Talk:Viol

message: It's not very helpful in showing people how the viol is played! Indeed it looks more like cellist who has just picked up a viol. Bluewave 12:10, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Which one? Badagnani 17:48, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The Media section of the article. The one showing a bloke playing the viol with (shock horror) vibrato!. Bluewave 22:10, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

text: Seeing as there are no other comments, I deleted it. The costume and setting were nice but I think it gave a very misleading impression of how the viol is played. Bluewave 14:27, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Video clip of viol player

message: The viol article currently says:
"Viols were (and are) strung with (low tension) gut strings, unlike the steel strings used by members of the modern violin family."
With the rise of the 'period' instrument movement, it isn't too unusual to find violins being (re-) strung with gut, so to use this as a way of differentiating viols from violins seems (at best) incomplete.
I'm not expert enough to draft a better comment but can I suggest that someone does???? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pelham (talk • contribs) 13:34, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I know several dozen viol players (some professional and some amateur) and none of them use wire strings. Strings are either plain gut, "catline gut" (where the gut is sort of plaited into a rope), gut wound with metal, or gut overspun with metal wire. Alison Crum's "Play the Viol" book has a good section on the type of strings to use for different periods of music, but makes no mention of pure wire strings. Bluewave (talk) 09:54, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: As I understand it, steel strings were used by some (mostly British?) players at least for the first string on some instruments from early in the revival (I think) until about the 1960s or possibly even later. One occasionally still comes across an old Dolmetsch or similar vintage viol that is/was fitted with a fine tuner on the tailpiece for a steel first string. There are occasional references to these strings in 20th century writings about the viol, which is possibly how they got into this article.  Also, wire and wire-core strings were used for the German Schulfiedel ("Fiedel in quart-tertz Stimmung") -- a sort of simplified viol for school and amateur use that was made by a few different makers and also available in kits during the mid-20th century. These strings are still available from Pyramid. Finally, Pirastro pardessus first strings are available ONLY as a wire string -- which you need if you are going to crank your Pardessus up to A-440, as gut will barely make it up to A-415 on a typical pardessus string length. Nonetheless, I have never encountered and indeed never even heard of anyone actually using the Pirastro pardessus first. It is utterly unsurprising that these wire strings are not mentioned in Alison Crum's book, as they had already fallen out of favor and out of use a considerable number of years -- decades, really -- before she wrote it.  Gambaguru (talk) 05:48, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

text: The main problem with this passage in the article is that it gives the impression that steel strings are the only strings used on modern-setup violin-family instruments, or at least the default choice. This is far from the case. With the exception of the first string, which can be a plain steel string (or aluminum wound on steel, or for viola aluminum wound on gut) the vast majority of modern violinists and viola players use synthetic-core strings (available since the 1970s), some use gut-core, and some use metal-core (usually some sort of braided core, but some folk-music fiddlers prefer a plain metal core string). Cello and bass also frequently use synthetic or gut core strings, but definitely use metal-core strings more often than the smaller instruments do. Also, it's harder to generalize about tensions than the writer of this sentence may have supposed. Gambaguru (talk) 22:54, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Snipped the most inaccurate part, and fact tag applied to what remains of the sentence about tension. Just plain Bill (talk) 23:07, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gut vs. Steel strings 

message: I count at least five images of people playing bass viols or larger. I'm having trouble imagining how exactly the smaller viols are played. By the leg? Are they supported entirely by the hand? --MinorContributor (talk) 14:19, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The treble is usually played with the player seated and the weight of the instrument supported in the player's lap. The neck of the instrument is pretty much vertical. Bluewave (talk) 17:28, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a video of the pardessus de viole, the smallest of viols. Badagnani (talk) 21:35, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

text: Thank you, that description helped a bit (too bad I can't view the video). If you do find a good image, please add it to the article. Perhaps a consort performing? All the viola da gamba consorts' web sites seem to be content with showing only "posing" images. --MinorContributor (talk) 21:32, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Imagery too focussed on larger viols 

message: Another new version of the viol is the TogaMan GuitarViol, which is essentially a solid-body electric tenor viol. Its tuning is the same as a guitar, whereas the Ruby Gamba is tuned traditionally.
This is just promotional spam for this luthier. This isn't a viol, no matter what he says. It's a guitar you can bow. It belongs (if anywhere since it is a promotion for a commercial product) in the guitar sections.
:The viol was a bowed guitar when it was first invented, too. Badagnani (talk) 18:10, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not a viol! But it is Spam 

