The Quito vihuela is in such a remote location, even with modern communications, it remains difficult to access information about it.
However, thanks to the pictures that were kindly provided by one of the members of this vihuela community - Ariel Abramovich who visited Quito earlier this year and who is himself a dedicated professional player of the vihuela, now there is another bit of rare and precious information pertaining to its construction available. In the most thorough description of the Quito vihuela to date (see Egberto Bermudez's article "The Vihuela: The Paris and Quito Instruments" which appeared in "The Spanish Guitar", New York - Madrid 1992, p.45) there is the following description of the bridge of this instrument: 'The bridge has holes for five courses of double strings and one for a single string course (the first)'. What is remarkable however is that the original bridge has slots rather than holes, in a similar way as is found on the bridges of the E.0748 'Chambure' vihuela as well as some surviving Spanish and Portuguese guitars. A close-up photograph of the bridge shows five slots for double courses and one rather shallow slot for the first single course. The slots for double courses are designed with a V- shaped upper edge thus allowing for individual strings of the courses to sit next to the sides of the slots (i.e. be positioned at the maximum widths of the slots). What is also interesting - as far as the quality of the photograph allows - is that the wear from strings, which is mostly noticeable on the back edge of the bridge, appears in the areas of the first (single), second, third and, to a lesser degree, forth courses. There is very little, if any, noticeable wear of the edge in the areas of the fifth and sixth courses. This could of course be due to the rather low resolution of the photograph. The other explanation may be that the strings of the fifth and sixth courses were considerably thicker than the higher pitched thinner strings to cause similar signs of wear. But can it also be that the instrument was, for a fairly prolonged period of time, (mainly used) strung with only four courses? It would of course be interesting in this respect to relate the signs of wear on the bridge with that of the fingerboard. And so perhaps Monica's idea of the rather "simplified" use of the instrument by Mariana the Saint is not that far fetched?! Unfortunately the above-mentioned Egberto Bermudez description of the Quito vihuela (although mentioning the signs of wear on the bridge: ". there is evidence of string tension on the bridge") is not very specific and does not mention the appearance of wear on the fingerboard. The other remarkable feature of the Quito vihuela bridge is the carved decorations on both its ends in the shape of stylized animal heads. A very similar decorative element also appears in mustachios of a number of surviving Spanish guitars that are associated with Cádiz school of makers, in particular its distinguished representatives such as Juan Pages and Josef Benedid. With a better quality close-up picture of the inlayed ebony decorations surrounding the sound hole one can clearly see silver thread running in the middle of the veins of the ornament. For more details have a look here: http://www.vihuelademano.com/quito/quito-vihuela.htm Alexander Batov To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
