Ep 1. The master craftsman: Gasparo Da Salo and his violins.

The Violin Chronicles Podcast

Join me as I explore the life and craftsmanship of Gasparo da Salò, a master luthier whose contributions shaped the course of violin making history. From his early beginnings in Brescia, Italy, we uncover the secrets behind his distinctive style and celebrated instruments.

Discover the allure of Gasparo da Salò's double basses, renowned for their robust tone and striking aesthetics. In this episode I speak to Violin maker and expert John Dilworth as we delve into the techniques and innovations that set his instruments apart, captivating the ears and hearts of musicians across generations.

Through expert insights and captivating anecdotes, we unravel the legacy of Gasparo da Salò and the profound impact his creations have had on the violin-making tradition. Explore the stories behind his violins, viola and cellos in The Violin Chronicles Podcast.

Music you have heard in this episode is by

Bloom - Roo Walker, Szeptuchy part 2 - Maciej Sadowski , Brandenburg Concerto No 4 – Kevin Macleod, The penny drops – Ben McElroy, Frost waltz- Kevin Macleod, The waltz from beyond – Albert Behar, Wandering Knight – Giulio Fazio, Telemann Sonata in D maj for viola da gamba – Daniel Yeadon, Budapest – Christian Larssen, Unfamiliar faces – All good folks.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles, a podcast in which I will attempt to bring to life the story surrounding the famous. infamous or just not very well known, but interesting violin makers of history. My name is Linda Lespe. I'm a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French violin making school some years ago now.

In this episode we will be looking at one of the very first violin makers known to us. His name is Gasparo Da Salo. Gasparo Bertolotti is confusingly known as Da Salo because of the town he came from, called Salo. He is perhaps best well known for his basses.

I'm Maxime Bibaud, I'm the principal bass of the Australian Chamber Orchestra. I have the pleasure of playing a bass by Gasparo Da Salo for the last eight years.

Gasparo Da Salo, maker of the double bass that I get to play every day, was born in the mid 1500s, past early 1600s. He is known to be the first maker of double basses, if not the first. Very close to being the first. We believe there are no more than ten of his instruments surviving these days.

And I’m one of the lucky ones that gets to play one of those. I should also say about Salo that, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but he was known to have created the modern violin.

Ooh, it's a touchy subject.

Okay, I will stay out of it.

To answer some of my questions about Gasparo de Salo, I had a chat with John Dilworth, a violin maker and restorer in England. He is one of the people who literally wrote the book on Brescian violin makers called Lutai in Brescia. Here he is.

Well, there's two people at the beginning of the violin, Gaspar de Salo and Andrea Amati in Cremona. And it's still very moot which of them made the first violin. Nobody really knows. Gaspar, in all the old literature they all say, without any doubt, that Gaspar invented the violin. But, you know, subsequent research finds that Amati and Gaspar were virtually, they were working at the same date, and the big problem is that, uh, in Brescia, the whole...All the violin makers in Brescia, they never put a date on their label, which is really annoying. So we don't actually know when any of them were made, whereas in Cremona, right from the get go, Andrea Amati was always very careful to sign and date his labels, so we know where we are with those.

The jury is still out as to the birthplace of the violin.Was it Brescia? Or a small town 40 kilometers south, in Cremona? We don't quite know, and as John Dilworth explained, the fact that the Brescian makers didn't date their instruments also adds to the confusion, or creates it. You see, most, but not all, violins have a label on the inside, glued to the back. In Cremona, for example, Andrea Amati would have on his label made by Andrea Amati of Cremona in the year 1560, for example. But in Brescia, these labels would have “Gaspar Da Salo in Brescia” with no date. A lot of these labels were printed and the date filled in by hand. You see the printing press came at about more or less the same time as the violin, and I imagine that it would've been terribly modern of them. And a question of pride to have a printed label. So herein lies the conundrum. One group dated their instruments and the others didn't. But then again, why would you? Artists at that time didn't necessarily date their paintings. And perhaps Gasparo de Salo identified more with the painters in his city than anyone else. Who knows?

The year is 1585 in the northern Italian region of Lombardy. At the feet of the Alps lies the ancient city of Brescia. The city is a hive of activity, full of wealthy merchants and tradesmen. The Brescians are renowned for their lavish dress made of costly fabrics. Their lively jousting tournaments, their production of superior weaponry, and their music. Not only their music, but their talented musicians, and most of all their instrument makers. It was around about this time that a recent arrival was becoming more and more in demand amongst the instrument makers of Brescia, and they were the instruments of the violin family. If you took a stroll down one of the busy streets near the city centre of Brescia and turned into the Contrada della Corsera, you would eventually happen upon the workshop of Gasparo Bertolotti, one of the most popular violin makers in Brescia.

