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Jenkins' gravestone proclaims that he was eighty-six when he died in 1678. If
humans [27] were seen as the paradigm for age, a fortieth birthday might be
thought of as near the end of a normal human life, so a forty-year-old object
might be described as 'old'. But although expiry at around forty might be seen
as the norm, examples of older people would be familiar and Harrison
virtually defines the critical point as sixty years. Unsurprisingly, it is therefore
impossible to establish a precise number of years someone needed to live in
order to be described as 'old'.
In the eighteenth century and later, the description 'old' often suggests a
viol was made before the late seventeenth century, rather than a fixed
number of years previously. 77 But some viols were already described as 'old'
in sixteenth century England, even as early as 1558. 78 The maximum age
possible for these viols in 1558 would be about seventy years, assuming that
they could by some extraordinary means have found their way from Spain or
from the court of Isabella d'Este in Mantua to a private house in Northern
England. Slightly less unlikely is that they were brought to England by
musicians of Catherine of Aragon, which would make them perhaps sixty
years old, or that they originally belonged the first viol players employed at
the court of Henry VIII, 79 which would make them around forty years old.
Most likely is that they were made in England after the popularity of the viol
was boosted by the influx of players at court in 1540. Eighteen years is easily
long enough for a set of viols to be used, abandoned and broken.
We cannot, in the end, establish for certain what was meant by most
reports of 'old' instruments, as the term was not used consistently. It is
possible that it occasionally meant 'old-fashioned', but contextual information
to confirm this is generally lacking. Probably no-one would disagree that a
hundred-year-old instrument is old, but they might use the same word to
describe a decrepit ten-year-old instrument. Forty years is often mentioned in
the context of age and indicates the scale of age required for an instrument to
qualify as old. We know that age has long been seen as an important matter
worthy of mention when describing instruments, but this does not mean that
people used mainly old instruments, especially if demand outstripped supply
at times of the viols' increasing popularity. But Mace's observation (quoted
above) that old lutes and viols are more highly valued than new ones, is
enduringly true and is independent both of the extent to which such objects
reflect the work of their original makers, and of how satisfactory they are for
music-making.
79. I. Woodfield, The Early History of the Viol (Cambridge, 1984), 206ff; P. Holman, Four and
Twenty Fiddlers: the Violin at the English Court 1540-1690 (Oxford, 1993), 70-72.
77 Fleming, Viol-Making, 7-12.
78 See appendix below.
79 I. Woodfield, The Early History of the Viol (Cambridge, 1984), 206ff; P. Holman, Four and
Twenty Fiddlers: the Violin at the English Court 1540-1690 (Oxford, 1993), 70-72.