Vihuela is a name given to two different guitar-like string instruments: one from 15th and 16th century Spain, usually with 12 paired strings, and the other, the Mexican vihuela, from 19th century Mexico with five strings and typically played in Mariachi bands.

History

Plucked vihuela, being essentially flat-backed lutes, evolved in the mid-15th century, in the Kingdom of Aragón (located in north-eastern Iberia (Spain), filling the gap that elsewhere in Europe was taken up by the lute; for the Spanish the lute was too close to the oud. In Spain and Italy the vihuela was in common use by the late 15th through to the late 16th centuries. In the second half of the 15th century some vihuela players began using a bow, leading to the development of the viol.

There were several different types of vihuela (or different playing methods at least):

Tunings for 6 course vihuela de mano (44344):

The vihuela faded away, along with the complex polyphonic music that was its repertoire, in the late 16th century, along with the other primary instrument of the Spanish Renaissance, the cross-strung harp. The vihuela's descendants that are still played are the ''violas campaniças'' of Portugal. Much of the vihuela's place, role, and function was taken up by the subsequent Baroque guitar (also sometimes referred to as vihuela or bigüela). Today, the vihuela is in use primarily for the performance of early music, using modern replicas of historical instruments. Juan Carlos Rivera, Juan Carlos de Mulder y Eligio Luis Quinteiro are some of the leading performers of this historic instrument. Today, instruments like the tiple are descendants of vihuelas brought to America in the 16th century.

Construction

Vihuela (and viola) were built in different sizes, large and small, a family of instruments. Duet music was published for vihuelas tuned one step, a minor third, a fourth, or a fifth apart, as well as unison tuned.

The physical appearance, "the look", of vihuela was varied and diverse—there was little standardization and no mass production. Overall and in general, vihuela looked very similar to modern guitars. The first generation of vihuela, from the mid-15th century on, had sharp cuts to its waist, similar to that of a violin. A second generation of vihuela, beginning sometime around c.1490, took on the now familiar smooth-curved figure-eight shaped body contours. The sharp waist-cut models continued to be built into the early-to-mid-16th century, side by side with the later pattern. Many early vihuela had extremely long necks, while others had the shorter variety. Top decoration, the number, shape, and placement, of sound holes, ports, pierced rosettes, etc., also varied greatly. More than a few styles of peg-boxes were used as well.

Vihuela were chromatically fretted in a manner similar to lutes, by means of movable, wrapped-around and tied-on gut frets. Vihuela, however, usually had ten frets, whereas lutes had only seven. Unlike modern guitars, which often use steel and bronze strings, vihuela were gut strung, and usually in paired courses. Gut strings produce a sonority far different from metal, generally described as softer and sweeter. A six course vihuela could be strung in either of two ways: with 12 strings in 6 pairs, or 11 strings in total if a single unpaired ''chanterelle'' is used on the first (or highest pitched) course. Unpaired chanterelles were common on all lutes, vihuela, and (other) early guitars (both Renaissance guitars and Baroque guitars).

Repertoire

The first person to publish a collection of music for the vihuela was the Spanish composer Luis de Milán, with his volume titled ''Libro de música de vihuela de mano intitulado El maestro'' of 1536. The notational device used throughout this and other vihuela music books is a numeric tablature (otherwise called "lute tablature"), which is also the model from which modern "guitar tab" was fashioned. The music is easily performed on a modern guitar using either standard guitar tuning (44434), sometimes called "new lute tuning", or by retuning slightly to Classic lute and vihuela tuning (44344). The tablature system used in all these texts is the "Italian" tablature, wherein the stopped frets are indicated by numbers and the lowest line of the staff represents the highest-pitch course (or string), as if the performer were looking "through" the neck of the instrument; Milán's book also uses numbers to indicate the stopping of the courses but exceptionally it is the top line of the staff that represents the highest-pitch course, as in "French" tablature.

The printed books of music for the Vihuela which have survived are, in chronological order:

Surviving instruments

Other possible surviving instruments

Notes

References

Discography

External links

Gallery of images of vihuelas

Category:Guitar family instruments Category:Early musical instruments Category:Spanish musical instruments Category:Spanish words and phrases

The place of his birth is not recorded, but he grew up in Guadalajara, and probably received his musical training there. He probably went to Italy in 1529 with Charles V, in the company of the fourth Duke of the Infantado, Íñigo López de Mendoza, marqués de Santillana. When he returned to Spain he became a priest, receiving the post of canon at the cathedral in Seville in 1546, where he remained for the rest of his life. While at the cathedral, he directed all of the musical activities; many records remain of his musical activities there, which included hiring instrumentalists, buying and assembling a new organ, and working closely with composer Francisco Guerrero for various festivities. Mudarra died in Seville, and his sizable fortune was distributed to the poor of the city according to his will.

Mudarra wrote numerous pieces for the vihuela and the four-course guitar, all contained in the collection ''Tres libros de musica en cifras para vihuela'', which he published on December 7, 1546 in Seville. These three books contain the first music ever published for the four-course guitar, which was then a relatively new instrument. The second book is noteworthy in that it contains eight multi-movement works, all arranged by "tono", or mode.

Compositions represented in this publication include fantasias, variations (including a set on La Folia), tientos, pavanes and galliards, and songs. Modern listeners are probably most familiar with his Fantasia X, which has been a concert and recording mainstay for many years. The songs are in Latin, Spanish and Italian, and include romances, canciones, villancicos, and sonnets. Another innovation he used was separate signs for different tempos: slow, medium, and fast.

References and further reading

External links

Category:Renaissance composers Category:Composers for the classical guitar Category:1510s births Category:1580 deaths

Fabritio Caroso da Sermoneta (1526/1535 – 1605/1620) was an Italian Renaissance dancing master and a composer or transcriber of dance music.

His dance manual ''Il Ballarino'' was published in 1581, with a subsequent edition, significantly different, ''Nobiltà di Dame'', printed in 1600 and again after his death in 1630. The work has been published in English as ''Courtly Dance of the Renaissance'' by Julia Sutton.

Both manuals have been printed in facsimile edition. Many of the dances of Fabritio Caroso's manuals are meant for two dancers with a few for four or more dancers. These manuals offer a great deal of information to dance historians and musicologists alike in that each description of a dance is accompanied by music examples with lute tablature and directions about how each music example is to be played. Many of the dances also contain dedications to noble women of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Bibliography

See also

Notes

External links

Category:16th-century births Category:17th-century deaths Category:People from the Province of Latina Category:Historical dance Category:Renaissance dance Category:Italian dancers Category:Italian choreographers