Alexander Batov wrote: > The weakest point in any of the two ways of the viola da mano > reconstruction that you mention is that we have absolutely no idea > (because of lack of surviving instruments) what sort of barring > arrangement the original instruments had. And this is a major set back > whichever external shape is chosen for the reconstruction. > Alexander,
You say we have absolutely no idea what sort of barring arrangement violas might have had. But surely we - or makers like you - do have some idea. Some violas look very similar to vihuelas, and were made at roughly the same time, and not geographically distant and play the same sort of sophisticated, polyphonic music. It would at least be reasonable conjecture and certainly not idle speculation to bar a viola like a vihuela, wouldn't it? I have the idea that early guitars (and for you there's no difference between 16th/17th century guitars and vihuelas?) had a couple of bars on the soundboard and a couple of bars (or three?) on the back. No doubt there are a million subtleties of exactly how these bars are fashioned. So there's a tradtion of barring flat-backed, plucked instruments and violas could just be part of that tradition. Or, do you think there is a possibility that violas had la much more complicated lute-like barring? (Or, Monica-style; we just don't know, will never know and it's all (mere?) speculation... ) But those deeper-bodied violas with deeply incurved sides - the ones that look like they could be bowed as well as plucked; might they have a different barring arrangement, more viol-like? ( I have no idea how viols are barred.) I wonder what you think, as a maker, of the possibility of an instrument that could equally be bowed or played with the fingers? It somehow seems unlikely to me. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