When we talk about a Brescian violin or the Brescian style, what do we mean exactly? Well, we are mainly talking about a period in the city of Brescia from the middle of the 1500s to the middle of the 1600s. Where the instrument makers worked in a particular fashion and their instruments have characteristics that we would recognize as being unique to them and Brescian school.

I'm John Gagne. I'm a senior lecturer in history at the University of Sydney, and I work mostly on European history from the 13th to the 18th century. Maybe the, the place to start is to talk about the city and sort of where it fits into the geography and the culture of Northern Italy of the, of the Renaissance.

And I suppose, so one of the things is, there's an old Roman road that runs from Venice to Milan. And on that Roman road, you have, You know, Padua and then, uh, Vicenza, Verona. Brescia Bergamo. So they're all like, that's the, a string of cities that over the course of the late Middle Ages, we're in this tug of war between Milan and Venice.

Brescia is one of those, it's one of the larger cities. And what makes it interesting in relationship to Venice is that it's an older city. So Brescia is a Roman city, and you can see it when you go to Brescia today. The old Roman forum ruins are right there in the city. Venice, by contrast, was founded in 421. So last year was its was its 1600th birthday. Brescia is interesting because ultimately it was a Much smaller city than Venice, but it had greater antiquity. And so the people who lived in Brescia were very proud of their, you know, ancient heritage, but over the course of the 15th century, uh, starting in 1426, they fell under Venetian rule.

The other thing to sort of introduce here in terms of the 16th century is the, the so called Italian wars or the wars of Italy, which started in the 1490s when the French kings invaded and Brescia was sacked violently in 1512. By 1512, it was a city of about 50, 000 people, and about 30, 000 people died or fled after the sack.

So these Italian wars were a period in Italy's history that lasted from 1494-1520 Gasparo de Salo as he's known, was born sometime in 1540. So he was almost 20 when these wars finally ended. It's quite hard to keep track of who was fighting who, but basically the French army arrived and everyone started fighting everyone else in a complex power struggle. Involved were France, Spain, Milan, Venice, the Habsburgs, the Holy Roman Empire, Flanders, even England and the Ottoman Empire wanted a piece of the action. During these wars, even if your town or city was not the target of an invading army, having thousands of soldiers abiding by no particular law tramping through would have been just a bit terrifying. Amidst the chaos of these years, Brescia found itself caught up in a spectacular conflict between the French and the Venetians. Brescia was a fantastically wealthy city. It was a center of the arts, a place of science, literature, and architecture. Famous for its musicians and music. It shared all the benefits of trade, wealth, and culture with Venice. During the Italian Wars, the French had taken control of the city, and the King of France thought of it as his possession. But the Brescians identified more with the Venetians, and so, when Venice recaptured the city, the Brescian people were happy to return to the Venetian state. Only the French were not going to let go of such a rich prize so easily. The French king, Louis XII, sent his fiery young cousin, Gaston de Froix, aka the Thunderbolt of Italy, to take back the city.

So in 1512, on a freezing February day, 25 years before our violin maker, Gasparo, was born, under torrential rain, Gaston and his soldiers attacked the city of Brescia, ordering his men to take off their shoes to be able to walk through the squelching mud. This probably didn't help the soldier’s bloodthirsty mood.

The French went on to sack the city in what has been described as one of the most brutal sackings in the Italian wars. And that's saying something because what was happening elsewhere was extremely violent. 4, 000 cartloads of goods were taken away worth three to four million ducats. That's about 600 million US dollars, according to one source. and many of the French soldiers after the sack just went home. They had just hit their biggest payday. This ended up creating a crisis for the French army as they lost so many soldiers, retiring basically.

The French eventually left Brescia, or what was left of it, to Venice. But did they give up? No. The memory was raw, but the people of this city threw themselves into the restoration of their city in a momentous way. There were building projects, monasteries were constructed, six new churches arose, a modern hospital, houses were restored, and businesses recommenced. Brescia was still a luxury brand Venis wanted in its collection.

What? you are asking yourself, do these Italian wars have to do with violins? Well, the ransacking and destruction of the city during Gasparo's parents’ generation created a sort of post traumatic growth in the city during Da Salo's lifetime. And this is when the violin emerges. It's the renaissance and never more so than in the city that had to rebuild itself physically and creatively. And perhaps this created the right mindset for the violin or the viola to be embraced.

