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 Marc Vanscheeuwijck Marco Ceccato
Guido Olivieri Matteo Malagoli Luigi Sisto

Gli esordi del violoncello

a Napoli e in Europa tra Sei e Settecento

a cura di
Dinko Fabris
 Proprietà letteraria riservata
Studio Editoriale Cafagna s.r.l., Barletta

Finito di stampare nel marzo 2020

da A.G.E. s.r.l., Urbino
per conto dello Studio Editoriale Cafagna s.r.l., Barletta

isbn 978-88-96906-59-0
 le vie dei suoni /5

Agli inizi del terzo millennio, Jean-Jacques Nattiez ha ben chiarito come, in
un’epoca in cui l’uomo sulla terra ha accesso praticamente a tutte le musiche
di ogni tempo e di ogni latitudine, sia necessario approfondirne criticamente
le specificità storiche e culturali di volta in volta diverse, e ciò che è vero per
la musica vale anche per il discorso sulla musica, ossia per la musicologia nelle
sue tante applicazioni. Questa collana, recuperando nel titolo l’intuizione
del viaggiatore Bruce Chatwin sulle infinite vie legate ai canti di un’umanità
nata per muoversi sul nostro pianeta, intende promuovere quell’“unità della
musicologia” oggi sempre più necessaria nella circolazione internazionale delle
idee e delle ricerche. Un itinerario preferenziale, perché ancora poco frequentato
dalle pubblicazioni musicologiche internazionali, sarà quello delle musiche
delle diverse sponde del Mediterraneo, con uno sguardo all’Europa “dal Sud”.
Accanto a professionisti di solida reputazione internazionale saranno accolte
proposte innovative di giovani ricercatori che potranno trovare la propria “via
dei suoni” nella fase d’avvio della loro professione musicologica.

Collana diretta da
Dinko Fabris

Comitato scientifico
Egberto Bermudez (Universidad de Bogotà), Vincenzo De Gregorio
(Preside Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra di Roma), Alessandro Di Profio
(Université Paris 3-Sorbonne), Manuel Pedro Ferreira (Universidad Nova de
Lisboa), Nicoletta Guidobaldi (Università di Bologna a Ravenna), Thomas
F. Kelly (Harvard University), Robert L. Kendrick (University of Chicago),
Tess Knighton (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Barcelona),
Metoda Kokole (Institute of Musicology, Ljubljana), Lorenzo Mattei
(Università Aldo Moro di Bari), Anis Meddem (Centre de Musiques Arabes
et Mediterranéennes di Sidi Bou Said, Tunisi), Margaret Murata (University
of California at Irvine), Georgia Petroudi (European University Cyprus),
Klaus Pietschmann (Universität Mainz), Adriano Rossi (Presidente ismeo/
Università L’Orientale di Napoli), Anna Tedesco (Università di Palermo),
Luisa Zanoncelli (Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi, Venezia).

I volumi di questa collana sono sottoposti a un sistema di double blind referee.

Il Comitato scientifico svolge anche le funzioni di Comitato dei referee
I testi presenti in questo volume sono stati inviati
ai due revisori anonimi il 30 giugno 2019 e approvati il 30 luglio 2019
 Indice

Presentazione 9
di Vincenzo De Gregorio

Gli esordi del violoncello a Napoli e in Italia

tra Sei e Settecento: un’introduzione 13
di Dinko Fabris

1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 25

by Marc Vanscheeuwijck
What is the Violoncello? The Question Reconsidered 28
The Methode of Michel Corrette (1741) 36
The Violoncello in the early 18th Century 43
Small Bass Violins before 1700 63
Large Bass Violins in the 17th Century 82
The Violoncello da Spalla: A 21st-Century Aberration? 88
Bibliography 94

2. Aspetti formali e sviluppo della sonata per violoncello

a Roma tra XVII e XVIII secolo 101
di Marco Ceccato
Parte I. I violoncellisti virtuosi nella Roma dei cardinali 101
Parte II. Aspetti formali di alcune sonate romane
per violoncello del primo Settecento 106
 Indice

3. Prassi e didattica del violoncello nella Napoli

del Settecento: un bilancio degli studi 117
di Guido Olivieri

4. Origini della letteratura sacra per violoncello

nella Napoli barocca 129
di Matteo Malagoli
Introduzione 129
La viola da gamba a Napoli 132
Gli albori della scuola violoncellistica napoletana 135
La letteratura con violoncello in ambito ecclesiastico 137
Rocco Greco, le antifone per violoncello e basso continuo 139
Conclusione 144
Appendice 146

5. Da Mathias Popeller ai Gagliano.

La nascita della scuola liutaria di Napoli 157
di Luigi Sisto
La liuteria a Napoli nella seconda metà del XVII secolo 158
Liutai napoletani e cordari abruzzesi 165
Alessandro Gagliano 171
Appendice documentaria 175

