CHAT THE THIRD
The Renaissance—The Influence of the Netherlands School—A brief Outline of the growing Use of the Viol in Germany, Italy, England, France
It must be allowed that both Gaspard Duiffoproucart and Andrea Amati were fortunate in living at a time when Art, Science, and Literature had taken a new lease of life. The meeting of sixteenth-century modernity with antique culture had created a new atmosphere of learning; in a word, the Renaissance had dawned, and progress had begun its march over Europe. Il Divino Raphaël, Leonardo da Vinci, Savonarola, Galilei, Lassus, were as comets in the horizon of advancement. Petrucci in Venice had invented the art of music printing, and deep in the heart of the Netherlands there had grown up a technically equipped school of musical composers, before which the spontaneous art of the minstrel was compelled to recede. Impelled onward by Guillaume Dufay, Johan Ockenghem, Josquin des Prés, and their successors, to Lassus, the higher culture of the divine art was making rapid progress and consummating the final emancipation of musical instruments. Already, in the early part of the sixteenth century, signs and tokens of the event were observable. In 1511 a native of Strasburg—Sebastian Virdung—compiled a species of miniature Grove’s dictionary devoted to the musical instruments of his time. The work was published in his native town, and was afterwards extensively cribbed by Agricola and Luscinis. The numerous woodcuts with which Virdung’s work is interspersed are of interest, especially when such guileless incongruities as a “Grosse Geigen”—without a bridge—and a “Kleine Geigen” (a rebec) with a bridge present themselves.
Ten years after Virdung, Hans Judenkünig was busy penning little pieces for voices and stringed instruments, a style of composition that counted numerous imitators at a later date, both on the Continent and in England. His manuscript—published by good Hans Syngriner in Vienna in 1523—consists of a number of short pieces, songs and dances, with the lute and viol pieces written in tablature. A precious copy of this work is jealously preserved in the Royal Library at Vienna. When one realises that it is easily within human capacity to feast upon its secrets, one cannot help wishing that a “magic carpet” could be requisitioned to take us to the spot where it now lies, at once. Could this be accomplished, and we were suddenly confronted with Judenkünig’s dog-eared elderly tome, our feeble attempts at description would collapse like a Gibus hat. There is something about time-honoured volumes that commands silence.
There are other points of interest about Judenkünig’s work besides that of its being the earliest attempt to mingle instruments in a methodical concerted manner. For instance, the title-page monopolises our attention, for the name Geygen is among the first to be found in print. Then again, further on, there is a woodcut representation of a man standing erect and playing on a big six-stringed viol, which he apparently holds vertically before him.[16] The instrument does not touch the ground, and, doubtless, it is attached round the player’s neck by a cord or ribbon, although the artist has not shown anything of that description. Similar woodcuts of the period intimate that this manner of playing the bass-viol was not at all uncommon during the sixteenth century. The custom was, doubtless, a survival of those “musiciens ambulants,” the minstrels, who could not be burdened with many accessories, and, like the Egyptian camel, carried their belongings on their backs. It was doubtless with their fiddles slung round their necks that the Chester minstrels sallied forth in the reign of King John, and, unarmed, conquered the besieging Welshmen by making such a noise that their enemy imagined themselves to be opposed by an overwhelming force, and flew. Also, at a later date, it is easy to imagine the genial Anthony Wood desiring to escape a little from University pedagogism and stealing out with five chosen comrades “in poor habits,” and how like country fiddlers they “scraped for their livings.” Roaming the country with their viols on their backs, Wood states that they went to “Farringdon Fair,” and, to the house of Mr Thomas Latton, at “Kingston Bakepaze,” who gave them money and sent drink out to them. After playing dance music at the inn and visiting other private houses, a most depressing encounter with some soldiers considerably damped Anthony Wood’s spirits. These men of war forced them to play in an open field without paying them a penny. “Most of my companions,” says he, referring to the incident, “would afterwards glory in this, but I was ashamed and could never endure to hear of it.” Among the five gentlemen who assisted in this escapade he mentions that “Edmund Gregorie, B.A., and gent. com. of Mert. Coll., Ox., played the bass-viol.”
Another call for playing the bass-viol in the position depicted by Hans Judenkünig came from that all-powerful patroness of music—the Church. To facilitate the use of viols in the religious processions, the bass-viol was attached round the neck of the performer. A small hole was made in the upper part of the back of the instrument so employed and a peg inserted. A cord or chain was attached to this peg, and passed round the player’s neck; an arrangement which allowed him to play with some degree of ease. Bass-viols so employed gained the title of “viola da Spala,” or shoulder viols, in Italy, from the position in which they were held. The early violoncellos, which were of a small size—not the size destined to live—were submitted to a similar chaining and carrying; of course, thumb movement and the numerous treasures of the high positions were unknown, and the player confined his efforts to the first position.
Two years after Hans Judenkünig’s publication, Martin Agricola, whose real name was Sore or Shor, published his “Musica Instrumental Deudsch,” a remarkable work, both from the point of view of literature and musicianship. He launched into woodcut representations of all the viols of the day, and they are probably there found for the first time in complete Quartets, with the names under each instrument as follows:—“Discantus” (treble), “Altus,” “Tenor,” “Bassus.” The tuning of all these viols at this period was always regulated by that prescribed for the lute. Gerle and Judenkünig states this to be composed of fourths, with a third intervening, while Agricola instructs the executant to
“Draw up your fifth string as high as you may
That it may not be broken when on it you play.”
This confusing method was even practised in the following century, for the worthy John Playford, in his “Introduction to the Skill of Music” (Twelfth Edition, 1694), tells the would-be player of the bass-viol that: “When you begin to Tune, raise your Treble or smallest String as high as conveniently it will bear without breaking; then stop only your Second or Small Mean in F and tune it till it agree in Unison with your Treble open,” and so on with each string. Imagine a modern orchestra tuned according to this recommendation!