John Gagny. So you can think of the beginning of the 16th century, starting with a crisis, which was where all the houses of elites were ransacked, where people had to escape the city. And it took basically the rest of the century to recover from that experience at the beginning of the 16th century. So by the time we get to the sort of violin makers of the 1530s through, you know, 1590s, that's part of the story of cultural recovery is, you know, people coming back into the city, having reasons to spend money and, you know, build up artisanal culture again.

And would they have had a memory of the sack?

Yes.

So, Gasparo, for example, would his parents have,...

Lived through it?, probably. But actually, I mean, to give you an example there is a mathematician named Niccolo Tartaglia. Who wrote a book of, you know, math book basically in the 1550s, and he writes about his experience as a young boy where he was stabbed in the jaw by a soldier. And the reason his last name is Tartaglia is because that's the Italian word for stuttering. Basically, his, mouth was so disrupted and, you know, injured. So yes, I mean, they're, so basically he's living in the 1550s around the time when Gaspar was a 10 year old. So there is, you know, that generation takes a long time to die out. It would be, you know, ever present. The, the, the question I have about Gaspar in terms of this Brescian political history is, you know, Salo, where he's from, is up the west flank of Lake Garda you know, 30, 40 kilometers away. So, unless you were in the city, which the walled city during the sack, as a boy, he probably would have, and his family might have been able to escape the worst of it.

Yeah. . But I imagine that people his parents age, they'd be like, oh. The French...

I mean, there was evidence of this that, you know, took, the rest of the century to overcome. And that's in a way, part of why the 16th century is a century of huge, civic development in terms of architecture, because they're really trying, they have the opportunity, not desired, but sort of forced upon them to rebuild some of the city. And so, that's part of, you know, there are a lot of new structures, churches that go up in the 16th century and in relation to, you know, music and instrumentalists, that is the hub of. Artisanal work for music makers and decorative arts is churches, right? So the fact that there's a chance to rebuild some churches and, you know, refresh them, uh, I think is part of the story of the growth of the artisanal sort of class in the 16th century.

So we find ourselves with these early violin makers in a city rebuilding itself, literally. There's new infrastructure going up. The economy is back in swing by the time De Salo arrives in Brescia and the wealthy citizens are back commissioning art and music, and most importantly for our story, buying instruments.

I'm now talking to Filippo Fassa, a contemporary violin maker in Brescia, who is also a coauthor of the book Lutai in Brescia, a reference book on Brescian instruments.

I'm Filippo Fassa, I'm violin maker in Brescia. I was born in Salò, like Gaspar Oda.

So are you Filippo da Salò?

Exactly. Yes, but I am just, uh, was born in Salò, after I live in Brescia.

The thing you have to remember here is that Filippo is Italian and he speaks with his hands. This, sadly, is lost in the audio medium, so you will just have to imagine them, the hands… remember.

Yes, first I think that it's important to know that Italy in this period, in this age, was,... It's made up of different countries, different states. The Republic of Venice, that's the Vatican, that's the Bourbon in the south, that's the little Florence, and Bologna, and Ferrara, and Pisa, and Genoa, and Milan. Many, many, many, many different state. And in this age, I don't know, from, uh, 15 to the end of 18 is, is a really particularly player in Italy. You know the Renaissance is the all arts develop really fast and, the richer people, particularly the, also the Pope, but not only, the king, uh, the different kingdom, wanted to, have the better artist, arts, generally. Close to the, develop of the music, is obviously that many artisans that make the instrument for, is the reason, I think, why in different part of Italy start more or less together this, uh, this practice.

So we have competing city states in Renaissance Italy all trying to outdo each other in art and music. Could this be the reason the violin appeared on the scene in Brescia and other areas at around the same time? Remember, after the sack of the city, it was almost as though they had to start from zero again. And perhaps this was the perfect environment for a new instrument to make its mark.

The year 1540 was the year that King Henry VIII of England both married and soon after divorced Anne of Cleves, who managed not only to keep her head intact, but also outlived all of Henry's other wives. Bravo! It was also the year Gasparo Bertolotti was born, in a northern town in Italy, and grew up in the small lakeside town of Salo.

This is where we get the name Gasparo da Salo from. It literally means from Salo.

Gasparo da Salo was born in this village that's called Salo. Really not in Salo, the Salo called Pulpenazza.

Salo, on the shores of the magnificent and ancient Lake Garda, is the largest lake in Italy and home to the Benacosaurus. A monster in the lake, and close rival, or maybe a cousin, to the Loch Ness Monster. The area of the lake the Bertolatti's came from was well known for its fine musicians and musical ensembles.