Indice dei nomi 185

Gli autori 191

 1. Violoncello and other
Bass Violins in Baroque Italy
by Marc Vanscheeuwijck

Since the advent of the early music revival – or better, the historical
(or historically informed) performance practice movement –
now almost seven decades ago, musicians and scholars have
resurrected most instruments and their playing techniques as
they were utilized during the early modern period in Europe.
As late as the 1970s and 1980s, musicians still experienced some
difficulties in finding an “acceptable” sound and intonation on
cornettos, sackbuts, recorders, trumpets, oboes, chalumeaux,
and other instruments, while string instruments were not thought
to have undergone such profound changes since the 18th century
as some of the wind instruments had (and still have, e.g., in case
of the natural trumpet). Indeed, after some bold pioneering
work in the 1960s many string players, particularly of the violin
family instruments, have established some new “standards”
for Baroque organology and performance practices that drew
information from treatises about music theory, education and
composition; from method books about instruments, voices,
ornamentation, and improvisation; from iconography; from
archival documents, letters, newspapers, and chronicles; from
the instruments themselves (in those extremely rare cases that
they were preserved in their fully original state); and from the
various repertoires. This approach has allowed performers to
reconstruct or sometimes reinvent an early-modern musical
performance language based in classical rhetoric, thus creating
the sounds we now attribute to the music of the Renaissance,
Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods.
Over these past seven decades, however, the sounds and
approaches within this historically informed performance
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

movement have undergone many changes and evolutions, as

we can hear in recordings. History is not a static discipline, but
rather a contemporary reconstitution of the past through ever-
changing methodologies; a continuous growth of knowledge,
and the constant accumulation of discoveries through on-
going research. It is therefore only natural that a historically-
based approach to performance of historical music should have
undergone the same sorts of evolutions.
While I do not claim to sketch the history of this in
fact ultra-modern approach to performance (paraphrasing
Richard Taruskin), I find it imperative to understand this sort
of dynamic in order to get a sense of what happened in the
revival of the instrument which is our focus in this volume:
the violoncello, most often abbreviated in English as cello.
This term, so familiar to us now, only appeared in 1665, as a
diminutive of the more “normal” term for the violone, a bass
instrument of the violin family. Although the term violoncello
gradually took over as the 18th century progressed, it really
only became the instrument we know today during the 19th
century, and in the early decades of the 20th century it was
eventually furnished with endpin and steel strings. Since the
1960s, when cellists began to develop an interest in the earlier
cellos, dropped the endpin, and went back to gut strings, the
new name “Baroque cello” emerged. When a decade or so
later, performers used slightly smaller instruments with five
strings for J. S. Bach’s 6th Suite for solo cello (as required in the
manuscript), the term “violoncello piccolo” entered the stage.
These two terms were used to cover the entire cello picture
from about 1500 to 1800, even though some players have used
the term “Classical cello” when referring to a late 18th-century
type that was not fundamentally different from the Baroque
cello (except perhaps for the bow). More recently, in the early
21st century, the small “violoncello da spalla” – a rather large
viola-sized instrument with higher ribs played against the chest
and strapped around the neck and shoulders of the player –
has also emerged as an alternative instrument for performing
18th-century solo and basso continuo repertoires.
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

The fact is, however, that during the early modern period
we find a great variety in the terminology used to denote
bass instruments of the violin and viola da gamba families.
Moreover, the same diversity is apparent in the many images we
have of such instruments and in the documentary descriptions.
So, what was the situation really? Could it be possible that
this striking diversity within documents, iconography, and
terminology in fact disagrees with our modern understanding
of the “cello” in the Baroque period? Or had we not quite
gone far enough in our reconstruction of what that instrument
could have been before the first complete violoncello method
book by Michel Corrette (1707-1795) appeared in Paris in
1741? To answer these basic questions, we cannot rely much
upon “extant” instruments, since virtually all 17th-century
instruments have been profoundly altered over time as needs
changed, and a large number of “Baroque” instruments were
actually created or even forged in the early 19th century (another
period fascinated with the past).
That the cello before 1800 was not the monolithic construct
we have come to consider it has become increasingly clear since
the 1990s. A new critical approach towards the extreme variety
concerning the bass violins that seems to have characterized
the period before 1800 is now surfacing in performance and
pedagogy. At the same time some extreme propositions such as
the violoncello da spalla have now also been subjected to critical
re-evaluation.
In this essay, I propose to explore various narratives about
these many types of bass violins – not all of them, but a selection
of some of the most salient ones in the Baroque era in Italy and
elsewhere in Europe where Italian cellists had a major influence
– first by trying to understand what the violoncello was in the
early modern period. After exploring that basic question, I will
take as my point of departure the earliest cello method book
by Corrette (1741). Instead of adopting a simple chronological
approach I will then need to work my way back into the early
18th century and then the 17th, by way of two crucial centers in the
development of the bass violins, Naples and Bologna. Finally, I
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

will conclude by addressing issues and problems concerning the

violoncello da spalla.

