On Mar 5, 2005, at 5:53 PM, John Howell wrote:
Unless my memory is completely faulty, the three instruments of the viola da braccia family in sizes equivalent to the violin, viola and cello are clearly illustrated in Agricola (1529), although I'm not sure whether they are illustrated in Virdung (1511).
The question at issue here is exactly what *versions* (dimensions of body and neck, etc.) of these soprano, alto, bass violins were used at various times and places, and what people called them.
It is very clear in the score to Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo" (1607) that the bottom line of the 5-part violin "band" was a cello-range instrument. One assumes that the bass size instrument in the "24 Violins of the King" was a cello-sized instrument.
Exactly--but it wasn't a cello. It wasn't called a cello, and it wasn't built like a cello. When real cellos came along later, they were given a different name, indicating that people of the time regarded the difference as significant.
The disposition of the Vingt-quatre Violons du Roy (and of Lully's opera orchestra) was 6, 4, 4, 4, 6, the five different instruments being respectively violin; 3 different sizes of viola, all tuned the same but with different bodies (the middle of the three corresponding to the modern viola); and the basse de violon--wh. was *not* a cello, though it was tuned like one. Note that there is no 16' voice.
To play this repertoire on modern instruments, you would use 6 violins, 12 violas, and 6 cellos.
The Italian for basse de violon was violone. The German was Bassgeige. The English was just "bass."
About this same time (ca. 1700) the cb, wh. previously had served only to support the basses in church choirs, began to appear in the orchestra, and the name violone was transferred to it. NB: there was no 16' voice in the orchestras of Lully or Corelli.
Again, I must cite Monteverdi's use of both contrabass violin and contrabass viol in 1607 as well as a 16' instrument (of whichever family but most likely the viols) in the music of Schuetz, and Corelli's preference for contrabass in some of his church sonatas. 1700 is MUCH too late as the terminus ante quem for the use of the contrabass in ensembles,
I said "orchestra" and I meant "orchestra." Neither Monteverdi nor his immediate successors such as Cavalli and Cesti had anything that could be called an orchestra in their opera pits--there were no massed strings.
As for Corelli, the works list in Grove says nothing about a contrabass in any of his works, and I would be very suspicious of such an assignment unless he actually specified "contrabasso." If it says "violone," then he means the cello-sized instrument mentioned above.
All this info comes from _The Birth of the Orchestra_, wh. I have mentioned frequently here and wh. I strongly recommend to anyone interested in the subject.
I really do want to get and read this book, but if your quotations are accurate I would have to question the scholarship in advance. There is a very well-researched and well-written dissertation on the history of the cello which does not agree at all, accepts the cello as a 16th-century instrument (which it certainly was), and notes that it was during the 17th century that many cellists started to adopt the overhand violin bow position while viola da gambists retained the earlier underhand position.
John
It all comes down to how broadly one defines "cello." If you take it to mean "the bass of the violin family, no matter how configured," then yes, certainly, the cello goes straight back to the early 16th c. But if you make the kinds of fine distinctions that musicians of the 17th century clearly made themselves, then the story becomes somewhat different.
FWIW, _The Birth of the Orchestra_ apparently bases its assertions in this area primarily on two articles by Stephen Bonta: "From Violone to Violoncello: A Question of Strings," JAMIS 3 (1977), 64-99; and "Terminology for the Bass Violin in Seventeenth-Century Italy," JAMIS 4 (1978), 5-42.
Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
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