Gasparro and his family lived on the Contrada of Villanorum, or Violin Street. He was raised in a musical family. His grandfather was a musician and a flock holder. Some think he produced gut strings for instruments from his livestock. His father, Francesco, also played music. He was registered in tax records as being a musician and painter, although he was mainly a musician.

In this busy household with six boys and two girls, Gasparo would have learnt music from his father and perhaps other family members. His uncle was also an accomplished musician, and his cousin became a virtuoso player on the violin and trombone. This cousin would go on to work in the nearby courts of Ferrara, the Esté Court.

In Mantua, for the Gonzaga family, and eventually in Rome for the Pope.

Dr. Emily Brayshaw is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney's School of Design. She will be explaining the importance of fashion and dress that would have greatly impacted the world and lives of people in Renaissance Italy during de Salo's lifetime.

I do love Brescia, I love that they're all about the lower half of the string family, like violas, double basses. Bring it.

And like Brescia's a really great place to get yourself established because it's sort of like catered on this frontier Milanese States It's also bigger than Verona. It's bigger than Vincenza. It's bigger than Bergamo. It's richest. It's the most strategically located of these Venetian cities. So there's a lot of opportunity there for him and also an opportunities for patronage as well.

So I don't know if de Salo got that, but you've got influences of feudal nobility and feudal privilege on the city as well. So, you know, some of these sort of feudal guys, these nobilities had a lot of their own court musicians. So one of the leading guys, guys, I sound like a jerk. One of the leading,Uh, nobility Noble Families was the Martino family and Mark Antonio Martino de Vira collected Madrigals so that he collected and published a volume of Madrigals in 1588.

A magical, is a secular vocal music composition. In simpler terms, it's the Backstreet Boys of the Renaissance, without the music.

And he was a military general from Russia, but he was also a nobleman and a composer himself. He was incredibly well connected in the courts of Europe and super richly dressed. He would have had like a nosebleed, lavish wardrobe because diplomatic relations. were very much also about how well you dress too. So if you rocked up to a court poorly dressed, that really besmirched your honour, it besmirched the honour of the nobility of the court as well that you were trying to build contacts with. So, you know, he would have been really set to dress. Right. So he was like representing Brescia. .. And Venice as well, like in the state of Venice to like represent, you know, he actually lived in Villa Ciara, which is halfway between Brescia and Cremona.

And He had his own court composer too. So, you know, these people are incredibly, not just sort of military, sporting, but they're also, you know, really at the forefront of the artistic endeavours of the day, of culture, of music making, and It's really quite an exciting life that they led.

And when you say he collected madrigals, did he write them or he heard them and he sort of collated them into a...

So this collection is fascinating because what it sort of did as well, uh, aristocratic life of the era was marked like by this spirit of competition. So there were lots of duels and jousts and this was sort of central to this expression of masculine virtue. Right? Which we can talk about a bit later when we're talking about the colour black, because that's a big reflection of it as well.

But what he was doing as well, sometimes musicians would challenge each other to duels as well, and they would compose upon the same melody and perform in front of a panel of judges, right? So what he did though, like, this is fascinating because he composed a poem and set it to music, and then he sent that around to 17 different composers, like really notable composers around Italy, inviting them to set this poem to the, like, write their own music for this text.

And this is his collection. And it's really quite important because it shows, you know, the different regional styles in the late Renaissance around Italy of these key composers. And it also doesn't surprise me, therefore, that guys like De Salo benefiting and really honing their art in this region and making the very Finest instruments that they can.

I can imagine In the workshop, them going, oh, did you hear about, you know, what was his name?

Uh, Mark Antonio Martignago.. Like, have you heard about Martino's latest poem? His collection of. It's like really early rap.

I don't know about early rap, but what's really interesting if we start sort of thinking about what these guys were wearing as well is, a lot of it was really about, creating their own identities and curating their own identities. So it's like... Early, I guess, social influences, early social media, you know, curating your identities and we see this in the portraits of what they're wearing as well. So, you know, a lot of these portraits show them almost, like, it does give us a really great idea of, you know, what they wore, sometimes it's aspirational, sometimes like they pose to, you know, the poses are all like significance and it shows what they want to be, who they want to be. They'll reflect things like their occupation, or their cultural station, their social station.

We see DeSalo is working in an environment in which noble patrons really wanted to impress and say something with their wealth. How they dressed, the houses they lived in, and the ability to employ musicians and supply their instruments was definitely a part of this story.

And this is where our instrument maker enters the scene. His profession places him between worlds, much like the musicians of the day whom he would have spent a lot of time with.

