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1 âEnglish viols are the ones which one normally playsâ:1 Researching early English viols
If you ask what early English viols were like, what sort of answer might you expect? This book presents plenty of relevant facts, but its core theme is heterogeneity. If half of England prefers to bathe in hot water and the other half in cold, it would be misleading to summarize the favoured temperature in a single word as âwarmâ. However much we value concise explications and easily communicable ideas, any characterization of early English viols that ignores their great variety of form, manufacture and context can be no better than âwarmâ. More likely it would be fallacious and misleading.
This study examines early English viols and their music in the period between the beginning of the sixteenth century, when they first appeared in England,2 and the Civil War in the middle of the seventeenth century. Thus âthe periodâ, a formula that recurs throughout this book, means approximately 1506â1642. Our research found less new material from the early sixteenth century than had been hoped, but comment about viols throughout the period has proved possible.
We present material from two closely related research projects: Michael Flemingâs PhD (2001),3 and the Making the Tudor Viol project (2009â14). Research for Making the Tudor Viol was carried out by Michael Fleming, together with the Principal Investigator, John Bryan. The project was based at the University of Huddersfield and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It addressed two principal questions: what are the characteristics of sixteenth-century English viols, and what do todayâs makers need to know in order to produce instruments that closely resemble sixteenth-century English viols? This chapter introduces and explains those questions and their context, our approaches to them, and the form in which the research is presented. John Bryan is the author of Chapter 2 and Michael Fleming wrote the rest of this book, but both authors were involved in all parts and are jointly responsible for the whole.
Early viols and their reputation
Soon after viols emerged in late fifteenth-century Spain, Italy and elsewhere,4 they became accepted in many countries. But despite the international connections evident in much music, some aspects such as pitch levels and vocal forces could be quite localized. The general nature of viols is now understood reasonably well but the differences between instruments of different times and countries still await thorough investigation. In England, viol players were employed at the royal court by the second decade of the sixteenth century but were known in the country possibly as early as 1506. This new family of bowed instruments was well suited to polyphonic music favoured in England. In many countries viols were used in combination with voices and other types of instrument, as well as continuing to perform what is now thought of as vocal music. But England also developed the most extensive, profound and important repertory of idiomatic music for sets of viols, which are now known as consorts.
Naturally, the nationâs blossoming interest in viols involved the acquisition of suitable instruments. Makers who could satisfy this demand emerged and eventually English viols became the most highly thought-of throughout Europe. Their reputation survived long after the styles of music for which they were made had fallen out of fashion. Old instruments have long been favoured over new, and when âplaying the violâ came to mean performing works by Marais, Forqueray, Bach, Abel and their contemporaries, the most treasured and sought-after instruments were always âold English violsâ. This resembles the reputation of lutes in that while other types were available, old Bolognese lutes5 were the acme of desirability.
Among evidence of this, John Dowland was commissioned by the Danish court to buy English instruments in 1601.6 Dowlandâs interest in viols displayed in his outstanding publication of 16047 makes it likely they were among the instruments sought. In 1638 the Master of the Kingâs Musick (Nicholas Lanier) acquired a matched set of six âexcellent old Englishâ viols on behalf of his friend the Netherlandish composer Constantijn Huygens.8 In France, the âjouer de violeâ and âsecrĂ©taire de la chambre et ordinaire de la musique du roi et de la reineâ Jean Boyer possessed an undescribed viol valued together with a hautbois and a musette at 40l., a small viol valued at 15l., and a large viol with case at 40l., but his large English viol with a leather case had the much higher valuation of 100l.9 Also in the seventeenth century, Rousseau describes âold English violsâ as those âwhich we particularly esteem in Franceâ.10
Much later, Jean-Baptiste Forqueray (1699â1782) advised his pupil King Friederich Wilhelm of Prussia that âEnglish viols are the ones which one normally playsâ, and that he should acquire an old English viol.11 Many examples of English viols were among the possessions of eighteenth-century French luthiers. For example, Nicholas Bertrand had twenty-three âviolles angloisesâ (1725), Claude Pierray had two âbasses de violle dâangleterreâ (1730), and Pierre VĂ©ron had eleven âbasses de violle dâAngleterreâ (1731).12 In eighteenth-century Germany Eisel asked which viols were held in great esteem, and his answer was âThe very old English ones ⊠because of their delectable sound and their age, which is over a century, the English ones maintain their rank above all others.â13 A corollary of the ubiquitous and long-lasting lust for old English viols is that information about them is significant not only for those who wish to understand and perform early English music but also for those with an interest in later continental European practices.
