The pardessus de viole is the highest-pitched member of the viol family of instruments. It is a bowed string instrument with either five or six strings and a fretted neck. The pardessus first appeared in the early 18th century, and was commonly played by women, particularly in French-speaking countries.
The pardessus de viole is the smallest of the viol family. Its size is similar to the violin's, and its range is correspondingly similar. [1] The strings are made of gut (like on any bowed string instrument until the 1970s) and the top string was tuned to g'', [2] a fourth higher than the top string of the treble viol. Like the treble viol, the pardessus de viole was almost never used to play accompaniment chords, but was always a melody instrument. [2] When played, it is played upright on the lap with a bow. [2]
Unlike the treble viol and other viol instruments, the pardessus usually has only five strings. The five string pardessus is tuned in fifths and fourths (g, d', a', d'', g''), while the slightly earlier six stringed pardessus is tuned like other viols in fourths with a third (g, c', e', a', d'', g''). Notice, however, that the third is between the fourth and fifth strings (rather than between the third and fourth as on other six-string viols), so that the lowest five strings of the six-string pardessus are the same as the highest six strings of the treble viol. [3]
The pardessus de viole was invented around the year 1700. Violins had begun emerging in Italy, and the pardessus was developed to allow people accustomed to viols to play violin music. [1] With a sound more reminiscent of the viol to audiences unaccustomed to the sound of the violin, musicologist Annette Otterstedt has characterized the pardessus as a hybrid between viols and violins. [1]
The pardessus was often played by women, as the method of holding the pardessus in one's lap was considered more lady-like than holding a violin on the shoulder. [2] The pardessus was most popular in French-speaking countries, [4] but by 1770 it was starting to disappear from the landscape as viols generally were being eclipsed by the louder stringed instruments of the violin family. [1]
Cecile Dolmetsch became an advocate for the instrument. Some years she may have been the only professional musician to play the pardessus de viole. Dolmetsch also used her time to find lost music for the pardessus de viole in French libraries. The music collection she curated included solo compositions by Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Thomas Marc and Caix d'Hervelois. [5]
The double bass, also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched chordophone in the modern symphony orchestra. Similar in structure to the cello, it has four or five strings.
A lute is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted.
The violin, colloquially known as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino piccolo and the pochette, but these are virtually unused. Most violins have a hollow wooden body, and commonly have four strings, usually tuned in perfect fifths with notes G3, D4, A4, E5, and are most commonly played by drawing a bow across the strings. The violin can also be played by plucking the strings with the fingers (pizzicato) and, in specialized cases, by striking the strings with the wooden side of the bow.
The viol, viola da gamba, or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitch of each of the strings. Frets on the viol are usually made of gut, tied on the fingerboard around the instrument's neck, to enable the performer to stop the strings more cleanly. Frets improve consistency of intonation and lend the stopped notes a tone that better matches the open strings. Viols first appeared in Spain and Italy in the mid-to-late 15th century, and were most popular in the Renaissance and Baroque (1600–1750) periods. Early ancestors include the Arabic rebab and the medieval European vielle, but later, more direct possible ancestors include the Venetian viole and the 15th- and 16th-century Spanish vihuela, a six-course plucked instrument tuned like a lute that looked like but was quite distinct from the four-course guitar.
The viola d'amore is a 7- or 6-stringed musical instrument with sympathetic strings used chiefly in the baroque period. It is played under the chin in the same manner as the violin.
The rebec is a bowed stringed instrument of the Medieval era and the early Renaissance. In its most common form, it has a narrow boat-shaped body and one to five strings.
The vihuela is a 15th-century fretted plucked Spanish string instrument, shaped like a guitar but tuned like a lute. It was used in 15th- and 16th-century Spain as the equivalent of the lute in Italy and has a large resultant repertory. There were usually five or six doubled strings.
Bowed string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by a bow rubbing the strings. The bow rubbing the string causes vibration which the instrument emits as sound.