What is the Violoncello? The Question Reconsidered

Today’s cellists interested in historical performance practices

have adopted the general approach of using instruments that
are, both organologically and in terms of playing technique,
fairly close to the modern cello. Indeed, the “Baroque” cello
has roughly been characterized by its violin shape; its four (gut
or wire-wound gut) strings tuned in fifths (usually in C-G-
d-a, except in a few cases such as J. S. Bach’s 5th Suite for cello
solo in c-minor, BWV 1011, tuned C-G-d-g); a slightly shorter
fingerboard; a flatter, differently shaped tailpiece and bridge;
the absence of an endpin; an overall case length of c.75cm
and vibrating string length of c.69cm, and sometimes even a
differently-angled neck (often straighter). It is always played
rigorously in a da-gamba position. The bows cellists have been
using are most frequently short Italian- or French-style sticks for
17th-century repertoires; longer, though still convex or straight,
bows for early 18th-century music; and so-called transitional bows
for later repertoires. All are played exclusively with overhand
grip, that is, with the hand above the stick, more or less the
way violinists hold their bow. As mentioned earlier, the term


Parts of this essay offer revised and updated sections, summaries, and
re-elaborations from various texts I have written in the past decade. These
primarily include the published CD liner notes: Marc Vanscheeuwijck, “Nel
Giardino di Partenope. Sonate Napoletane per Violoncello,” liner notes for
Nel Giardino di Partenope. Gaetano Nasillo, Michele Barchi, Sara Bennici (1
CD Arcana/Outhere Music France A185, 2015). They also include unpublished
conference papers: “The Violoncello in Eighteenth-Century Naples” paper
presented at the Conference Pietro Marchitelli, Michele Mascitti e la Scuola
Strumentale Napoletana (Villa Santa Maria, November 2014); and “Se non è
vero è molto ben trovato: The “Violoncello da Spalla” in the 21st Century,” pa-
per presented at the 18th Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music
(Cremona, July 2019). And finally: “Cello Stories” liner notes for Cello Stories.
The Cello in the 17th & 18th Centuries. Bruno Cocset, Les Basses Réunies (5 CDs
Alpha Classics/Outhere Music France Alpha 890, 2016).
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

violoncello (or its alternative violoncino) is merely a diminutive

from the generic term violone, which was more commonly
used in the Baroque period to indicate any large bowed string
instrument used to play bass parts in a musical ensemble.
Moreover, in the last decades the term violone has been used
primarily to denote a usually octaviating larger instrument of
the double bass type; we will see in fact that this usage is far
too restrictive. For now let us start from the assumption that
the violone was just the most common name for a large bass
viola – literally – and was often a member of the violin or viola
da braccio family, though this fact will become less relevant as we
explore the matter further.
As bass instruments of the violin family (henceforth, “bass
violins”), violoncelli and violoni have been the object of much
discussion and confusion in recent years, particularly since
Stephen Bonta published two articles in 1977 and 1978. The
second essay, on the terminology of bass violins in 17th-century
Italy, showed the enormous name diversity bass violins were
given: the terms encountered, in addition to violone and
violoncello, are bassetto, basso viola, basso da brazzo, viola,
violone da braccio, violonzono, violoncino, violone piccolo, and
many more. The 1977 article argued that the violone was not
necessarily a 16-foot double bass, but could be an 8-foot bass of
the violin family. According to Bonta, the difference between
the violone and the violoncello – a term first encountered in
the 1665 Venetian print of the Sonate A 2. & a tre con la parte di
violoncello a beneplacito (Opus 4) by Bolognese organist Giulio


Stephen Bonta, “From Violone to Violoncello: A Question of Strings?”
Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society 3 (1977): 64-99; “Terminol-
ogy for the Bass Violin in Seventeenth-Century Italy,” Journal of the American
Musical Instrument Society 4 (1978): 5-43.

By 8-foot I refer to the pitch an eight-foot long organ pipe produces (in
the Praestant or Principale register), that is C (low C under the bass clef, or
lowest note of the cello). 16-foot refers to the octave below (C1-B1), while 4-foot
refers to the octave above (c-b), and that has nothing to do with the size of the
instrument.
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

Cesare Arresti (1619-1701) – as that the violone was usually larger,

and the violoncello (as of 1660) was strung with at least one wire-
wound gut string (a development in string making that occurred
in approximately the same decade in such centers as Bologna
and Bergamo) and was considerably smaller, thus offering both
a good sonorous low range and greater ease in playing more
virtuoso passage work.
Moreover, since no treatises or methods before Michel
Corrette’s Methode, théorique et pratique. Pour apprendre en peu
de tems le violoncelle dans sa perfection (Paris, 1741) explain in
sufficient detail how to play the instrument, modern Baroque
cellists have largely based their technique on Corrette’s precepts
on how to hold the instrument and the bow, and how to finger
the cello. In the end, cellists who took up the “Baroque” cello
did not need to go too far out of their comfort zone in terms
of equipment and playing technique. Yet I believe that what
Corrette described in his treatise was not a generalized practice,
even in 1741, but rather a relatively new approach (that of
Giovanni Bononcini and most likely also of such Neapolitan
cellists as Francesco Alborea and Salvatore Lanzetti), both in
playing technique and in the use of a semi-standardized ideal
compromise instrument, adopted fairly recently, that offered the
best features of both large and small types. Corrette wanted to
promote both the instrument and its playing technique as “the”
correct way in his method book that was intended primarily
for amateur cellists. In short, the “Corrette way” of performing
on the cello came to be utilized for the repertoires of the mid-
eighteenth century and later, but also for those of the two
preceding centuries.
It is necessary then to fundamentally revise such a standardizing
approach. I detect a much larger diversity of possible instrument
types, in which we can see a clear polarization between two
major groups: instruments larger than today’s cellos, referred to


