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Nicolas Houël (1584)
Sources For Rediscovering Lost Viola da Gambas
Iconography
Iconography offers invaluable yet murky evidence for reconstructing early French viol consorts. Iconography, for example, offers no evidence of the internal construction of instruments.
Treatises
Treatises and other primary sources provide evidence for historical tunings, which can be extrapolated as organological evidence to inform our reconstructions. Treatises further offer clues as to the social use of viols in the lives of sixteenth-century French women and men.
Repertoire
While ample evidence exists of the tunings and outward appearance of early French viol consorts, the question of what repertoire these instruments performed remains an unexplored issue. The Parisian chanson was in the sixteenth century a mass-produced popular form of polyphony that was flexible enough and could be performed on consort instruments.
The Latest from Our Blog
- Dessus Viol
This week John Pringle finished the first viol of our planned four-viol consort. The viol arrived this week and will be paired with the two prototype viols John made over the last few years. John will next work on a bass for the consort. This first viol, with a 59 cm string length, will serve … Read more - Gaspard Duiffoprugcar and French Renaissance Viols
Gaspard Duiffoprugcar [Tieffenbrucker] was a member of a German family of instrument builders from the village of Tieffenbruck, near Roßhaupten in Bavaria. In 1810, Choren and Fayolle, in their Dictionnaire historique des musiciens artistes et amateurs, provided a … Read more - Extending the Longevity of French Renaissance Viols
In his Harmonie universelle, contenant la théorie et la pratique de la musique (Paris, 1636), Marin Mersenne reproduced the woodcut of a five-string viol from Jambe de Fer’s L’Épitome musical des tons, sons et accordz, es voix humaines, fleustes d’Alleman, flesustes à neuf trous, violes, & violons (Lyons, 1556) and noted that this was a kind … Read more
Rediscovering French Consort Tunings
La clef de noz violes à l’usage de France, sus la partie du bas, & du dessus, se prend sus la seconde corde d’en haut à vuyde, que nouse appellons G sol re ut, donc celay da bas, est le second contenu en la game, & celuy du dessus est le troizieme, faisant difference de l’un à lautre de huit voix, que nous appellons octave. Les tailles & haute contres accordent leur chanterelle justement sus la seconde du dessus, à vuyde: Comme le tout est contenu en la figure:
Philibert Jambe de Fer, L’Épitome Musical (Lyons, 1556)
