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'antique'. Old English viols were highly valued on the continent, 48 but
admiration for English instruments was not based solely on their age. For
example, in 1581 Vincenzo Galilei admired English citterns without
commenting on their age, 49 yet most writers praise old English viols. Examples
of 'old' instruments noted in English inventories are given in an appendix at
the end of this article.
All sorts of items were commonly described as 'old', often (in inventories)
to the neglect of other adjectives, but the adjective carried no consistent
implication of quality or value and was used to indicate condition more than
age. 50 There are, however, many cases where age was considered a desirable, or
at least an important, feature of instruments. In 1612 Sir John Denham
commissioned a new Irish harp only after he found he was unable to obtain an
old one, 51 and the seventeenth-century pursuit of old Bologna lutes for
modernisation is well-known, 52 but although there can be no doubt that
players did not only use new viols, there is no evidence that old viols were
positively sought in England, at least before the Restoration. The inventory
made of Raymund Fugger's instruments in Augsburg (1566) mentions, among
other instruments, one hundred and thirty-eight lutes, of which sixteen are
described as old and a further six as old, good. This last distinction, underlined
by the fact that one maker (Sigismund Maler) had some instruments designated
as good and others as old, good, shows that the concepts of old and good were
not invariably associated. 53 The word old in this case referred to instruments
made between about fifteen and forty years before the inventory was drawn
up. 54 Similarly in England the author of Mary Burwell's Lute Tutor recognises
48 Continental admiration of old English viols is discussed in Fleming, Viol-Making, 7-12.
49 V. Galilei, Dialogo dellaKmusica antica e moderna, di Vincentino Galilei nobile
Fiorentino. In sua difesa contro Ioseffo Zerlino (Florence, 1602), 147. [This text is the same as
in Dialogo di Vincentio Galilei nobile Forentino della musica antica, et della moderna
(Florence, 1581)]. Galilei's admiration of English lutes is cited in J. Hawkins, A General
History of the Science and Practice of Music (1853 edn, repr. 1963), I, 404, J. Buxton,
Elizabethan Taste (New York, 1966), 204 and others, but this seems to be a mistranslation of
cetera as lute rather than cittern; Galilei distinguished between these instruments. I am grateful
for Bonnie Blackburn's assistance with translation.
50 M. Fleming, 'An old old viol, and other lumber', Royal Musical Association Research
Chronicle (in preparation).
51 . L. Hulse, 'Sir Michael Hickes (1543-1612): A Study in Musical Patronage', Music £r
Letters 66 (1985), 220-27, at p. 226, n. 37.
52 M. Lowe, 'The Historical Development of the Lute in the 17th Century', GSJ 29 (1976),
11-25, at p. 15.
53 D. Smith, 'The Musical Instrument Inventory of Raymond Fugger', GSJ 33 (1980), 36-
44. Lute no. 72 in this inventory was described as 'very old-fashioned'. The English language
connections and distinctions between age and decrepitude are illustrated in the entry for'old' in
the Oxford English Dictionary (1979).
54 There are, of course, numerous other continental inventories which note instruments'
age. Two old harps and an old viol are mentioned among thirteen instruments in one Spanish
inventory (1588); an old dulcian and four old violin bows are among over thirty instruments in
another (1596): see B. K. de Pascual, 'Two Sixteenth-Century Spanish Inventories', GSJ 49
(1996), 198-202. A 1573 inventory of the Cassel Hofkapelle includes some instruments
described as new and others described as '6 old Geigen, made in Cassel': see A. Baines, 'Two
Cassel Inventories', GSJ 4 (1951), 30-38, at p. 32.