Early English Viols: Instruments, Makers and Music

Fleming, Michael and Bryan, John (2016) Early English Viols: Instruments, Makers and Music. Routledge. ISBN 978-1472468543

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Abstract

Musical repertory of great importance and quality was performed on viols in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. This is reported by Thomas Mace (1676) who says that ’Your Best Provision’ for playing such music is a chest of old English viols, and he names five early English viol makers than which ’there are no Better in the World’. Enlightened scholars and performers (both professional and amateur) who aim to understand and play this music require reliable historical information and need suitable viols, but so little is known about the instruments and their makers that we cannot specify appropriate instruments with much precision. Our ignorance cannot be remedied exclusively by the scrutiny or use of surviving antique viols because they are extremely rare, they are not accessible to performers and the information they embody is crucially compromised by degradation and alteration. Drawing on a wide variety of evidence including the surviving instruments, music composed for those instruments, and the documentary evidence surrounding the trade of instrument making, Fleming and Bryan draw significant conclusions about the changing nature and varieties of viol in early modern England.

Item Type:	Book
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain M Music and Books on Music > M Music M Music and Books on Music > ML Literature of music T Technology > TT Handicrafts Arts and crafts
Schools:	School of Music, Humanities and Media
Related URLs:	Author Author
Depositing User:	John Bryan
Date Deposited:	08 Nov 2016 09:00
Last Modified:	08 Nov 2016 09:00
URI:	http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/29885

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