John Gagne, again, speaking about what it would have been like to be a musician at this time and the Gonzaga Court.

There is a whiff of disreputability associated with the theatre, but of course musicians also work in churches and Music also, you know, there are theorists of music who are becoming quite renowned and respected. Um, you know, performers who are taking on a, a life, you know, that brings them in shoulder to shoulder with princes and that thing. So I probably, I imagine there's, you know, depends on who you are, right? Like if you're a rough and tumble commedia dell'arte troupe, who's traveling, you know, City to city, you're not going to be necessarily invited into great company. But if you're one of these, theorists, like there's a, there's a famous Brescian theorist from the early 16th century named, Lanfranco, Giovanni Lanfranco, who writes this book called scintillii di Musica or sparkles of music. And that's, you know, that's complex musical theory, mathematics,, ideas about, you know, the movement of the spheres. I mean, like that guy, I imagine he's probably at the level of. associating with professors. And so, you know, I mean, like there's.

If I picked up a book called the sparkles of music, I would not expect such a heavy topic.

Exactly. I can show it to you. It's beautifully illustrated too. It's got all kinds of, you know, diagrams. And so that, I guess the, one of the interesting things is how aware. contemporaries were of the quality of Brescia, like they were sought out for those qualities. The two that I was, you know, trying to remember to talk about today were, you know, the Archduke of Tyrol who has more than one,, Brescian instrument and they're like extravagant instruments. And then the other place where it seems there was a lot of traffic in terms of the specific desire for Brescian instruments was Mantua, where the Gonzaga court was like very musically advanced in the 15th century already and, you know, sought out all kinds of the best musicians and makers, the Gonzaga collection seemed to have quite a few Brescian instruments as well.

So there, I think, you know, it shows you about, let's say, the connoisseurly eye of some of the princely families in the greater region who, you know, developed a love for these instruments and really wanted to put them into their, into their collection. Isabella d'Este marries into the Gonzaga family in the 1480s, you know, she's probably one of the best known collectors of the Renaissance, intensely interested in music. You know, she is one of those people who, she was also courting Leonardo da Vinci, trying to get him to do all kinds of work for her, and does the same with. almost all aspects of her life, Um, clothing, perfumes, musicians, singers, poets. She knows exactly who she wants, and she targets them by sending out her guys, like her agents, to harass them basically into, you know, doing whatever she wants with, you know, greater or lesser success. But it makes perfect sense that she would be quick to sort of like, get the aroma of the quality of Brescian instruments in certain makers, even before this like explosion of, of their prominence, she dies in 1539. So, I mean, this is, this is even before this sort of take-off of the, uh, of the real sort of like the known masters.

She sounds like a real, an influencer.

Absolutely, she totally was.

An IT girl.

Isabella's husband, Francesco Gonzaga, was, you know, a soldier collector. So he's sort of, you know, a man of the, army and a man of peace and the arts. He did, in the last 10 years of his life, he died in 1519. Suffer from terribly from syphilis. So he was out and about, let's say, but there's a new book by, a great scholar, at Monash, Carolyn James, who spent 30 years working on Isabella d'Este and she's, her book is about their partnership basically as rulers, collectors, uh, patrons, that thing. And how Francesco and Isabella worked together. To sort of, you know, both rule a state and produce great art.

I was going to say the Brangelina of the Renaissance, but that didn't end so well. But you know, did, were they happy?

I think they were. I mean, that's part of what, this book is tracing is the, you know, they had a lot of respect for each other.

Um, and the great thing that Carolyn has discovered is the way that Isabella could dish out just as much as Francesco could, could give, you know, that sort of, he would sometimes scold her for things and she would say, look, We agreed I was going to do X. And so I did X and you can't get angry, so, I mean, I think it did, it did turn out well.

And so they drifted apart. Let's say they started living apart, but frankly, that happens often with, power couples is that they have jobs they've got to do and they don't, they can't always work together.

They had their own castles on twin castles.

The Gonzaga court where Gasparo's cousin worked had a long history of patronizing the arts. And when historians talk about the importance of Brescia in the history of instrument making, they will often refer to Isabella d'Este, who in 1495 ordered a set of vials from an unknown luthier in Brescia. If Isabella had ordered them from here, believe me it must have meant that they were the best. You see, Isabella came from the important house of Este, in Ferrara. Growing up, she was given an excellent education, and her little sister, though she loved her dearly, was her main source of competition. They took sibling rivalry to the next level. At the age of ten, the Duke of Milan offered for her hand in marriage, but she was already promised to the Marquise of Mantua…You had to be fast with these things. But no problem. Isabella's little sister, Beatrice, was free, so he accepted her. A wealthy, influential d'Este bride was still a wealthy, influential d'Este bride. This meant that her youngest sister would be a Duchess, and she was just a Marquise. One point to Beatrice.

