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The Two Renaissances of the Vihuela

Article · April 2005

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John Griffiths
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MAGAZINE ENSAYO

Some thirty summers have now come and gone since I began playing the vihuela and
researching its history. During that time, what was once an esoteric relic of a distant past has
become a vibrant reality.

After more than three centuries of extinction, the vihuela has become part of the contemporary
musical world through the interaction of players, instrument makers, researchers, publishers,
concert promoters and recording companies.

Through recordings and live performances a small group of contemporary artists have
reinserted the vihuela into the public domain, and allowed a very broad public to experience an
exquisite repertoire.

In accepting the invitation to write this article for Goldberg, I thought that it might be useful,
perhaps even illuminating, to reflect upon the vihuela not only in the context of Renaissance
Spain, but also considering the contemporary evolution of the instrument, its music and its
place in the world.
By John Griffiths

Historical awareness of the vihuela began with the encyclopaedic publications of nineteenth
century Spanish musicógrafos, with the first modern transcription of a song from Miguel de
Fuenllana’s Orphénica lyra appearing in the Calendario Histórico Musical para el año de 1873. A
quarter of a century later, the 1902 publication of Guillermo Morphy’s Les Luthistes espagnols du
XVIe Siècle, an anthology of songs and solo pieces from the seven surviving vihuela books,
drew serious, wider attention to the instrument. This was followed by the inclusion of pieces in
Felipe Pedrell’s Cancionero Popular Musical Español (1918-1922) and Eduardo Martínez Torner’s
Colección de Vihuelistas Españoles del Siglo XVI (1923), an edition of pieces from Luis de
Narváez’s Los seys libros del Delphín de música de cifras para tañer vihuela (1538). While all
these publications brought the vihuela to the attention of erudite scholars, it was the
involvement of the guitarist Emilio Pujol that brought the vihuela to a broader musical public.
Pujol began editing and performing guitar transcriptions of vihuela pieces from the late 1920s
and then took the further step of having a copy made of the recently discovered vihuela in the
Musée Jacquemart André in Paris. In 1933, he made the earliest recording of vihuela music,
including three of Luis Milán’s pavanas in the pioneering recorded music history, L’Anthologie
Sonore, under the direction of the distinguished German musicologist Curt Sachs.

It was not until the 1960s that further vihuela recordings appeared, notably Graciano Tarragó
accompanying Victoria de los Ángeles in recital, and also with the Barcelona ensemble Ars
Musicae. By this time, selected works from Luis Milán’s El Maestro (1536), Narváez’s Delphín
(1538), Alonso Mudarra’s Tres libros de música en cifras para vihuela (1546) had become
common in the recitals of classical guitarists, and Andrés Segovia assisted the movement by
inviting Pujol to participate in his annual master classes at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena. As
a scholar, Pujol had published during this time his complete editions of the music of Narváez
(1945) and Mudarra (1949) in the authoritative Monumentos de la música española, followed in
1965 by the original pieces in Enríquez de Valderrábano’s Libro de música de vihuela intitulado
Silva de sirenas (1547). Much earlier, in 1927, Leo Schrade had published a modern edition of
Milán’s El Maestro. While these new editions were giving easier access to the music, and Pujol’s
included extensive scholarly studies, John Ward was working on the other side of the Atlantic on
a doctoral thesis on the vihuela that was completed in 1953, and which provided the first global
study of instruments, players, repertoire and historical context. Although never published, it still
remains the most authoritative global study of the vihuela and its music.

I suspect that the initial impact and early success of the vihuela was not directly due to its
sound, but rather to the images it conjured. On the one hand, it invoked legendary figures of
antiquity, and the supernatural powers of music embodied in the myths of Orpheus and Apollo,
and other legends invoked by the titles of the sixteenth century vihuela books. At the same

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time, and still in a period in which the guitar was striving to achieve legitimacy on the
international concert platform, these images lent a certain ancestral authority to the guitar that
was made audible through the obsolete modal harmonies of its distant heritage. This
enchantment that linked the past to the present, the twentieth century to the Renaissance, is
also paralleled in the way that Renaissance vihuelists attempted directly to invoke the music of
classical antiquity. Deeper than a romantic yearning for the simplicity of the past, or even a
purely historical concern, vihuelists had learned from the new Platonic translations and
contemporary music theorists of the theories of the Greeks concerning the power of music and
its ethical value in building worthy character. They understood the way that the vihuela could be
used to move the affections and tune the human spirit to the harmony of the universe. These
essentially Pythagorean rationalisations coincided perfectly with Christian devotion and were
thus also in tune with their age. For them, the vihuela was the reincarnate lyre of Orpheus and
they identified the instrument with noble and ancient musical virtues perfected in classical
civilisation.