Eugène Arnold Dolmetsch, was a French-born musician and instrument maker who spent much of his working life in England and established an instrument-making workshop in Haslemere, Surrey. He was a leading figure in the 20th-century revival of interest in early music.
The term violone can refer to several distinct large, bowed musical instruments which belong to either the viol or violin family. The violone is sometimes a fretted instrument, and may have six, five, four, or even only three strings. The violone is also not always a contrabass instrument. In modern parlance, one usually tries to clarify the 'type' of violone by adding a qualifier based on the tuning or on geography, or by using other terms that have a more precise connotation. The term violone may be used correctly to describe many different instruments, yet distinguishing among these types can be difficult, especially for those not familiar with the historical instruments of the viol and violin families and their respective variations in tuning.
The violin family of musical instruments was developed in Italy in the 16th century. At the time the name of this family of instruments was viole da braccio which was used to distinguish them from the viol family. The standard modern violin family consists of the violin, viola, cello, and (possibly) double bass.
The violin, viola and cello were first built in the early 16th century, in Italy. The earliest evidence for their existence is in paintings by Gaudenzio Ferrari from the 1530s, though Ferrari's instruments had only three strings. The Académie musicale, a treatise written in 1556 by Philibert Jambe de Fer, gives a clear description of the violin family much as we know it today.
In music, standard tuning refers to the typical tuning of a string instrument. This notion is contrary to that of scordatura, i.e. an alternate tuning designated to modify either the timbre or technical capabilities of the desired instrument.
Tina Chancey is a multi-instrumentalist specializing in early bowed strings from the rebec and vielle to the kamenj, renaissance fiddle, violas da gamba and pardessus de viole.
Bass violin is the modern term for various 16th- and 17th-century bass instruments of the violin family. They were the direct ancestor of the modern cello. Bass violins were usually somewhat larger than the modern cello, but tuned to the same nominal pitches or sometimes one step lower. Contemporaneous names for these instruments include "basso de viola da braccio," "basso da braccio," or the generic term "violone," which simply meant "large fiddle." The instrument differed from the violone of the viol, or "viola da gamba" family in that like the other violins it had at first three, and later usually four strings, as opposed to five, six, or seven strings, it was tuned in fifths, and it had no frets. With its F-holes and stylized C-bouts it also more closely resembled the viola da braccio.
The Cretan lyra is a Greek pear-shaped, three-stringed bowed musical instrument, central to the traditional music of Crete and other islands in the Dodecanese and the Aegean Archipelago, in Greece. The Cretan lyra is considered to be the most popular surviving form of the medieval Byzantine lyra, an ancestor of most European bowed instruments.
The violoncello da spalla, known informally as the cello da spalla, is a small cello played braced against the shoulder.
Viola da braccio is a term variously applied during the baroque period to instruments of the violin family, in distinction to the viola da gamba and the viol family to which the latter belongs. At first "da braccio" seems to encompass the entire violin family. Monteverdi's Orfeo designates an entire six-part string section "viole da brazzo", apparently including bass instruments held between the knees like the cello and bass violin. His Selva morale (1641) contains a piece calling for "due violini & 3 viole da brazzo ouero 3 Tronboni", reflecting a general shift in meaning towards the lower instruments. Eventually it came to be reserved for the alto member, the viola. A famous example is Bach's Sixth Brandenburg Concerto (1721), combining two viole da braccio with two viole da gamba. The German word for viola, Bratsche, is a relic of this last use.
The quinton is a bowed musical instrument, in use mostly in France in the 18th century. It takes its name from the fact that, in ensembles, it played the quinta vox or quintus. Another derivation of the name may be from the number of strings and for consonance with violon. By the same name it is sometimes denoted the pardessus de viole, an originally six-stringed instrument of the family of the viols, since the pardessus lost one string and adopted the same tuning of the quinton. However, while the pardessus is viol-shaped, the quinton is violin-shaped.
Cécile Dolmetsch became Cécile Dolmetsch Ward was a British expert on the pardessus de viole. The Dolmetsch family were all enthusiasts for early music and the instruments that it was played on.
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