Vihuela

What it means

The vihuela is a plucked instrument of the Spanish Renaissance with a flat, guitar-like body, incurved sides, and six double-strung courses. It is tuned like the Renaissance lute in fourths with a major third in the middle; the neck carries movable gut frets. Its sound is clear and dry, less full than that of the round-backed lute. Its music was recorded in tablature, which gives the fingerings rather than the pitches.

Musical use

In the sixteenth century, the vihuela held on the Iberian peninsula the position that the lute held elsewhere: an instrument for solo music, song accompaniment, and artful arrangements of vocal works. The surviving collections contain fantasias, variations on well-known melodies, dances, and songs with accompaniment, and show a polyphonic, richly ornamented way of writing. Toward the end of the century, the smaller, five-course guitar took its place; the transition proceeded gradually. The vihuela differs from the modern guitar in double courses, tuning, fret material, and sound, despite an outwardly related shape.

Performance practice

It is plucked with the fingertips, with short nails and a light touch; the instrument tolerates little force and lives on clarity. The double courses must be tuned pure within themselves, or every note sounds floating — tune each course individually and check often. Check the position of the gut frets, since they shift and then spoil the intonation. Read the tablature directly, rather than transcribing it into standard notation; it is written for the hand and eases the fingerings. Ornaments are mostly not written out in the sources and belong to the shaping.

Bear in mind that the point of contact decides the timbre: close to the bridge the instrument sounds hard and distinct, over the sound hole soft and round. Use this to structure polyphonic pieces, rather than working with volume. Check the courses individually for purity, because floating double strings destroy clarity. With intabulations of vocal works, a look at the underlying model is worthwhile, because voice leading and text explain the phrasing. Keep the frets evenly tensioned and check them regularly.