Towards the end of the 1960s a new upsurge of interest in early instruments was gaining a
momentum that would enable a more extensive revival of the vihuela. Thomas Binkley was the
first vihuela player in my experience to come close to evoking the spirit of sixteenth century
players. The driving force behind the Studio der Frühen Musik and one of the most powerful
contributors to the twentieth century early music revival, Binkley’s performances on the 1968
double-LP Musica iberica (Teldec SAWT 9620/21-B) accompanying Andrea von Ramm were
thoroughly inspirational and have stood the test of time better than many others. At precisely
the same time, the first Spanish discs dedicated exclusively to the vihuela were being planned
for the ambitious Hispavox Colección de música antigua española. The three discs recorded
between 1969 and 1974 by Jorge Fresno (Hispavox HHS 5, HHS 10, HHS 23) and the album by
Rodrigo de Zayas and mezzo-soprano Anne Perret (Hispavox HHS 15) allowed a wide selection
of music from the old vihuela books to be heard for the first time in recorded history.

One of the factors that limited the enduring value of the old Hispavox recordings stemmed from
the quality of instruments available at the time. Fresno and de Zayas played vihuelas that were
handsome but heavy. Built using the principles of modern guitar making and strung at a much
higher tension, they were difficult to play and both artists achieved astonishingly good results
under the circumstances. This experience was part of the process of the evolution of early music
performance, and while luthiers gradually learned that earlier makers knew exactly how to
make instruments that were ideal for their purpose, the situation of the vihuela was limited by
the lack of historical models to copy. At the time, the Jacquemart André vihuela was still the
only known original, but it is a large, unusual instrument and not really a suitable prototype for
modern copies. Since then, two further instruments have been rediscovered: one in Quito,
Ecuador, identified in 1976 by the Chilean guitarist and vihuelist Oscar Ohlsen; the other owned
by the Musée de la Musique, Paris, and brought to public attention in 1998 by museum curator
Joël Dugot. These recent discoveries give valuable new insights, but still do not provide makers
with an ideal model. Contemporary makers draw on a variety of sources. They are guided by
experiment and intuition, and informed by research. Many ideas are inspired by images of
vihuelas preserved in original paintings and prints, although these do not resolve many
fundamental questions of construction. Makers have thus turned to sixteenth century lutes as
well as guitars of the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that appear to
maintain some of the fundamental construction principles developed in the sixteenth.
Information resulting from musicological research furnishes further details. Much has been
deduced, for example, from descriptions of instruments in inventories of deceased estates. They
inform us not only about the owners of vihuelas, but also of their appearance, size and value.
The most valuable instruments were made from rosewood or ebony, common local timbers such
as walnut were used for cheaper vihuelas, soundboards were frequently decorated in the way we
see in illustrations, and instruments were made in a variety of sizes. In the last quarter of the
sixteenth-century, new innovations begin to appear such as instruments with curved rather than
flat backs, and there was a new fashion for sound-hole decorations in the style customarily
associated with later guitars, using multiple layers of parchment to create lazos hondos.
Recently, François Reynaud located and published the 1575 inventory of the workshop of Toledo
violero Mateo de Arratia that gives us a list of his tools and the partially completed instruments
in his workshop and allows us to understand some of the techniques and processes used by
early violeros. Interpreting the available information in individual ways, contemporary vihuela
makers have learned to build light instruments with a string tension only one third of that of the
modern guitar, but which produce a strong, rich tone. They use a very simple form of internal
construction, and respond ideally to the essentially linear polyphony of sixteenth century music.
Since the 1980s several makers have been making outstanding instruments that approximate
the style of original vihuelas as closely as current knowledge permits.

