Viola da Gamba: The Bowed, Fretted Voice of the Renaissance and Baroque

Overview

The viola da gamba, or viol (informally “gamba”), is a bowed and fretted string instrument that is played da gamba, meaning “on the leg.” It is the central member of an entire family of bowed, fretted instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes whose string tension can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitch of each string. Although treble, tenor and bass were the most commonly used sizes, viols came in a wide range: pardessus (a high treble developed in the 18th century), treble, alto, small tenor, tenor, bass and contrabass — the largest of which is called a violone.

Viols are distinguished from later bowed string instruments, such as the violin family, by appearance and orientation when played. The neck is typically held upward and the rounded bottom rests downward on the lap or between the knees. The instrument uses the alto clef. Seven (and occasionally eight) frets made of “stretched gut” are tied around the fingerboard. Because the frets are tied rather than permanently fixed as on a guitar, the player can fine-tune the placement of each fret to the temperament of the music being performed.

A modern player of the viol is commonly known as a gambist, violist or violist da gamba. The word “violist” is a homograph of the term used since the mid-20th century for a player of the modern viola, which can cause confusion in print when context does not make the meaning clear.

Origin and History

Viols first appeared in Spain and Italy in the mid-to-late 15th century. The most widely accepted scholarly account traces their development to vihuelists who began playing their flat-topped, originally plucked vihuelas with a bow in the second half of the 15th century. Within two or three decades this practice led to the evolution of an entirely new and dedicated bowed string instrument that retained many features of the vihuela: a flat back, sharp waist-cuts, frets, originally thin ribs and an identical tuning. Hence its original name, vihuela de arco — arco being Spanish for “bow.” An influence on the playing posture has been credited to the example of Moorish rabab players (the Arabic rebab is itself derived from a Persian instrument called rubāb).

Other scholars, notably Stefano Pio (2012), have argued for an independent Venetian origin in which the viola da gamba evolved from the medieval violetta or vielle, gradually adding strings to extend the lower register. Ian Woodfield’s The Early History of the Viol takes a synthetic view: the viol does start with the vihuela, but Italian luthiers immediately applied their own highly developed instrument-making traditions to the early instrument once it reached Italy. Whatever the precise route, a ten-year span at the end of the 15th century saw the birth and rapid diffusion of the viol family in Italy, including instruments of different sizes — some as large as the famous violoni “as big as a man” mentioned by Prospero Bernardino in 1493.

The viol reached its peak popularity in the Renaissance and the Baroque period (1600–1750), serving as both a solo instrument (especially the bass viol and the lyra viol) and as the foundation of consort music for ensembles of three to seven players. The classical-era rise of the louder, more projecting violin family gradually eclipsed the viols, and by the late 18th century the instrument had largely fallen out of regular use.

Construction and Materials

A typical viol has a hollow wooden body with a flat back rather than the curved back of the violin family, sharp inward waist-cuts that distinguish it visually from a cello, sloped shoulders, and c-shaped soundholes rather than f-holes. The neck carries a fretted fingerboard with seven (sometimes eight) frets made of gut tied around the neck. Because they are tied, the frets can be moved by the player to suit different temperaments — an essential feature for music written before equal temperament became standard.

Most viols have six strings, although bass viols often add a seventh low string. Tuning is in fourths with a major third in the middle, similar to a Renaissance lute. A standard six-string bass viol is tuned D₂-G₂-C₃-E₃-A₃-D₄ from low to high. Other family members are tuned in the same intervallic pattern transposed to their respective ranges: pardessus, treble, alto, tenor (in A or G), bass, and various sizes of violone in A, G or D. The bow is held underhand (palm upward) rather than overhand as on the violin family, which produces a different attack and a more controlled bow-stroke at low dynamic levels.

Playing Technique

The viol is held vertically, resting on or between the legs depending on size — the smallest are supported on the thigh, the largest stand on the floor on an endpin. Bowing is underhand, with the index finger and thumb gripping the frog from below; this grip allows for very subtle dynamic shaping and was central to the instrument’s reputation for vocal, speech-like phrasing.

