1st Edition

The Viola d’Amore Its History and Development

By Rachael Durkin Copyright 2020
202 Pages 13 Color & 44 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

202 Pages 13 Color & 44 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

202 Pages 13 Color & 44 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book provides the first scholarly history of the viola d’amore, a popular bowed string instrument of the Baroque era, with a unique tone produced by a set of metal sympathetic strings. Composers like Bach made use of the viola d’amore for its particular sound, but the instrument subsequently fell out of fashion amid orchestral standardisation, only to see a revival as interest in early music... Read more

1. An obsolete instrument of the viol tribe: The viola d’amore

2. For its swetenesse & novelty: The wire-strung viola d’amore

3. Especially charming in the stillness of the evening: The sympathetically-strung viola d’amore

4. La Viole d’amour est ordinairement montée de 6. ou de 7. cordes: Design and development of the viola d’amore

5. A dolefull & straunge noyse of violles, Cythren, Bandurion: The context of the viola d’amore

6. Une masse de violes d'amour chantant une belle prière: The viola d’amore’s revival

Biography

Rachael Durkin is a Senior Lecturer in Music at Northumbria University, specialising in the field of organology. She holds a doctorate from The University of Edinburgh (2015), and has previously worked at both The University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh Napier University.