The development of modern instruments of high quality has been only one of the advances of
recent decades. Frequent live performances and the availability of recordings covering a broader
section of the repertory are the most visible evidence of growing interest in the vihuela, but
there have also been great changes in performance style, as well as in our historical knowledge
of the instrument, its music and its historical context. If not involved directly in research

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themselves, most performers of historical instruments keep abreast of scholarly advances and
this, in combination with their intuitive response to the music, can influence many dimensions of
their performance. A greater understanding of each vihuela composer, his musical personality
and performance context, for example, have helped to project their music with greater
individuality. Luis Milán is now understood as a flamboyant entertainer of the ladies at the
Valencian court of Fernando of Aragón and Germaine de Foix, probably a nobleman, and a man
who aspired to be a Renaissance courtier of the kind so lucidly defined by Castiglione. He is
unlikely to have had a formal musical training in counterpoint and vocal polyphony, instead he
was an improviser probably descended from an older unwritten musical tradition of
instrumentalist singers. Milán himself tells us that the works in El Maestro were all composed on
the vihuela and then written down, making them, in effect, transcriptions of his own
improvisations. Understanding him as singer of romances, as a musical storyteller, provides
enormous insight in performing his music: in discovering the narrative logic within his fantasías,
and in performing his music today as if we were the original improvisers. This is precisely the
sensation that we derive from Hopkinson Smith’s two CDs of Milán’s music, one of solo music
(El Maestro, vol. 1, Astrée E7748) and another of songs performed together with soprano
Montserrat Figueras (El Maestro, vol. 2, Astrée E 7777).

One of the things that distinguishes El Maestro from all other vihuela books is that Milán’s music
is all his own: he included no vocal polyphony arranged for the vihuela. Whether by Spanish,
Italian, French or Franco-Flemish composers, these arrangements represent nearly two-thirds of
all the surviving vihuela music, and can be used to comprehend many dimensions of the
vihuelists’ background, training, taste, and other details of their musical style. These
arrangements have traditionally been discarded as of secondary importance compared to original
compositions, however, even as literal transcriptions of the vocal originals, they make highly
attractive solo instrumental pieces, or songs with vihuela accompaniment. Their importance is
even greater when we consider the repertoire in its sociological context. In the last twenty years
there has been a fundamental shift in our perception of the social position of the vihuela in
sixteenth century Spanish society. Formerly seen as principally an instrument of the court,
largely based on evidence suggested by the printed musical sources, recent research makes it
clear that the vihuela enjoyed a much wider popularity. I will return to this point shortly, but it
is relevant here to understanding the tablature arrangements made by the vihuelists. Their
function, on the one hand, was didactic, as they allowed instrumentalists to learn the
composition techniques of master polyphonists through playing their music at a time when
conservatories did not exist and music education possibilities were limited. On the other hand,
the arrangements provided a repertoire of high quality music to be used for leisure purposes,
whether in the private chambers of the courts, or in purely urban or domestic settings. The
vihuela was, in fact, one of the principal vehicles for transmitting to the urban classes the art
music that had traditionally been limited to a much narrower privileged sector of society. Similar
to the role of the piano in the nineteenth century as a transmitter of symphonic and operatic
repertoire through arrangements, the vihuela was a key factor in bringing the highest art music
of its time to the educated middle classes.

The first vihuelist to publish arrangements, Luis de Narváez, was also responsible for
establishing a new style of original fantasia that was emulated by subsequent composers. The
books of Alonso Mudarra and Enríquez de Valderrábano published in the 1540s share many
common characteristics of musical style with Narváez’s Delphín of 1538. Published only two
years after Milán’s El Maestro, Narváez’s Delphín is markedly different. Documents found just
over ten years ago by Juan Ruiz Jiménez have substantially redrawn our image of Narváez.
Originally from Granada, he spent most of his professional life in the service of Francisco de los
Cobos, secretary of Carlos V, later entering the service of Felipe II in 1548. In the new
documents Narváez depicts himself above all as a composer of vocal polyphony, and only
secondly a vihuelist. Two of his motets, incidentally, survive in mid sixteenth century
publications from the Low Countries. It is likely that he met the great Francesco da Milano in
Rome while there with Francisco de los Cobos, and that this was influential in the development
of a new style of vihuela fantasia which he proudly claims to have introduced into Spain. This
new imitative fantasia rapidly became the predominant style and prevailed for the following fifty
years at least. These fantasias derive from the same techniques used by composers of motets
and masses, and are conceived as though the vihuela were an ensemble of three or four
contrapuntal voices, but blending abstract polyphonic ideas with the idiomatic devices suggested
intuitively by the vihuela. Other works by Narváez, however, also show links to Milán and earlier
improvised traditions, especially his diferencias or variations on the formulas associated with the
recitation of romances and in improvisations on cantus firmi from well-known hymn melodies.
Two monographic CDs of Narváez’s music are available, one of solo pieces by Hopkinson Smith
(Los seys libros del Delphín, Astrée E 8706) while the other features songs and solo pieces
performed by Juan Carlos Rivera with soprano Marta Almajano (El Delfín de música, Almaviva
DS-0116).