The two sisters were both intelligent, trendsetters, and very wealthy women of their day. Leaders in fashion, patrons of the art, and in Isabella's case, an astute diplomat. If you can remember the Italian wars we were talking about previously, the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, he was that bright spark who invited the French to invade Naples, and then all hell broke loose.

Well, that was Beatrice's husband. Isabella's husband, on the other hand, Francesco, was captain general of the Venetian armies. So, while he was off fighting whoever was attacking them at the time, Isabella was literally holding the fort back home, probably grinding her teeth wondering what her genius brother in law would do next.

Despite the whole wars, invasions, and sacking of cities thing, the sisters still managed to compete in their own way. Beatrice was rubbing it in that she had two healthy sons, whilst Isabella was finding it hard to fall pregnant. When she did, she had girls. Well, Isabella is also an accomplished musician, so when she adds to her collection of beautiful Renaissance objects, she has a set of vials made in Brescia. So you can imagine these were the best money could buy.

So in the violin making histories of Brescia, this story will always come up of, Isabelle d'Este ordering, uh, a set of vials from, Brescia because she was, uh, well known for, for ordering the best of everything. It's sort of, it’s, it put into prominence the importance of Brescian, uh, instrument making. And, I love this, the stories about her and her sister, how they, they grow up and they're very, uh, competitive. And there's, there's this whole exchange of letters between them and it was about a family funeral and really what they were talking about was one sister was going, so I'm actually going to be wearing this dress. And I've got this painter to paint a picture of me, and I'm sending it to you, just so you know what I'm wearing, and you don't wear the same thing.

And this was actually incredibly important. Emily Brayshaw. Because, you know, there's a lot been written and researched about the role of dress and fashion at funerals, particularly in Florence around the time. But again, these customs extend because. Uh, you know, to show, it's sometimes to show disrespect, to show up in the same clothes.

It's all very carefully curated, like so maybe some of the lead mourners might wear the very finest clothes, and then the next group of mourners might wear sort of like the next, next rank down and things like that. So it's a social occasion, but also, you know, if you're caught wearing the wrong thing, and this applies to men and women as well, you get ridiculed, you get laughed at.

It's like, nah, like you just, it's a big thing. So even though there is that sort of sibling rivalries, if you will, it makes absolute sense and that, you know, they wouldn't want to be wearing the same thing, they'd be curating their outfits, but, uh, you know, I can imagine it'd also be sort of within the context of what's appropriate to wear to a funeral as well. What's interesting too is like collecting this set of instruments, I read that apparently women didn't play these stringed instruments so much at this time. It was considered more suitable for the ladies to play sort of keyboard instruments. So, it would be fascinating to know if she wanted them for her court, if she wanted them for, you know, to have a bash herself, if she was quite an accomplished player, Um, because also, you know, a lot of very, very wealthy women of the era, also had like the agency to be able to sort of buck the trend as well. You know, it's like, well, you know, I want to play the viola. I don't care if I'm a woman. I'm rich. I've got nothing else to do. I'm going to play the viola. You know,

I think she did play the lute, which was a ladies.

A lady's instrument, but I get the feeling the violin definitely wasn't a lady's instrument. It did come a lot later. Hmm.

So far we have looked at the environment in which our violin maker lived, the history of the city, the different ways people would display their wealth, and what they wanted to portray to people through how they spent their money. It is the Renaissance and art is a big thing, but what are people listening to?

Although we call Gasparo de Salo a violin maker, he did in fact make many different types of instruments. Gambas and viols were extremely popular and would have encompassed a large part of his production. Music made on these instruments would have filled noble houses and courts of the day.

Here I'm speaking to Danny Yeadon about these instruments.

So my name's Danny Yeadon, and I play the cello and the viola da gamba, and I have a full time post at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music as a lecturer in cello and chamber music and historical performance. The main transition that happened in terms of compositional technique, from Renaissance into the Baroque, uh, was, uh, one from polyphony, which was the predominant technique of the Renaissance, where all the people involved, get a chance to, to sing or play the, key melodies.

So the, the transition was from that to, uh, what's, called monody or sonata writing, where one instrument is the predominant instrument for the melody. Monteverdi is a good example, actually, because he wrote, he left us all these wonderful madrigals in which the part writing is equal, pretty equal, but he started to explore more soloistic, if you like, or idiomatic writing for the voice in pieces like Vespers and, his operas like Orfeo.