Because of the tied frets, the viol shares with the lute and the guitar the ability to play chords and stops with great clarity of intonation. The frets enable the performer to stop the strings cleanly, improve the consistency of intonation, and lend stopped notes a tone that better matches the open strings. The movable nature of the tied-on frets allows players and consorts to adopt mean-tone temperaments, which are more suited to Renaissance music than equal temperament. Several historical fretting schemes use unevenly spaced frets to produce particular tempered intervals.

The bass viol developed a particularly virtuosic solo idiom in the lyra viol style, which used many alternative tunings (called scordatura), chordal writing, and a special pizzicato technique known as a “thump.” Lyra viol music was commonly written in tablature rather than staff notation, and a vast surviving repertoire — much of it anonymous — testifies to the popularity of the style in 17th-century England.

Cultural Context

In its heyday the viol was the chamber instrument of the educated amateur. Consorts of viols — typically a treble, two tenors and two basses, the so-called “chest of viols” — were standard equipment in the well-appointed Renaissance and early-Baroque household. The instrument was associated with refinement, contemplation, and the kind of musicianship that, as Percy Scholes wrote, “demanded musicianship more often than virtuosity.”

In France, the bass viol developed a particularly elevated solo tradition under players and composers such as Marin Marais and Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe in the late 17th century. In England, a parallel solo and consort tradition produced the great body of fantasias and In Nomine settings for viol consort by composers including William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, John Jenkins, William Lawes and Henry Purcell. In Germany, the bass viol survived into the early 18th century in the music of Telemann, Bach (the Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 famously features two viole da gamba) and Carl Friedrich Abel, who is often considered the last great gambist of the Baroque.

The 20th century saw a sustained revival of the instrument, beginning with the work of the Dolmetsch family. The Viola da Gamba Society was established in the United Kingdom in 1948 by Nathalie and Cecile Dolmetsch, and the Viola da Gamba Society of America followed in 1962. The 1991 feature film Tous les matins du monde by Alain Corneau, based on the lives of Sainte-Colombe and Marais, prominently featured viola da gamba music and brought the instrument to a much broader audience; the bestselling soundtrack featured performances by Jordi Savall.

Notable Players and Examples

Among the foremost modern viola da gamba players are Jordi Savall, Wieland Kuijken, Vittorio Ghielmi, Paolo Pandolfo, Hille Perl, Andrea de Carlo, Alison Crum, Susanne Heinrich and Jonathan Dunford. Notable consorts include Fretwork, the Rose Consort of Viols, Les Voix Humaines, Phantasm, and the Baltimore Consort (which specialises in Renaissance song with broken consort).

Among institutional collections, the Orpheon Foundation’s Museum of Historical Instruments at the University of Vienna holds more than 100 instruments, including approximately 50 historical violas da gamba in playable condition. All of these instruments are played by the Orpheon Baroque Orchestra and consort or are loaned to active performers, and they are studied and copied by violin makers, contributing to ongoing research into historical viol construction.

Comparison with Related Instruments

The viol is most often compared to the cello because the bass viol occupies a similar register, but the two instruments differ at almost every point of construction and technique. Compared to the violin family (violin, viola, cello, double-bass), the viol family has flat backs, sloped shoulders, c-holes, frets, more strings, fourths-based tuning, and underhand bowing.

Compared to the lute, the viol shares the same tuning principle and fretted fingerboard but is bowed rather than plucked. Compared to the viola d’amore, it lacks the sympathetic resonance strings that give that instrument its characteristic shimmer, but the two share an aesthetic of refinement and intimacy. The vihuela, as discussed above, is the direct historical ancestor of the viol family.

The instrument’s nearest functional sibling outside Europe is arguably the family of bowed, fretless lutes that includes the Indian sarangi and the Chinese erhu, which fill comparable expressive niches in their own classical traditions despite having very different physical designs and tunings.