universelle, contenant La Théorie et la Pratique de la Musique. Paris, 1636. Ed. facsimile of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, 1965.
- Marin Mersenne: Harmonicorum Libri XII. Paris, 1648. Facsimile in Minkoff, Geneva, 1972.
At the middle of the century, the Englishman Simpson continued the tradition of decreases, teaching to improvise (divisions) on the so-called grounds in his complete treatise, which includes other aspects of the viola da gamba; he will follow in London Mace's treatise, part of which is devoted to the viola:
- Christopher Simpson: The Division-Viol or The Art of Playing Ex Tempore Upon a Ground. London, 1659 (ed. in English) and 1665 (ed. bilingual English). Facsimile in J. Curwen & Sons, London, 1955.
- Thomas Mace: Musick’s Monument. London 1676. Facsimile of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Paris, 1966.
At the end of this century the main viola da gamba treatises will be written in France:
- Mr. Demachy: Pièces de Violle, en musique et en tablature. Paris, 1685. Facsimile in Minkoff, Geneva,1973.
- Le Sieur Danoville: L’Art de toucher le dessus et le basse de violle. Paris, 1687. Facsimile in Minkoff, Geneva,1972.
- Jean Rousseau: I brought the violet. Paris, 1687. Facsimile in Minkoff, Geneva, 1975.
- Etienne Loulié: Methode pour apprendre a jouer la violle (ca. 1700). Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale. Facsimile in Fuzeau, 1997 (Lescat and Saint-Arroman: Viole of Gambe..., pp. 61-81).
Already in the 18th century we find important contributions in Corrette, as well as in the aforementioned Le Blanc:
- Michel Corrette: Méthode pour apprendre facilement à jouer du pardessus de viole à 5 et à 6 cordes avec des leçons a I. et II. parties. Paris, 1738. Facsimile in Minkoff, Geneva,1983.
- Hubert Le Blanc: Défense de la basse de viole contre les entreprises du violon et les prétensions du violoncelle. Amsterdam, 1740. Eds. facsimiles in Minkoff, Geneva, 1975 (ISBN 2-8266-0615-8) and Karel Lelieveld, The Hague, 1983.
- Michel Corrette: Méthodes pour apprendre à jouer de la contre-basse à 3, à 4 et à 5 cordes, de la quinte ou Alto et de la viole d’Orphée, Nouvel instrument ajousté sur l’ancienne viole. Paris, 1781. Facsimile in Minkoff, Geneva,1977.