! From both historical and practical points of view, lute and vihuela music are interchangeable. a iv)-a similar affirmation of the humanist spirit of the Spanish tradition-shows a much smaller instrument, of a size more suited to the technical demands of the music, due to what must have been a much shorter string length. 6v) shows a large instrument in the hands of its mythological patriarch, while the image of Arion in the opening folios of Narváez’s Los seys libros del Delphín (1538, fol. Milán’s frequently reproduced depiction of Orpheus playing the vihuela in El Maestro (fol. The instruments depicted in the well-known woodcuts in the two earliest vihuela books are indicative of the variety of instrument sizes that were known. G or A appear to have been the most common pitches of the outer courses among a number of theoretical possibilities. ! The vihuela was tuned to the same intervals as both the lute and viol and was strung with six double courses as the lute, although in unison throughout and normally with a double-strung first course. This latter instrument is widely depicted in Italian sources and is principally distinguished from the Spanish model by its sickle-shaped rather than flat pegbox. While the transformation of the vihuela de arco into the viola da gamba occurred through the intervention of Italian craftsmen, the specifically plucked version appears to have emerged in Spain around the turn of the century together with an Italian variant, the viola da mano. The period of change and transmission to Italy appears intimately connected with the ascent of the Aragonese Alexander VI to the papacy in 1492. In their fifteenthcentury form, bowed and plucked vihuelas de arco and de mano are virtually indistinguishable, and it was not until the early years of the sixteenth century that the two species assumed independent forms and construction. The emergence of the instrument in eastern Spain. Many early literary references to the vihuela are reproduced in the introduction of Pujol’s edition of Alonso Mudarra, Tres libros de música en cifra para vihuela, Monumentos de la Música Española 7 (Barcelona, 1949). A more general study of early plucked instruments in Spain is given in Heinz Nickel, Beiträge zur Entwicklung der Gitarre in Europa (Haimhausen, 1972). Ian Woodfield, The Early History of the Viol, Cambridge Musical Texts and Monographs (Cambridge, 1984). Recent research by Ian Woodfield has made significant headway in tracing the origins of the vihuela in Aragon and its subsequent development in the second half of the fifteenth century.1 Largely through iconographical documents, he has traced 1 It was not until the sixteenth century that the instrument reached its zenith and, by the early seventeenth century, it had virtually disappeared. The instrument ! The origins of the vihuela can be traced back at least to the mid-fifteenth century, although no music survives from this period. It is rather a survey that provides a long-needed reassessment of the vihuela repertory in its social context, and that makes a critical review of its composers and music. The present essay does not pretend to summarise all that has been said about the vihuela and its music.
For both pleasure and learning, it served court and domestic roles, and generated a substantial repertory of music of great diversity and character. It enjoyed a popularity that extended across a broad social spectrum and-much more than has generally been recognised-was equally familiar to the middle-classes as to royalty and the nobility.
At Court and at Home with the Vihuela de mano: Current Perspectives of the Instrument, its Music and its World _ BY JOHN GRIFFITHS ! The vihuela de mano was the most prominent solo instrument in sixteenth-century Spain.
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