John Griffiths
A study of the vihuela in Spain at the extremities of its central history, 1465-1535 and 1575-1625, and the need to reassess conventionally accepted notions of the instrument and its practice. In its early life, the vihuela was a multipurpose instrument that could be bowed or plucked, equivalent to what is understood today as a fiddle, a viol or a guitar. It was played throughout the territory of modern Spain, becoming separated into distinct plucked and bowed varieties in the last decade of the fifteenth century. After the last music printed for the instrument (1576), the vihuela continued in use, with its old polyphonic repertory gradually overtaken by the new strummed style around 1600. The tablature manuscripts later than 1576 are put into the context of this process of change. It is clear that the commonly described transition from “vihuela” to “guitar” is principally a question of style change using essentially the same instrument which experienced very little change in construction or sound until the single string guitars (c.1800).