Giulio Cesare Arresti, Sonate a 2, & a tre. Con la parte del violoncello a
beneplacido. Opera quarta (Venice: F. Magni, 1665); only the Violoncello part
survived in PL-WRu, 50258 Muz.
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

as violoni; and a category of instruments smaller than today’s

cellos, called violoncelli (or violoncini before 1665). This great
diversity should also be extended to playing techniques, number
of strings, and tunings, as they applied in various European
regions (not yet nations) for the 17th and early 18th centuries. In
short, we need to realize that all the term “violoncello” means
is a small bass violin, literally a “small violone,” which can be
a variety of organological types with different sizes, shapes,
number of strings, tunings, and playing techniques. Moreover,
if we speak in an absolutely strict terminological sense, then the
violoncello is the type of instrument described above emerging
in the 1660s. This all suggests that the question “What is the
Violoncello?,” is too narrow when what we intend to do is deal
with the bass of the violin family in the early modern period.
Let us then broaden the topic to something more inclusive and
comprehensive.

Large and Small Bass Violins

In addition to the most standard terminology I will also address

a few other terms, such as violoncello piccolo, violoncello (or vio-
la) da spalla (shoulder cello), viola pomposa, and viola da collo
(literally neck viol), as mentioned in the opera La Gerusalemme
liberata (Dresden, 1687) by Carlo Pallavicino. Although violon-
cello piccolo is traditionally associated in modern terminology
with slightly later types of smallish instruments, most often with
five strings, I contend that in fact they are all members of the
larger category of the violoncello (in the 17th-century sense) as
well – and that such terminological differences and delimita-
tions were only made in the 19th and 20th centuries, in opposi-
tion to what has later become our universal “violoncello.” We
should not forget that the budding 18th-century passion for stan-
dardization, which developed into 19th-century evolutionary and
positivistic thinking and culminated in global theories and in
an obsession with systematization, has resulted in a clear but
highly artificial and anachronistic separation of issues and ideas
that were not necessarily so separate in early modern contexts.
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

A striking example is that, when looking at bowed bass instru-

ments, we recognize viole da gamba only if they correspond to
our modern construct of what a viola da gamba should be. The
same is true for viole da braccio, and whatever fits neither group
is too often designated as a “hybrid” – which, if one studies the
entire available body of iconographic sources, appears to be the
largest of the three categories. This is definitely a notion that
post-grand-narrative scholarship is no longer willing to accept,
because it does not correspond to what we now consider to be
the reality of the past.
In looking at European iconographic sources of the 16th
through the mid-18th centuries, and without (yet) categorizing
types of instruments and performing styles within small
geographical regions, we realize how rarely the bowed bass
instruments depicted even remotely resemble our current
concept of the Baroque cello, let alone how the instrument
was actually played. Documentary sources, repertoire, and
iconography show us bass violin-type instruments being held da
gamba (between the legs), da spalla (on the right shoulder), da
braccio (against the chest), across the player’s lap, or standing on
the floor, on a stool, with some sort of endpin, or hung (mostly
vertically) with a rope around the neck or shoulders; with four,
five, or six strings; with the bow held overhand (not very often
before 1720) or underhand; with the left-hand position that could
be diatonic or chromatic; or with the strings tuned in fifths or
in a combination of fourths and fifths. All these different factors
are eventually to be ascertained by situational, regional and
even local practices. In fact, we might keep in mind Philibert


See Peter Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1993), chapter 1: “Quagmires of History and Terminology: The Origin of the
Violin,” 2.

See Tilden A. Russell, “New Light on the Historical Manner of Holding
the Cello,” Historical Performance 9, no 2 (1993): 73-76.

I refer to diatonic fingering when the hand is positioned in an oblique
way on the fingerboard, as on the violin. Chromatic fingering, as adopted from
the bass gamba, shows a perpendicular position of the fingers on the finger-
board.
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

Jambe de Fer’s assertion that the difference between the viole da

braccio and the viole da gamba was originally as much a social as
it was an organological question, and give the second part of his
definition some more weight than we have done so far. The full
passage provides a great deal of useful information:

L’accord & ton, du Violon

Le Violon est fort contraire à la viole, premier, Il n’a que quatre
cordes, lesquelles s’accordent à la quinte de l’une à l’autre, & en cha-
cune desdictes cordes y a quatre tons, en sorte & maniere qu’en quatre
cordes il a autant de tons que la viole en a cinq. Il est en forme de
corps plus petit, plus plat, & beaucoup plus rude en son, il n’a nulle
taste par ce que les doigts se touchent quasi de ton en ton en toutes les
parties. Ilz prennent leur tons & accords tous à l’unisson. Assavoir le
dessus prend le sien à la plus basse corde à vuyde. Le bas prend le sien
à la chanterelle à vuyde, les tailles & hautecontres prennent le leur à la
seconde corde d’embas pres le bourdon, & l’appellent G sol re ut le
second, tous ensemble, au reste ledit violon suyt de point en point la
viole, & ne differe en rien le Francoys avec l’Italien en c’est instrument
quant au ieu.
Pour quoy appellez vous Violes les unes, & les autres Violons?
Nous appellons violes c’elles desquelles les gentilz hommes, mar-
chantz, & autres gens de vertuz passent leur temps. Les Italiens les ap-
pellent viole de gambe par ce qu’elles se tiennent en bas, les uns entre
les jambes, les autres sur quelque siege, ou escabeau, autres sus les
genoux mesme lesdicts Italiens, les Francois ont bien peu en usage
ceste facon. L’autre sorte s’appelle violon & c’est celuy duquel lon use
en dancerie communement, & à bonne cause: car il est plus facile d’ac-
corder, pour ce que la quinte est plus douce à ouyr que n’est la quarte.
Il est aussi plus facile à porter, qu’est chose fort necessaire, mesme en
conduisant quelques noces, ou mommerie.
L’Italien l’appelle Violon da braccia ou violone, par ce qu’il se sou-
tient sus les bras, les uns avec escharpe, cordons, ou autre chose, le
Bas à cause de sa pesanteur est fort malaise à porter, pour autant il est
soustenu avec un petit crochet dans un aneau de fer, ou d’autre chose,
lequel est attaché au doz dudict instrument bien proprement: à celle
fin qu’il n’empesche celuy qui en ioue.


Philibert Jambe de Fer, Epitome musical des tons, sons et accords (Lyon,
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

In addition to the differences in the number of strings, and

the fact that violin family instruments are a little flatter, smaller,
and have a harsher sound, Jambe de Fer answers the question
why one group is called viols and the other violins in two ways:
first by considering social status, the second by considering the
playing position. Our modern, more prescriptive distinction
between viols and violins does not correspond entirely to the
16th- and even 17th-century notions; it was formulated by early
organologists of the 19th century who, in their positivistic attempt
to offer airtight definitions, took Michael Praetorius’ 1619
engravings as a point of departure (see Figure 1). For most of
the early modern period, however, such distinctions were much
more fluid than we have made them appear today. Evidently,
this greatly increases the number of eligible types and shapes of

1556), 61-63: “The Tuning and Pitch of the Violin. The violin is very different
from the viol. First, it has only four strings, which are tuned in fifths, and
each of the strings has four pitches, in such a way that on four strings it
has as many pitches as the viol on five. The form of its body is smaller, and
flatter, and it is much harsher in sound; it has no frets because the fingers
almost touch each other from tone to tone in all the parts. They all take their
pitches and tunings from the unison. That is, the treble takes its pitch on its
lowest open string; the bass takes it on the open top string, the tenors and
altos take theirs on the second string from the bottom next to the bourdon,
and that is G sol re ut an octave up [from Gamma-ut] for everyone. For
the rest, the violin resembles the viol in everything, and the French violin
differs in nothing from the Italian instrument as far as playing technique is
concerned. Why do we call some instruments viols and others violins? We
call viols those with which gentlemen, merchants and other men of worth pass
their time. The Italians call them viola da gamba because they hold them
down, some between the legs, others on some seat or stool, others yet on
the knees, but the French are not in the habit of doing so. The other kind is
called violin and it is the type commonly used for dance music, and for good
reason: it is easier to tune, because the fifth is sweeter to the ear than is the
fourth. It is also easier to carry, which is a very necessary thing, especially
in accompanying some wedding or masquerade. The Italian call it viola da
braccio or violone because it is held on the arms, some with a scarf, rope, or
other thing. The bass, because of its weight, is very troublesome to carry,
hence it is supported with a little hook in a ring of iron, or of something else,
which is well attached to the back of the instrument, so that the player is not
hampered by it.” [emphasis mine]
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

instruments that could potentially become part of the extended

bass violin family.

1. Michael Praetorius: Syntagma Musicum, Tomus Secundus

De Organographia (Wolfenbüttel, 1619): Ill. XX & XXI
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

The Methode of Michel Corrette (1741)

No document before Corrette’s Methode, théorique et pratique.

Pour Apprendre en peu de tems le Violoncelle dans sa Perfection
(Paris, 1741) tells us in such minute and systematic detail how to
play the violoncello. Corrette published method books for virtu-
ally every major instrument, always attempting to offer the most
efficient path to learning an instrument for the benefit of ama-
teur players. In many cases, as he did here, he included some
basic principles of music (pp. 1-6). His extensive Préface opens
strikingly as follows:

Depuis environ vingtcinq ou trente ans, on a quitté la grosse basse de

Violon montée en Sol pour le Violoncelle des Italiens, inventé par Bo-
nocini [sic] présentement Maitre de Chapelle du Roi de Portugal, son
accord est d’un ton plus haut que l’ancienne Basse, ce qui lui donne
beaucoup plus de jeu.
[… the author then provides both tunings: “Ancien Accord” B♭1-
F-c-g; and “Accord du Violoncelle” C-G-d-a]
Le Violoncelle est beaucoup plus aisé ajouer que la basse de Violon
des anciens, son patron etant plus petit, et par consequent le manche
moins gros, ce qui donne toute liberté pour joüer les basses difficiles,
et même pour executer des pièces qui font aussi bien sur cet instru-
ment que sur la Viole.

