The Spanish plucked viola in Renaissance Italy, 1480-1530

Abstract

Hiroyuki Minamino The Spanish plucked viola in Renaissance Italy, 148o—1530 ' While some play every sort of composition most delightfully on the lute, in Italy and Spain the viola without a bow is more often used. T Hrs testimony to the popularity of this mysteri- ous instrument in Italy is taken from Johannes Tinctoris’s music treatise De inventione et usu musi- cae, written in Naples about 1480 and published there between 1481 and 1483.‘ The ‘viola without a bow’ (‘viola sine arculo’) is probably a tenninology adapted by Tinctoris to denote the instrument more commonly known by some other names.‘ It may well be an instrument called viola or small lute (‘dimidum leutum’) of which Tinctoris described its origin and physiognomy in the same treatise: Indeed the invention of the Spaniards, the instrument which they and the Italians call viola and the French demi-lath is descended from the lute. However, it differs from the lute in that the lute is larger and shaped like a tortoise-shell whereas it is flat and in most cases curved inwards on each side.’ Iconographical evidence indicates that this instru- ment was invented in Valencia in the mid-15th cen- tury. At first it had a thin body, a flat back, a long fingerboard, a lute—like reverse peg-box, and a deeply incurving waist. But by the end of the 15th century a new type ‘invented’ from the earlier model aban- doned the sharply cornered waist, and featured instead a gently incurving- waist.‘ This constructional change was probably the result of changes in musical tastes. Players’ desire to perform polyphonic compo- sitions on a single instrument was aided by using the fingers for plucking, a technique that enabled the simultaneous production of notes on non-adjacent strings. This stylistic change in turn prompted the invention of a tablature notation for solo players in the late 15th century. These events led to the increas- ing popularity of the instrument later called the vihuela de mano in Spain and the viola da rnano in Italy. During the last two decades of the 15th century and the first three decades of the 16th century there were abundant references to the Spanish plucked viola, referred to by various names, from several major Italian courts, such as Naples, Rome, Mantua, Ferrara and Urbino. There is also iconographical evidence for the instrument, one with a sharply cor- nered waist and the other with a gently incurving waist. Two political powers seem to have played a vital role in the importation and dissemination of the Spanish plucked viola in Italy: the Borgias in papal Rome and the Aragonese Trastemeras in the Kingdom of Naples. It was the Aragonese heritage that promoted political and cultural ties between Spain and Italy. Many of the courts in which the Spanish plucked viola was popular appear to have had close family or political connections either with the Borgias or the Aragonese dynasty in Naples. Naples Tinctoris did not specify which Italian cities culti- vated the Spanish plucked viola; he used a collective term ‘italia’.5 The Aragonese court at Naples must have been one of them, for he had been in the service of the Neapolitan court for several years by the time he wrote the De inventione in the late 14705. How- ever, it is unclear whether the references to the play- ers of the viola from this period denote the Spanish instrument. For instance, a list of musicians working at the court of Naples, dating between 1480 and 1490, I-Iiroyulci Minamino is an independent scholar who received his doctorate in musicology from the University of Chicago. He is currently working on an article on musical relations between Europe and Iapan in the 16th century and a monograph on John Dowland’s espionage of 1595. EARLY MUSIC MAY 2004 177