The viol across the Channel and its golden age

Music by Tobias Hume, Richard Sumarte, Alfonso Ferrabosco II

Enrico Ruberti, viola da gamba

Tickets € 5

The most fruitful period for the English viol was between the late sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. Viols were played in nearly every English household belonging to the bourgeoisie and aristocracy. Testamentary and archival documents testify to the presence of viols even in the homes of stonecutters, turners, and bakers. It was during this period that (alongside the consort music that had already been very popular since the end of the previous century) the most specifically English and particularly idiomatic repertoires for the viol developed: lyra viol music and the division viol repertoire. The lyra viol, the main repertoire of the concert, was the quintessentially English way of making the viol a harmonic instrument (thanks to the performance of chords of two to six notes) capable of rivaling its close relative, the lute, in the performance of polyphony.