This exordium indeed sounds like a manifesto in defense and

in favor of the “new” violoncello that has superseded both the
old basse de violon and the viol; Corrette wants his readership


Michel Corrette, Methode, théorique et pratique. Pour Apprendre en peu
de tems le Violoncelle dans sa Perfection (Paris, 1741), A: “For about 25 or 30
years now, we have abandoned the large Basse de Violon tuned in G for the
Italian cello, invented by Bononcini, who is currently chapel master of the
King of Portugal. Its tuning is a step higher than the old bass, which gives it
many more possibilities […] The Violoncello is much easier to play than the
old Basse de Violon, its pattern being smaller and consequently its neck less
thick, which provides all the freedom necessary to play difficult bass lines, and
even to play compositions that work as well on this instrument as they do on
the Viol.”
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

to pay attention to this novelty. In the same preface, he further

warns against resisting such an innovation, describing the
general situation of bass violin playing in the past:

Au Reste ceux a qui les nouvelles découvertes ne plaisent jamais,

malgré le bien qui en resulte, pourront apprendre egalement le Manche
du Violoncelle dans les Chapitres IV, et V ou se trouve la maniere
ordinaire dont on se sert pour l’enseigner.
Je donne aussi une autre position qui derive des anciennes basses
montées en Sol, que quelques uns ont appliquez au Violoncelle, ayans
quitté la grosse basse de Violon, sans avoir quitté sa position: ce qui
forme plusieurs sectes parmi les Violoncelles: mais la plus générale et la
meilleure est celle de Bononcini dont les habiles Maîtres de l’Europe
se servent.

By calling them “sects,” Corrette in essence confirms that in

1740, cellists still used both large and small-size instruments,
and various playing techniques. This diversity in “schools” of
playing is something Corrette wishes to abolish by teaching the
“best and only” approach, the one used by the most proficient
European virtuosos, such as Giovanni Bononcini. The cello
method proper begins on page 7 and is only forty pages long; it
opens with Chapitre I. La maniere de tenir le Violoncelle:

Pour bien joüer du Violoncelle, il faut s’asseoir sur une chaise, ou

tabouret d’une hauteur proportionnée a sa taille, autant que cela se
peut trouver et n’estre pas assis trop avant sur le siege. Ensuite il faut
placer le Violoncelle entre les deux gras des jambes; tenir le manche de
la main gauche, et le pencher un peu du côté gauche, et tenir l’Archet
de la main droite, et observer que l’Instrument ne touche point à terre,


Ibid., C: “Moreover, those who never like new discoveries despite the
advantages they can offer, will also be able to learn the positions on the finger-
board in chapters 4 and 5, where they will find the ordinary way to teach them.
I also provide another position that derives from the old basses tuned in G
that some have used on the Violoncello, even though they have abandoned the
large basse de Violon, but not its positions, which creates various “sects” among
cellists. The best and generally most accepted way is Bononcini’s, which is used
by the most skilled European masters.” [emphasis mine]
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

attendu que cela le rend sourd: quelque fois on met un baton au bout
pour soutenir la basse, quand on joüe debout: non seulement cette
posture n’est pas la plus belle, mais elle est encore la plus contraire aux
passages difficiles, ainsi la plus belle maniere de tenir le Violoncelle est
d’être assis, tenir le Corps ferme, la tête droite, et les pieds en dehors,
et jamais ne les tenir de côté. Voyez l’estampe.

Described in a similarly authoritative manner, the bow-hold

could occur in three ways, all overhand (see Figure 2); the first
one described (ABCDE) is the position most modern Baroque
cellists have adopted.

2. Michel Corrette: Méthode (Paris, 1741): 8


Ibid., 7: “To play the Violoncello well, you must sit on a chair or on a
stool well suited to your height, and make sure not too sit too far forward on
the seat. Then you must place the cello between the two fleshy parts of the
legs (calves); hold the neck with the left hand and tilt it slightly towards the
left; hold the bow with the right hand, and make sure that the instrument does
not lean on the ground, because that would cause its sound to be muffled.
Sometimes people insert a stick at the bottom [of the instrument] to support
the bass when playing standing; not only is this position not the most elegant
one, but it is contrary to playing difficult passages, so the best way of holding
the cello is to be seated, keeping the body steady, the head straight, and feet
outwards but never sideways. See the illustration.”

All figures from Corrette’s method can be found on http://imslp.org/
wiki/M%C3%A9thode_pour_apprendre_le_violoncelle,_Op.24_%28Cor-
rette,_Michel%29
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

At this point, I should give a short aside regarding the

French bow-grip. When Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) began
to lead the Petits Violons in Versailles in 1656 to circumvent what
he did not like in the Grande Bande of the Vingt-quatre Violons
du Roy, he introduced equal bowings for all five instrumental
parts in the ensemble. That “military” perfection of motions
was soon to be enforced in the larger group as well. The result
was that even the basses de violon now had to switch from
their customary underhand bowing technique to an overhand
practice, to match that of the violins. Henceforth we see that
in iconography relative to the French court, bass violin players
consistently play overhand, whereas elsewhere in the kingdom
players often continued to use the more normal underhand
bowing technique. In any case, the overhand technique Corrette
advised violoncello students to use already had long precedents
in France and in Naples, but possibly also in Rome, as we will
discover later.
In his explanation of fingerings Corrette generally adopts
the older diatonic 1-2-4 “oblique” hand position on the
fingerboard inherited from the other members of the violin
family, but in Chapter XIV (p. 43), Contenant une autre position,
he advocates for a chromatic fingering, using all four fingers
of the left hand, which automatically adopts a perpendicular
position of the fingers on the fingerboard, such as viol-players
use. (see Figure 3) He justifies the use of this “new” position
by demonstrating its advantages over the old basse de violon