Thus English instruments were to be found among the possessions of music-loving individuals and establishments across Europe. Some were acquired as gifts and others after effort had been expended to locate suitable examples, but of course some viols were made locally or came from countries other than England. Similarly, not all viols used in England were necessarily made in that country. Evidence of the international trade in musical instruments includes cargo lists in port books (Figure 1.1), specific rates of customs duties, and the identification of instruments in inventories as of foreign origin. The import/export trade was not symmetrical, with England tending to import more manufactured goods than she exported. Lists of imports frequently include quantities of musical instrument strings,14 lutes, gitterns and other musical instruments. However, I am aware of only one example of a viol in an import cargo list. On a ship called Le Sigoma, Lewis Cassarisâs cargo included one pair of virginals and one viol: âj paier virginals j vyollâ.15 For viols in England, therefore, the evidence indicates that international trade principally comprised exports rather than imports.16
Figure 1.1 The only known port book record of a viol imported to England
The National Archives, ref. Port Book E 190/6/3, fol. 3r
Understanding and researching viols
For viol users today there are many potential barriers to re-creating the viol experience as understood by the composers, performers and listeners of the period. Musical texts, performance practice (aspects such as bowing, ornamentation and musica ficta), the physical and social context of performance, and other matters, are all vitally important for anyone who intends to understand the repertory and perform it in ways that would be recognized in the culture whence it originates. But exploring such matters is not the function of this book. This book focuses on the physical object â the viol itself.
The suitability of particular instruments for particular music was recognized by Mersenne in 163517 but the idea received its main boost when the âearly musicâ movement blossomed in the later twentieth century. However, while instruments are an important issue for any music that involves them, scholars who discuss the viols of early modern England18 have concentrated predominantly on aspects such as musical texts or performance issues, rather than the instruments themselves and how they were made. This relative status of theoretical and mechanical aspects of music reflects medieval attitudes as much as the current paucity of information. But while the main focus here is on the instruments and their makers, music should not be ignored.
Particularly for the Tudor period, where other evidence is thinner, the repertory that viols might have played is a tangible resource that deserves close attention. It enriches our understanding of viols, providing context for their making, ownership and use. An analytical approach may yield evidence to help us speculate with greater authority about the characteristics of the viols upon which such music was played.
In other musical repertories, analysis of the ranges and particular registers used has been shown to inform our understanding of the instruments for which it was designed. For example: what appear to be large left-hand stretches in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century keyboard music alert us to the presence of a âshortâ octave; the ranges of eighteenth-century recorder parts show that instruments were available in pitches other than the now standard âFâ or âCâ; the texture of Haydnâs piano music can suggest whether specific pieces were conceived for the lightly strung Viennese instruments he knew in his youth or the rich, ringing bass register of the more sturdily constructed English instruments he encountered in 1790s London.19
How might the surviving English repertory played on viols in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries inform our understanding of performersâ and composersâ expectations of their instruments, and of makersâ aspirations when building them? The analysis in Chapter 2 focuses on this question. More viols survive from later periods, so the need for repertory to illuminate their characteristics is less acute.
Chapter 2 begins by exploring the relationship between voices and viols, which were closely associated for much of the period. This provides a context for the investigation of repertory intended for purely instrumental performance. Issues that lend themselves to such analysis include the overall compass of pieces, the relationship between the voices within the composition, and their individual ranges. Further analysis can indicate the prevailing register within each partâs overall range that a composer favoured, which may identify areas in which he felt the viols he knew were most effective.
This approach is most fruitful when applied to discrete bodies of music, such as a particular publication or manuscript collection, the work of an individual composer, or pieces for a particular combination of instruments. Analysis of range and register gives insights into the ways instruments were combined to create different textures, and provides some measurable parameters for comparison. Compasses and ranges may also provide proxies for broader stylistic variations and therefore show composersâ responses to the instruments with which they were working. Compa...