Being not only the earliest sources, but also the first to be studied, the courtly associations of
Milán and Narváez were influential in constructing the image of the vihuela as a courtly
instrument. The pioneering studies of Pujol and Ward revealed a total of only some thirty-five

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sixteenth century vihuelists. Subsequent archival research has now quadrupled this figure and
articles on many of them are included in the recent Diccionario de la música española e
hispanoamericana. Furthermore, the discovery of printing contracts for some of the vihuela and
related keyboard has made it clear that they were published in large editions of 1000-1500
copies, and were obviously aimed at widespread distribution. The close interrelationship between
the habitually separate research fields of Renaissance vocal polyphony and instrumental music is
also becoming clearer as there are more discoveries of composers such as Francisco Guerrero,
who also played the vihuela and possibly used the instrument as a compositional tool. Not only
do we know of professional vihuelists employed at court, but also of noblemen who were
amateur players. Vihuelists from other social groups include university educated professionals
and their wives, clerics who played the vihuela in their leisure time, and soldiers such as
Garcilaso de la Vega, whose swiftness with the sword was often balanced by skills in poetry and
music. The recent discoveries concerning sixteenth century violeros reaffirm the same view of
the broad popularity of the vihuela and its social penetration, in stark contrast to the paucity of
surviving instruments. If each of the c. 130 known violeros made as few as fifty vihuelas in his
lifetime—a modest figure judging by the inventory of Mateo de Arratia— this would represent
some 6500 instruments, but it is more likely that the surviving names represent only one
quarter or even one tenth of those who practised their craft in the sixteenth century. The
popularity of the vihuela was surely extensive.

Alonso Mudarra spent the last thirty-five years of his life as a canon of Seville Cathedral after
having been raised in the household of the Dukes of the Infantado. His Tres libros de música
(1546) probably reflects both his musical experience in a noble household as well as the musical
tastes of the educated clergy. Mudarra’s collection includes fantasias, tientos, dances, variations,
and tablature arrangements of vocal polyphony and exquisite songs with vihuela
accompaniment. The lyrical quality of these works, many of which have been recorded by
Montserrat Figueras and Hopkinson Smith (Libro tercero de música en cifra y canto, Astrée E
8533), is truly exceptional, and show the lute song to have been well developed in Spain before
flourishing in other parts of Europe. Mudarra’s fantasias are similar to Narváez’s in many ways,
but their initial imitative expositions are often completed by free polyphonic writing in which
Mudarra also applied the same melodic talents that are evident in his songs. Broad selections of
Mudarra’s solo music are available on numerous recordings, notably on the Juan Carlos Rivera
recording De los álamos de Sevilla (Almaviva DS-0106).

It was probably the dedication of Enríquez de Valderrábano’s Silva de sirenas to Francisco de

Zúñiga and the reference to him as a resident of Peñaranda de Duero that lead Juan Bermudo
to assume him to have been a musician in the service of the Count of Miranda, but
contemporary research has failed to uncover any trace of his life. All that remains is his
anthology of 171 solo pieces and songs, both original works and arrangements of music by
other lutenists and vocal composers. The style of his solo music is highly individual and
somewhat enigmatic, and his fantasias proceed as long discourses that often borrow extensively
from the music of other composers, but with relatively little of the polyphonic imitation that is
the structural nucleus of the music of other instrumental composers. Although highly appealing
music, few vihuelists have incorporated much of his music into the commonly performed
repertoire. Two recent recordings by Alfred Fernández present numerous works by Valderrábano
for the first time alongside music by his contemporaries: Valderrábano y los vihuelistas
castellanos (Unacorda UCR 012000) and, more recently Nunca más verán mis ojos (Enchiriadis
EN 2004).