So my most familiar context for the console is vile console playing, because I play the the viol, which of course is the family of instruments that predates the violin family by a couple of hundred years. And originally comes from the Vihuela, which is the medieval equivalent of the vial. A vial consort consists of usually one or two treble viols, one or two tenor viols, and one or two bass viols. Um, and they're all instruments that are played. They rest on the lap and they're played with an underarm bowing technique. A lot of it does, of course, originate in dance music. Galliards and, and jigs, yes.

Is that easy to do on the viol or is it easier on a modern instrument? The sort of the baroque, more sustained note for a very long time? Is that, as you're playing, do you find, , as you're playing different types of music, that it's easier? on your period instrument or is it easier on a modern instrument to play different types of music?

What's interesting is that, the early instruments, the viol and the, and the cello when it's set up as a baroque cello in conjunction, so with, with gut strings and then in conjunction with a baroque bow which is of course tapered, , it's easier to emulate speech and to get nuancing into the sounds with a tapered bow than it is with a modern bow. Because a modern bow is with the heavier tip, and likewise with a viol, a bass viol, and, uh, and a viol bow, which is also long and tapered. It's actually easier with uh, the modern setup to play long legato phrases than it is with historical instruments. So it's as if the historical instruments were designed for lots of rhetorical nuancing and ease of articulation. And with a, with a modern bow, with its heavier tip, it's easier to play these longer sustained notes and phrases. To some extent, the materials inform us. how to play the music, which is, that's fascinating in its own right.

So the French, there was a certain amount of consort writing in France, but the French really championed the bass viol or the viol de gamba, as they called it. And, uh, there were a couple of composers that really particularly championed the instrument and wrote. Much more soloistic music for it in the 17th century., so that was Marin Marais, and also Antoine de Forqueray I think he's called. Forqueray It's fun to pronounce, isn't it? There was Foucault, the scientist, wasn't there?

In England it was played both in courts and in relatively wealthy households. I'm pretty sure also in the courts of northern Italy, and I imagine the same, the same was the case in France and Germany. France and Germany had multiple composers that championed the viole family and, wrote legato lines for the instruments within larger works.

So Bach, for example, included it in some of the most poignant arias in the passions.

And would, the Nobles play as well, or is that seen as the, what was sort of the, the. role or reputation of a, a musician.

So there were, there were nobles who, who played and engaged musicians in their courts.

So, and quite a lot of the nobility were into playing these instruments themselves, and the wealthier ones employed, they had multiple musicians in their employ. There were probably both, uh, musicians playing viol family, but also the, the violin and actually the flute was a really, really popular.

The baroque flute was a very popular instrument with male nobility. There are, I've seen in several museums in Europe, walking sticks that doubled up as baroque flutes.

You never know when you need to, like, whip that out.

Exactly, just play a tune. Start piping up. To appease the enemy.

Okay, and then do you think that, all this music was then just picked up by the, the violin family afterwards? Is that what we've done? Have we, is there a lot of music that we think, think of as, you know, music for the violin family today? That was actually written for the,

Yes, I imagine that at the time in the, in the, 17th and 18th centuries, uh, music from earlier from the Renaissance period was being played by people on instruments from the violin family. But at the same time, the sonata was being cultivated as a compositional form. And, uh, in the Baroque period the music for the members of the viol family really, shone a light on, it was idiomatic, so it was really was specifically for those instruments.

Right, so the, the sonata is like in the Baroque period and you're saying that that's where we see more of the violins coming into more prominent role in the Baroque?

Yes, so through the 17th century and then into the 18th century. So there are early sonatas for the Baroque violin specifically, quite a lot of those are from Italian composers like Castello. And so ornamentation is a whole thing, that whole feature of music throughout the whole period. So a lot of the composers from the Renaissance period wrote out ornaments in addition to expecting players to do their own ornamentation.

Whereas As we move into the Baroque period, there's a sense that, uh, composers expected the players to, to do more of their own improvisation. So we have, examples, for example, Corelli's Violin Sonatas. Corelli has, uh, it's a wonderful, the Opus 5 Sonatas, the original manuscripts and engravings show simple version of the violin part above the basso continuo, and then above that, Corelli writes out his own ornamented version. Right. Of the simpler version of the melody. So that really gives us an idea of, of what composers expected musicians to do spontaneously.

I get the feeling that it was very, the music was very, open to interpretation and the musicians themselves could put, could add their personality to the works.

