History and repertory to 1600

According to the first detailed description of the violin family, in Lanfranco's Scintille di musica, there were four sizes of ‘Violette da Arco senza tasti’ (also called ‘Violetta da Braccio, & da Arco’), ‘Soprano’, ‘Contraalto’, ‘Tenore’ and ‘Basso’, with three tunings; the alto and tenor were tuned in unison.

In other words, the consort consisted of a single violin, two violas of different sizes, and a bass violin.

This disposition, confirmed by later treatises, was the standard one for 16th-century violin consorts, though a third viola was added when five-part dance music became common after 1550. Scorings with two violin parts were gradually adopted in most countries during the 17th century, though the French court orchestra, the ‘Vingt-quatre violons’, retained the old layout until after 1700. The earliest violin consorts probably consisted entirely of three-string instruments. Sylvestro di Ganassi dal Fontego (Lettione seconda, 1543/R) gave the sizes pitched a 5th apart, as in wind consorts of the period: the bass was tuned F–c–g, the violas c–g–d', and the violin g–d'–a'.

This simple and logical arrangement was soon complicated by the addition of a fourth string. Lanfranco's system of specifying the intervals between the strings rather than absolute pitches implies the use of a three-string violin and viola tuned as in Ganassi, but with a four-string bass tuned B'–F–c–g. This tuning, with the fourth string at the bottom extending the range downwards, is the one given by the majority of 16th- and 17th-century sources; given the limitations imposed by the plain gut strings of the time, it must have been used on large instruments with long string lengths, such as the two in an illustration of the banquet for the marriage in 1568 of Duke Wilhelm to Renée of Lorraine. C–G–d–aand F–c–g–d' were specified by Praetorius (Syntagma musicum, ii, 1618, 2/1619/R), while Adriano Banchieri (Conclusioni nel suono dell'organo, 1609/R) specified G–d–a–e'. F–c–g–d' and G–d–a–e' were evidently arrived at by adding the fourth string at the top rather than the bottom, and were probably used on instruments made small enough to be played standing or walking along, supported, in the words of Philibert Jambe de Fer (Epitome musical, 1556), ‘with a little hook in an iron ring, or other thing, which is attached to the back of the said instrument quite conveniently, so it does not hamper the player’.

Jambe de Fer was the first writer to record four-string violins and violas, with the fourth string placed at the top as in the modern tunings. It extended their ranges in 1st position to c''' and f'' respectively, their normal top notes in ensemble music throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. However, Lodovico Zacconi (Prattica di musica, 1592/R), copied by Daniel Hitzler (Extract aus der Neuen Musica oder Singkunst, 1623), gave F–c–g–d' as an alternative for the viola, adding the fourth string at the bottom, and this has given rise to the modern notion of the ‘tenor violin’. Large violas tuned in this way may have existed around 1600, but they are not required by the inner parts of 16th- and 17th-century violin consort music, which never go below c, the lowest note on the ordinary viola.