message: I have come across this instrument in various museums and collections, and I am unable to find any references as to its origin and history. As I am no expert on stringed instruments at all, is there somebody out there who could add a comment to the viol article?
Cither Viol or Sultana, 
Thomas Perry invented this instrument about 1760 in no 6 Anglesea Street, Dublin, Ireland. 
He is believed to be a son of Claude Pierray of Paris France, 
As a well respected Violin maker he made a big impact on the violin making world, his instruments were well made and sold for huge sums, 
He named his invention the Cither Viol or Sultana, It is basically a bowed English Guitar or Cittern for which he was also a famous maker, but it had many different set ups from 6 to 10 string instruments, 
It is great for playing Celtic music on it and can be played both on the knee as in Viola da Gamba or under the chin as the viola, however none of the instruments I have seen or obtained pictures of from museums have any wear on the soundboard from under the chin, There are many in Museums Worldwide, As Thomas Perry was a violin maker he used various arching on his Violins and Violas but on the Cither Viol he used the same high arch with a lip as on violins or sometimes without it and sanded flush with the sides. all had a flame hole unlike his violins which had f holes, The fingerboard and tailpiece was made from 1.6mm Ivory on a maple block, the 10 pins for the strings were also made in ivory turned pieces, the tailpiece had a strong metal tailgut soldered to a silver plate running through the Tailpiece, The soundboards were of excellent Swiss pine 4.5mm thick in the center and the backs, sides and neck were of nice flamed maple, all had a 5 a side set of lightweight machine heads, terminating in a finial with abalone and pearl star but also other patterns, 
On one of the instruments he used shamrock shaped ebony pegs and that body was violin in outline but the ribs glued to the neck as was common on the Quinton, 
The strings were arranged in 6 courses and tuned c,g,c,e'g'c"
http://www.pauldoyleinstruments.com/availablenow.php?item=437
http://www.mfa.org/collections/search_art.asp?recview=true&id=50260&coll_keywords=sultana&coll_accession=&coll_name=&coll_artist=&coll_place=&coll_medium=&coll_culture=&coll_classification=&coll_credit=&coll_provenance=&coll_location=&coll_has_images=&coll_on_view=&coll_sort=0&coll_sort_order=0&coll_view=0&coll_package=0&coll_start=1
http://www.springersmusic.co.uk/Library/Violin%20collection%20P2.htm
http://72.5.117.145/collections/search_art.asp?recview=true&id=50258&coll_keywords=&coll_accession=&coll_name=&coll_artist=&coll_place=&coll_medium=&coll_culture=&coll_classification=&coll_credit=&coll_provenance=&coll_location=&coll_has_images=&coll_on_view=&coll_sort=1&coll_sort_order=1&coll_view=3&coll_package=10083&coll_start=1
Michael Zapf (talk) 10:53, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shouldn't the cither-viol (or zither-viol, 'Sultana') get some mention? 

message: The graphics beneath the 'history' heading should be rearranged. They take up too much space... when I read this article I thought that the subsection was blank, until I scrolled down. Fffgg (talk) 20:00, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: graphics

message: I'm not sure when this bit got added (at the opening top of the page), but Lira are lira, viols are viols, and cellos are cellos! There was indeed such a (rare) thing as a Lira da Gamba, being a very oversized and bass version of a "lira da braccio" and it was played upright or "da gamba" but that does not make it a viol. David, are you still around? Cyclocifra (talk) 08:11, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lira da gamba is not a Viol 

message: Just because something originated from Spain doesn't mean it automatically has a Moorish link.  The Vihuela, from which the Viol evolved, first appeared in north eastern Spain, Catalonia or nearby, in the 15th century, hundreds of years after the Moors were kicked out of the area.
:This is not my article, but please check out:
:Woodfield, Ian. Howard Mayer Brown, Peter le Huray, John Stevens. ed. The Early History of the Viol. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
:This text documents how the viol playing position was otherwise extinct in Europe until it was adapted from the rabab. FYI, the book does not seem to have any bias towards the Moors.  Just about every other aspect of the evolution of the Vihuela and the pre-Italian viol are credited to the Christian populations of Aragon and Valencia.BassHistory (talk) 05:59, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Done.BassHistory (talk) 02:00, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Moorish Link ?

message: The History section currently ends with a paragraph about an ancient Hebrew harp with a name that happens to be a cognate of viol when transcribed into the Latin alphabet. But the two instruments share no common history or etymology. In fact the instrument is unmentioned in the Hebrew Wikipedia article that corresponds to Viol. In modern Hebrew, apparently, the viols are called "the Huoiolim" and there is no sense of them being connected to the Hebrew "viol."  
So the information on this Hebrew viol is out of place in this article. Here are some things we could do: 
# Start a new article, Viol (Hebrew) or Hebrew viol, and link to it from a hatnote. (We already have one hatnote link to Viola.) 
# Link to Kinnor (often translated "lyre") if the Hebrew viol is similar enough to that instrument. That article contains text about the Hebrew viol almost identical to what has been inserted in this article. 
# Add a section to the History and development section of Harp or the similar section of Lyre. Neither article currently mentions ancient Hebrew instruments. 
For the present I am shortening the passage about the Hebrew viol to make clear that it is not related to the instrument this article is about. I am keeping the link to Kinnor. 
Please comment on the options. Who is interested in expanding WP coverage of the ancient Hebrew instruments? — ℜob C. alias ÀLAROB 15:49, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article needed? [[Viol (Hebrew)]] 