Only a handful of 17th-century images show bass violins held da gamba
and played with overhand bow grip, though in Marin Mersenne, Harmonie
Universelle (Paris, 1636): IV, 185, the author indicates that “l’on doit tousiours
tirer l’archet en bas sur la premiere note de la mesure,” (“on every first note of a
measure, the bow should be pulled downwards”), possibly describing an over-
hand bow-grip, though not necessarily if the underhand-playing cellist adopts
the strong downbow approach that today’s German-style double bass players
use. I am convinced that this double bass technique is the most probable ap-
proach to underhand bowing on Baroque bass violins as well. See also Mark
Smith, “The Cello Bow held the Viol Way; Once common, but now almost
forgotten,” Chelys 24 (1995): 47-61.
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

technique in playing virtually everything except for diminished

fifths over two strings:

Ainsi la position des Anciens ne peut estre admise que dans le cas de la
fausse quinte; Car dans tout autre occasion elle arrête tout court celui
qui s’en sert dans les vitesses.
Mais comme nous avons dejà dit dans la Préface Cette position est
un reste gotique des grosses Basses de Violon montées en sol qui sont
Exclues de l’Opéra et de tous les pays Etrangers.

3. Michel Corrette: Méthode (Paris, 1741): 42

Finally, Corrette’s Methode is also the earliest document to

describe the left-hand thumb position for playing passages
in high registers: Chapitre XIII (p. 41) En quelle occasion on
doit se servir du pouce, et de la maniere de jouer les dessus sur
le violoncelle. Given the otherwise manifesto-like tone of the
treatise, does the fact that Corrette describes the thumb position
without any fanfare indicate that it was already standard among


Corrette, Methode, 43. “Thus the [hand-]position of the Ancients
[=Basses de Violon players] can only be accepted when playing diminished
fifths, because in all other cases it would block whoever is using it in fast pas-
sages. As we have already mentioned in the Preface, this position is but a goth-
ic remainder of the large Basses de Violon in G that are now banished from the
Opera [orchestra] and from all foreign countries.”
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

cellists of the time? We could assume so, but unfortunately no

other source can confirm it, except the repertoire, which could
partly also have been played on five-string instruments.
As we have seen before, Corrette’s Methode has been the
port of entry for historically informed cello playing today. It is
clear from the tone of the treatise, however, that the author was
advocating for a set of new trends – a four-string instrument
smaller than the basse de violon, tuned in fifths, and capable of
playing both bass parts and virtuoso solo music; a seated playing
position with overhand bow-grip and a perpendicular (to the
fingerboard) chromatic left-hand technique; the use of thumb
position when needed in treble parts – that seems to have been
used by such cellists as Bononcini, but that was by no means
standardized yet. In providing so systematic a method book,
Corrette set a model that was to be followed by many other
(mainly French) cello pedagogues. The techniques described
established the basis for Jean-Louis Duport’s Essai sur le doigté
du violoncelle, et sur la conduite de l’archet (1806), and through
the use of the Essai at the Paris Conservatoire, for modern cello
technique.
Despite Corrette’s efforts and direct influence on French
cellists, however, it still took a few decades before both the
violoncello and its playing technique were fully adopted by
cellists across Europe. If we briefly return to the idea of variable
sizes, numbers of strings and tunings, it is obvious that even
after Corrette’s Methode, composers and authors were still
promoting different practices. In his Versuch einer Anweisung
die Flöte traversiere zu spielen of 1752, Quantz advises owning
more than one instrument:

Wer auf dem Violoncell nicht nur accompagniret, sondern auch Solo
spielet, thut sehr wohl, wenn er zwey besondere Instrumente hat; eines
zu Solo, das andere zum Ripienspielen, bey großen Musiken. Das
letztere muß größer, und mit dicken Saiten bezogen seyn, als das erstere.
Wollte man mit einem kleinen und Schwach bezogenen Instrumente
beydes verrichten; so würde das Accompagnement in einer zahlreichen
Musik gar keine Wirkung thun. Der zum Ripienspielen bestimmte
Bogen, muß auch starker, und mit schwarzen Haaren, als von welchen
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

die Saiten schärfer, als von den weißen, angegriffen werden, bezogen
seyn (Chapter XVII, Section IV, §1, p. 212).

Boccherini too, in his inventory of personal belongings from

26 April 1787, still refers to owning a Jacob Stainer cello and a
violoncello piccolo: “Ittem un Violon de Estayner con su Caja en
mil y quinienttos Reales-/Ittem un Violon Chico con su Caja en
doscientos Reales-.” In 1756 Leopold Mozart describes in his
Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule that:

Die siebente Art heißt das Bassel oder Bassette, welches man, nach
dem italiänischen Violoncello, das Violoncell nennet. Vor Zeiten hatte
es 5. Seyten; itzt geigt man es nur mit vieren. Es ist das gemeinste
Instrument den Baß damit zu spielen: und obwohl es einige etwas
grössere, andere etwas kleinere giebt [...].