The modern history of vihuela music, in both the publication of editions as well as recordings
has developed largely according to the chronology of the original publications. Milán, Narváez,
and Mudarra are by far the best-known vihuela composers today. After the pioneer Hispavox
recordings of the early 1970s, approximately a decade passed until further solo vihuela
recordings were released. These began with the first of the five CDs by Hopkinson Smith.
Already highly reputed as player from the mid 1970s, Smith’s controversial recordings
challenged accepted notions of vihuela performance. His first vihuela recording, works from El
Maestro (1984), imposed his already legendary dynamic flair on Milán’s music. For the first time,
Milán’s solo music achieved a depth of character and a breadth of colour that gelled with the
composer’s own musical personality. Smith brought a new rhythmic flexibility that was unknown,
and his sound revealed the polyphonic qualities of the vihuela as never before. The same
qualities apply to his subsequent recordings of Narváez and Mudarra. A student of both Emilio
Pujol and John Ward, Smith is a key link between tradition and modernity, and brings together
Pujol’s pioneering spirit and love of the vihuela with Ward’s analytical mind, blending them
together with his own unique artistic gifts. A foundation member of Hesperion XX, he also
played a vital role together with Jordi Savall and Montserrat Figueras in the dramatic redefinition
of the sound of Spanish Renaissance music, following the inspiration of Thomas Binkley. In his
role as professor of lute and vihuela at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Smith has been a
central figure in the development of vihuela performance during the last twenty years, and the
majority of today’s leading vihuelists have attended his classes or have been influenced by his
interpretations.

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The music of the later vihuelists, Miguel de Fuenllana, Diego Pisador and Esteban Daza still
resides more in the domain of musicologists than in the concert hall or on recordings. It
corresponds to a period in which the polyphonic density of music generally increased and is
often extremely demanding both for the performer and listener. I sometimes wonder if it is not
the performer who derives the greatest pleasure from this music through the continuous
discovery of its charms at each new encounter, and with its textures subtly manipulated to give
new nuances. May this have been its original purpose, as intimate musical experience rather
than concert music?

Again allied to the broadening perspective of the vihuela in society, it is of fundamental

importance to realise that both Pisador and Daza were amateur vihuelists, while Fuenllana was
a professional player attached to the court of Felipe II for most of his working life. Pisador was
probably of noble descent and spent many years as a mayordomo in Salamanca, maintaining
family honour in apparently modest circumstances. His Libro de música of 1552 represents years
of dedication and includes arrangements of eight complete masses of Josquin alongside some
thirty original works and fifty further arrangements of vocal polyphony. Even when one resolves
the typographical errors that abound in his tablature, it is evident that his compositional ability
was limited. In his fantasias, Pisador was neither able to control the density of musical texture
nor direct the flow of his harmony with great skill. There is a frustrating and un-reconciled
tension between his ability to conceive satisfying musical forms and his lack of ability to bring
his intentions to fruition. On the other hand, his diferencias and songs, which are of modest
pretensions are more satisfying works in performance. Together with arrangements of vocal
polyphony these are the works performed by Felipe Sánchez Mascuñano with soprano Miryam
Vincent on the 1995 monographic anthology La música de Diego Pisador (Ars Viva AVA16101).

Like Pisador, Esteban Daza came from a large and once prestigious family in neighbouring
Valladolid. Some details of his life suggest him to have been a recluse who took refuge from the
world in the hermetic abstraction of his vihuela. Even after the death of his father, he avoided
taking on the family responsibilities that befall the firstborn son in a large family and there is no
evidence that he ever practised a profession after his university studies. Nor did he venture far
from the family fold: unmarried at fifty, he continued to reside with four of his younger siblings,
and at the end of his life was buried in the family chapel at San Benito el Real. In this
environment, Daza was able to achieve a level of musical competence and polish that we might
consider in modern terms to befit a professional. Together with about forty deft arrangements
of motets, villancicos and villanescas, his fantasias are models of dense polyphonic counterpoint,
high precision miniatures that are cast very well for the instrument. The two recent recordings
that feature Daza’s music give pride of place to his arrangements of Spanish songs, and to his
fantasias. Estevan Daça, El Parnasso (Arcana A316), released in 2001 by Ariel Abramovich and
countertenor José Hernández Pastor, is the first recording entirely dedicated to Daza’s music
and includes nearly all his song arrangements and a selection of fantasias. A smaller but similar
selection is included on Spanish Songbooks (Emergo EC3928-2), released in 2000 by Dutch
vihuelist Lex Eisenhardt and soprano María Luz Álvarez.

Without any doubt, Miguel de Fuenllana is one of the most outstanding instrumental composers
of the sixteenth century and still largely underestimated. He is a composer who deserves to be
included among the most outstanding instrumental musicians of the sixteenth century alongside
Antonio de Cabezón, Francesco da Milano, William Byrd, John Dowland, or any other
acknowledged Renaissance master. In considering the only surviving source of Fuenllana’s
music, it should be remembered that Orphénica lyra (1554) was published when he was
probably still in his early twenties, and we can only guess what he might have achieved in the
following thirty or forty years of his musical career. At the time of the book’s publication,
Fuenllana was in Seville, but the following year the theorist Juan Bermudo cites him as being a
musician of the Marquesa of Tarifa. Although not independently confirmed, the probability of this
is supported by his subsequent appointment to the royal court in 1560 as a chamber musician
to Felipe II’s second wife, Isabel de Valois, immediately following the marchioness’ departure for
Naples where her husband, the Duke of Alcalá, had been appointed viceroy. Fuenllana spent
more than thirty years in court service.