Yes. A lot more so than today. Yes.That's a Yes. That's definitely, definitely the case in my opinion. Yes, I think we've become very allied to the score these days, scores from through the ages, but we do know from pedagogical writings and treatises that musicians were expected to, to very much to have their own input.

Increasingly, you're seeing brave musicians who are writing their own cadenzas from music of any period., like they're saying, this is your improvisation.

Okay. And we've become quite, like, today, if you just went off and started mucking around with the adding or augmentation to a very well-known piece, it might be a bit shocking.

Yes. Although, although there is a return to that practice. Yes, lots and lots of brave performers are doing that more and more.

And do we get the word concert from the consort?

Quite possibly, yes. Yes. I'm not 100 percent sure, but...

I'm going to a consort. And it turns into I'm going to a concert.

Concert and concerto, of course.

So the Brandenburg Concertos are a very good example because There are many different instruments involved from one concerto to the next. It's as if Bach wanted to give a real solo highlighting spot to instruments in turn. And that's where you needed a lot, a quite powerful instrument.

Yes, yes. And he wrote for violin.

He did, yes, yes. Much more for the violin family than for the, for the viol family. In the, in Brandenburg six, that scored for two violas da gamba Okay And two violas from the violin family, so that's a really, really beautiful texture. Gives us an idea that Bach was just as fascinated by the viol family as the violin family, even though the violin family was the, was becoming by far the dominant family of instruments.

It's a bit like chicken and egg, isn't it? Which came first? Did they, did they produce those amazing, powerful instruments and that inspired writing or all were they exploring? Writing styles that led to even more powerful instruments.

I could imagine a musician going, “Look, I've got this Bach piece. I want people to hear me more. I don't, I feel like I'm getting drowned out by the others. I'm special. Come on”. Is it harder to get a very loud sound from, It's not about power, is it, the gambas?

No, no, definitely in terms of decibel level. It's much softer than the cello, but it's fascinating because it does have quite, there's something penetrating about the sounds. For example, Brandenburg Six is played in large concert halls, and the viola da Gamba players in that piece really, really have to play at maximum volume a lot of the time in order to be heard. But it does work, it is possible. You need so many facets on there, that, as you say, these things that tie in. I'm trying think how like, the, it sort of was overtaken by the violin family.

Um, and I think also one of the things was it was easier to take a violin outside, it was, it's probably a bit more fragile to go walking around out in the damp Venetian air with a with a viol. Yes. With a viaol, yes. And uh, also in terms of outdoors, of course, violins transportable. You can walk and play the violin outdoors with a viol as it sits in the lap.

It's not so, not such a portable instrument.

As we heard, vials were a very important instrument in 16th century Italy, and Gasparo's workshop did indeed make many instruments from the viol family. But as we will see during De Salo's lifetime, the viols and viola da gambas will have to start seriously competing with the violin family. We do see from time-to-time cellos and violas that were once viols and gambas that have been at some point in their history transformed to feed the demand for more modern instruments, and yet these instruments can still hold their own today as you have just been listening to the enchanting Teleman Sonata in D Major, played by Daniel Yeadon on his viol. So here we find Gasparo Da Salo in Brescia, a city controlled by the very powerful and fashionable Venetian state.

They've had to rebuild themselves and move on from the brutal sacking a generation earlier and reestablish themselves. Brescia had, before the wars been known for its fine artisans and now in the mid-1560s the city is back on its feet and embracing the renaissance ideals with a boom in building and culture.

We have seen how important fashion and dress was and the ability to have musicians or play music oneself was also part of the fashionable world, and who better to supply you with that beautiful instrument but Brescia's best instrument maker, Gasparo de Salo.

I hope you have enjoyed this first episode of the Violin Chronicles about Gasparo de Salo. I wanted to convey an idea of the world in which he operated, that in some sense is not so different to the one we live in today. In the next episode, I will be looking into this instrument maker's life and his own family dramas.

It's a story of war, plague, musical innovation, love, and loss. All the big hard-hitting themes. But before I go, I would like to thank all of my lovely guests. Maxime Bibaud, Dr. John Gagne, John Dilworth, Dr. Emily Brayshaw, Filippo Fasser, and Danny Yeadon. I would also like to thank the Australian Chamber Orchestra for their help and cooperation, and to you, the audience, for listening.

In part two, we'll see what happens to Gasparo when he moves to Brescia and sets up his workshop. Gasparo da Salo is starting to look a bit like a Renaissance Mrs. Bennet, trying to find spouses for an array of family members, and at the same time, run a successful business. I'm Linda Lespets, and I hope you'll join me for the next episode of The Violin Chronicles.