----- Original Message ----- From: "Alexander Batov" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu> Cc: "Roger E. Blumberg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, September 17, 2006 1:11 PM Subject: Re: [VIHUELA] Re: Regimento dos Violeiros 1572
> > Speaking of different sizes, I just got this picture yesterday. Extremely > > small bodied vihuela with rather wide neck. Anonymous Spanish painting, > > sadly dated no better than simply "16th century". > > > > La Virgen con el Niño y San Juanito > > Congratulations, Roger, on another great find! How many more ahead ...? :)) Thanks. More!?, you want more! -- so do I ;-) Like I've said, I'm always convinced that the most recent one is the last of them, until tomorrow ;') > One detail of this small instrument seems quite remarkable to me: the sides > (or body outline) curving in at the junction with the neck. There are few > vihuela depictions where this feature is also present: on that newly found > fresco in Valencia that you informed us about, also on the vihuela > illustration in 'Venegas de Henestrosa' and some others. The Iberian guitar > c.1740 in the Edinburgh university collection also has slightly incurving > sides at the neck / body junction. ya, that's that tell-tale in-turned shoulder contour I was talking about the other day. At one point I was calling them "angel-wing" shoulders and waist-cuts, because that's what they look like, and they often terminate in an out-swept curved peaked wing-tip at the cut. Here's some more of those, on pluckers, the shoulder or/and wing-tip http://www.thecipher.com/viola-guitar_GasparOrGiorgioGhisi_1557_det.jpg http://www.thecipher.com/vihuela_shaped-like_Ferrari-Saronno-Viola_deta.jpg http://www.thecipher.com/guitar-baroque_NicolasPOUSSIN_Bacchanal_1628-30_det a.jpg I still need a date on that second-last one, the relief-carved one, if any of you'all ever get one, ball-park even (is ok). > > It may well be that this feature was inherited from some early forms of the > vihuela, perhaps while still in its viola da mano- / viol-like incarnation, > with cornered body at the waist area. I think so. It's a common feature on both plucked and bowed waist-cut models in the very early days. > > Thanks Alexander. I'm not up to date on all the details of your > > researches, > > nor which particular things you're wanting to point out that are new, > > interesting, curious, validating of some observation or argument, or > > perhaps > > revealing something contrary to commonly held assumptions and beliefs, > > etc. > > So could you please elaborate a little more for me on what you mean when > > you > > say "I think I now understand why". > > Well, I suppose it would have been difficult for me to make sense of what > the Regimento text is all about without, say, having a look inside the Dias > vihuela (actually, it is now more accessible then it was, thanks to the > change of the curator at the RCM collection of instruments!) Or, which is > even rarer, one of the surviving guitars by Sanguino. These are, in a way, > virtually the 'encyclopaedias' of the Spanish tradition of guitar / vihuela > making. > > Having said this, I do not claim that my interpretation is totally correct > in every single point. It is more like the beginning of the process to > interpreting this very important document, perhaps the most comprehensive > one in its kind, on of the 16th century vihuela construction. > > Alexander ok, I see. I thought maybe there was one particular bit of back-story I might have been missing or not linking, and I guess you just explained it -- i.e. you're correlating what you observed in person on surviving instruments with what that document says, and why others might have passed over things mentioned therein which didn't at first make sense to them, etc. Roger To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