The majority of the 188 pieces in Orphénica lyra are arrangements of vocal polyphony: Mass
movements, motets and Spanish and Italian secular works. Published prior to his court
appointment, this music probably reflects Fuenllana’s musical experience in his employment with
the Spanish nobility. His original works, sixty fantasias and tientos, are demanding exercises in
dense imitative polyphony. They are strongly architectonic works that conceal a high level of
expression within their dense counterpoint. It is very difficult music, and this is undoubtedly a
principal factor that continues to make it the least heard vihuela music today. The only
monographic recording drawn from Fuenllana’s anthology was the 1999 debut of José Miguel
Moreno’s ensemble Orphénica Lyra. Although in many ways an exquisite recording that
transmits some dimensions of Fuenllana’s extraordinary musical sensibility in various ensemble
reconstructions mainly of popular song arrangements, it is disappointing that only two of the
master’s original pieces are included on Fuenllana, Libro de Música para Vihuela intitulado
Orphenica lyra (Glossa GCD 920204). The eleven solo pieces Juan Carlos Rivera selected for his

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record De los álamos de Sevilla (Almaviva DS1 0106), give a complementary selection, although
it too only presents two of the fantasias. Listeners wishing to hear more of these works must
return to the old Hispavox recordings or to excellent modern guitar performances by Italian
Piero Bonaguri Incontri—Encounters (Phoenix 00617), recorded in 2000, in which he uses the
reflective fantasias to contrast with works by twentieth century composers.

Once limited exclusively to the seven vihuela books that we have been discussing until now, the
panorama of the vihuela has been gradually expanding during the last decades. Published in
1993, José Miguel Moreno first solo vihuela recording, Canto del Cavallero (Glossa GCD 920101),
not only consolidated the reputation he had gained during the previous decade as one of the
most formidable modern vihuelists, but also took the bold step of including for the first time
selections from the books of Venegas de Henestrosa (1557) and Hernando de Cabezón (1578)
conceived “para tecla, arpa y vihuela” alongside works by Pisador, Fuenllana, Valderrábano and
Milán. Beyond the luxurious sound and impeccable artistry that Moreno brings to the vihuela,
these are the first recorded attempts to include some of the music that in its own time was
considered interchangeable between keyboard instruments, the vihuela and the harp.

On another front, the vihuela repertory has been slowly expanding due to the discovery of new
tablature manuscripts. The discovery by Juan José Rey in 1975 of works bound into a poetic
anthology Ramillete de flores (1593) held in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid was the first of
these. Its importance was twofold: a source considerably later than those previously known,
and a repertoire with greater emphasis on popular performance styles than on polyphonic
arrangements and fantasias. Together with manuscript additions to the Vienna copy of
Valderrábano’s Silva de sirenas, and another small collection discovered in Simancas and
published by Antonio Corona-Alcalde in 1986, these works have broadened our perspective of
the practice of the vihuela in sixteenth century Spain, helping us to see the published books as
the more formal dimension of a broader and multi-faceted practice.

From the early period of the vihuela’s development in Spain in the second half of the fifteenth
century, the instrument also gained rapid acceptance in the parts of Italy that were under
Spanish influence, especially Naples, and also Rome during the Borgia papacies. Known in Italy
as the viola da mano, the instrument was cultivated there alongside the lute. Exploration of the
Neapolitan face of the vihuela is one of the current areas of research into the instrument. My
own current work has resulted in a volume of music by Neapolitan vihuelists-lutenists, chiefly
Fabrizio Dentice and Giulio Severino, who both spent substantial periods in Spain and were
influential in both geographical regions. Moreover, one of the chief Neapolitan sources, a
manuscript of 350 works kept in Cracow and now known as the Barbarino Lutebook, includes
various pieces by unknown Spanish composers such as Luis Maymón, and early settings of folías
and seguidillas that help to understand the process by which the austere vihuela and its
intricate yet severe music gave way in the early years of the seventeenth-century to the guitar,
to a style based on popular tunes and a vivacious strummed style.

Copyright 2003, Goldberg. [email protected]

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