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-ol v lr\rll Low. 23
ON THE STRING LENGTH OF THE lOth CENTURY VniUELA DA MANO
E Segerman and D Abbott
Some of the vihuela music (1) involves a full stop (barre) on the first fret while
fingering the fifth fret, involving a stretch of about 19^ of the string length with
equal tempered fretting. This is very difficult for most players on an instrument
as large as the surviving vihuela in Paris (2) which had an originai string length
of about 80 cm.
The only other known information or. the sizes of vihuelas is inconographic. On
representation^size can be determined by comparison with objects of known ~ize.
The most convenient such object is a human player of the instrument. A method
for scaling representations is given in the Appendix.
In the Table we show the results of measurements of string length on photographs
of 4 drawings, 2 sculptures and a painting of instruments believd to have been
intended to be vihuelas. Because of crudity of drawing,either because of the
artist's technique or the small size of the originai, some of these data could be in
error by more than 10^. Our feeling is that most of it is accurate to less than 10%.
Distinguishing vihuelas from guitars is not helped by the habit the artisls had of not
being very concemed about getting numbers of strings or pegs right. With
justification discussed here later, size is the primary criterion.
It seems then that these data offer some evidence for string lengths of aboul 60cm
(5 depictions), 70 cm (2 depictions) and 80 cm (the surviving Paris instrument).
The first courses of such instruments could be tuned to P, d' and e' respectively
in a pitch standard within a semitone below modem. This set of relative sizes is
remarkably similar to the instructions often appearing in Baroque guitar books on
how to transpose 'alfabeto' notation for guitars of 3 sizes to play together, where
the smallest is tuned a fourth above the largest and the middle*-sized one is a tone
above the largest.
Bermudo (8) mentioned a six-course "descant" as one of a trio which can play
together, the others being a vihuela and guitar. He did not describe the "descant"
as he did (rather repetitiously) every other instrument involvcd, implying that it
was so little different from another instrument already described that it did not
need to be independently considered. We cannot imagine it to be other than a small
vihuela. His instructions indicate that the descant was tuned a fourth above the
vihuela and that the first course of the guitar was tuned a fifth above that of the
vihuela when the three played together.
It seems reasonable to relate the surviving Paris 80 cm vihuela in e' to Bermudo's
proper vihuela, and the 60 cm vihuela in f to Bermudo's
descant. This implics that the guitar's first course was tuned to g', a most
appropriate tuning if we consider that the size of the Dias guitar at the Royal College
is typical. The Guerrero illustration (9) shows a guitar of this size (about 55 cm
string length). Bermudo implied an a' tuning for the guitar, which is consistent
with this if we assume that mid-16th century Spain used a tone-low pitch standard.
On this assumption the descant would have been considered to have been in g' and
the large vihuela in d\ Bermudo indicated that the vihuela player could imagine any
pitch level for the instrument's tuning, but g' or a' was most usuai. Luis Milan