message: Stefano Pio's theory that the viol does not have its origin in the vihuela rests on two foundations: (1) that Johannes Tinctoris did not mention the arco de vihuela and (2) the rapid development and diffusion of the the instrument around Italy is implausible.
Both these claims are extremely weak: 
(1) The first, that a foreigner in Renaissance Italy could be reliably aware of everything going on Italy is plainly ridiculous. Those times were not like more recent times where even trivial things are documented and information is widely available. Most likely it was still very much a new minority instrument being experimented with by some luthiers.
(2) The second claim totally misses Ian Woodfield's point, that Renaissance Italian instrument makers had highly developed instrument making traditions of their own. Any new, underdeveloped instrument, like the early vihuela de arco, would immediately have presented new possibilities to Italian luthiers who would have rapidly developed its potential according to their own traditions. A skilled luthier would have seen new possibilities the moment he first saw the earliest version of the instrument. Ten years is a long time for luthiers and would have been plenty of time for the more developed versions of the instrument to get around Renaissance Italy given Italy's well developed and busy road, sea and river links. The interest created by an exciting new instrument would have ensured a rapid spread. The commercial and political links of Italy were highly developed and the links across the western Mediterranean with the commercial hubs of eastern Spain, Barcelona and Valencia, which were then major cities of Aragon, were strong. Pio's arguments smell of special pleading.
Pio's argument for the viol evolving from the vielle, based on the fifth string being called, incorrectly, a "drone" in old documents is his most plausible argument but falls far short of being decisive. An alternative explanation to Pio's postulated evolution from the vielle is that Italian musicians simply applied the language of the vielle to the viol. It is even possible that in its early evolution into a distinct instrument from the vihuela, the viol may have been influenced by the vielle and so some terms used for the older instrument were applied to the new instrument. This would be unsurprising. Pio needs more evidence.
The traditional starting point for identifying the emergence of the viol from the vihuela are their great similarities in construction and tuning and their coincidence in time and space and given the strong commercial and political connections across the western Mediterranean between the Italian states and eastern Spain at that time, this should not be surprising. Provocateur (talk) 02:55, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Pio's theory

message: This English-language article on the Viol is already fairly well written and thorough, but has anyone here had a look at what they've done to the German article? []  It's totally insane (in a good way!) -- some very busy bees over there ;-).  Anyone looking to expand this article could do a lot worse than run the German page through Google translate and start incorporating bits of content from it into this one.  Lots of great photos, etc. Turjan (talk) 05:52, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: One thing that the German article gets about right and this one at present gets embarassingly wrong is the tunings of the various sizes of viol. (E.g., the 5-string pardessus is NOT tuned like the 6-string pardessus, and the great double bass is not the same thing as violone in G -- its likely tuning was in A.) However, I would recommend NOT following the mishmash of clefs that the German article uses for tunings. Modern notation best-practice for the viols uses treble, alto, and bass clefs only. The German article may in some cases be following the cleffing of the historical sources for specific tunings, but clearly it is not always doing this (no historical source uses the octave-transposed treble clef!!). So I'd advocate normalizing to treble, alto, and bass clefs wherever possible. Gambaguru (talk) 05:28, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, the problems with the tunings finally started to bug me enough that, without addressing this article's other problems (which I haven't time to do), I at least corrected the table of tunings and edited the paragraph preceding it to more accurately indicate its scope. Gambaguru (talk) 23:04, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  German wikipedia entry on the Viola da Gamba is amazing! 

message: I have begun an article on the Viola da Gamba Society of America. The draft is in my sandbox now. I would appreciate any feedback or suggestions to prepare this article for publication. You can find the draft article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:HenryPurcell/sandbox  
--HenryPurcell (talk) 03:21, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The draft version of an article on the Viola da Gamba Society of America has now been accepted as an AfC (Article for Creation). It has now been moved to the draft space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Viola_da_Gamba_Society_of_America  Please feel free to help prepare it for publication.
--HenryPurcell (talk) 21:01, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Viola da Gamba Society of America 

message: A point needs clarifying: if the baryton is not a member of the viol family (this in itself is confusing because several RS seem to suggest it is) then evidence should be here to support it, and the page Baryton should also be edited accordingly as it states that it is a member of the viol family and links here. I am sure there are some knowledgeable music historians here who could point to the definitive answer and sort out the contradiction. Mramoeba (talk) 22:13, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Baryton 

message: The term "flat-edged instruments" occurs at the beginning of the history section of the main article in referring to vihuelas. This term does not make sense; it is unclear what might be meant by "edge". Normally, only the table and back of the vihuela are flat. The sides (ribs) are curved. The edges where the ribs meet the table and back are therefore also curved. Perhaps what is meant is that vihuelas do not have an overhanging edge on the table and back, as the violin family has where these edges extend beyond the ribs. Can anyone here elucidate on what this phrase "flat-edged instruments" is supposed to mean? Otherwise, I can re-write the sentence to make sense. --HenryPurcell (talk) 15:45, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Strikes me that it was meant to be "flat-topped", what with the vihuela not having a curved top like the viol family. Probably a case of a passage poorly translated from another language and/or written by someone with a weaker grasp of English. I'm going to adjust that. oknazevad (talk) 17:49, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  "flat-edged instruments"