Even more striking for us today than Mozart’s observation that

the cello used to have five strings and by 1756 four, is what he
writes in his description of the viol on the same page:

Die neunte Art ist die Gamba. Sie wird zwischen die Beine gehalten;
daher es auch den Name hat: denn die Italiäner nennen es Viola di


See Johann Joachim Quantz, Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traver-
siere zu spielen (Berlin, 1752), trans. and ed. Edward R. Reilly as On Playing the
Flute, 2nd edition (Northeastern University Press, 2001), 241: “Those who not
only accompany on the violoncello, but also play solos on it, would do well to
have two dedicated instruments, one for solos, the other for ripieno parts in
large ensembles. The latter must be larger, and must be equipped with thicker
strings than the former. If a small instrument with thin strings were employed
for both types of parts, the accompaniment in a large ensemble would have no
effect whatsoever. The bow intended for ripieno playing must also be stronger,
and must be strung with black hairs, with which the strings may be struck
more sharply than with white ones.”

See Jaime Tortella, Boccherini. Un músico Italiano en la España ilustrada
(Madrid: Sociedad Española de Musicología, 2002), 265-67.

Leopold Mozart, Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule (Augsburg,
1756), 3: “The seventh type is called Bassel or Bassette, which we call Violoncell,
according to the Italian Violoncello. In the past it had 5 strings; today people
play with only four. It is the most common instrument to play the bass part on,
and although there are some larger and some smaller [cellos], [...].”
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

Gamba, das ist: Beingeige. Heut zu Tage wird auch das Violoncell
zwischen die Beine genommen, und man kann es mit allem Rechte auch
eine Beingeige nennen.

For Mozart to state that the cello is “nowadays also held between
the legs” it must have been noteworthy, which triggers the
obvious question: how was the violoncello held before? On the
floor, on a stool, maybe even da spalla with a strap around the
neck, though that seems slightly early? Most probably, any or all
of these options were possible and used.

The Violoncello in the early 18th Century

Although Michel Corrette primarily represented an idealized

French situation, and was responsible for a first effort in
standardizing an instrument that represented the perfect
compromise between the larger violone or basse de violon
and the smaller violoncello types, the early 18th century was
still characterized by a much wider variety of instruments and
playing techniques. Iconographic sources and a variety of
treatises, as well as a few surviving instruments, confirm the
existence of various sizes of bass violins of the smaller type
with four or five strings, tuned an octave below the violin (four-
string instruments), or in C-G-d-a-e’ (more often also C-G-d-
a-d’), called violoncello (after 1665), violoncino, viola, violetta,
bassetto (starting in 1641), and also the viola/violoncello da spalla.
Writing in Treviso, Zaccaria Tevo mentions the viola da spalla
as a (melodic?) bass instrument, whereas he indicates that the
viola (a term normally used in the Veneto region for the bass
violin) and the violone are bass and basso continuo instruments,
respectively:


Ibid. “The ninth type is the Gamba. It is held between the legs; whence
its name: since the Italians call it viola da gamba, that is: leg viol. Nowadays the
Violoncello is also held between the legs, so we could also rightly call it a leg
viol.” [emphasis mine]
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

[…] gli Istrumenti che si usano sono li Violini, li Cornetti e le Trombe,

che suonano le parti sopra acute. Le Viole da braccio, che suonano
le parti dell’Alto, e Tenore le Viole da gamba, e da spalla, fagotti, e
Tromboni, che suonano la parte del Basso, e li Violoni, e Tiorbe che
suonano il Basso Continuo. Con queste voci adunque, e con questi
istrumenti, si formano le compositioni grosse, come Salmi, e Messe
[…] Pare che per ordinario si adoprino degl’Instrumenti, due Violini
per la parte sopra acuta, una Viola da braccio per la parte del contralto,
& una Viola, ò Fagotto, ò Trombone per la parte del Basso, li quali
potranno servire à quattro.

A few years later, a friend of Bach’s in Weimar, Johann Gottfried

Walther (in his Praecepta der Musicalischen Composition, Weimar,
1708), seems to paraphrase French gambist Jean Rousseau (Traité
de la viole, Paris, 1687), whereas Johann Friedrich Bernhard
Caspar Majer and Johann Philipp Eisel (Musicus autodidacticus,
Augsburg, 1738) undoubtedly echo Mattheson’s description in
Das Neu-eröffnete Orchestre of 1713:

Rousseau: […] on ne peut pas dire que la Basse de Violon dont on

jouë présentement en Italie ne soit une veritable Basse de Violon, de la
mesme espece que celle dont on jouë en France, quoy qu’en Italie on
la tienne d’une maniere, que ce qui est icy la Partie Inferieure, est chez
les Italiens la Partie Superieure, parce qu’ils la tiennent sur le bras, au
lieu qu’en France on l’appuye contre terre.


Zaccaria Tevo, Il Musico Testore (Venice, 1706), 360: “[…] violins, cor-
nets, and trumpets are the instruments used to play the treble parts. The Viole
da braccio play the alto and tenor parts, the Viole da gamba, Viole da spalla,
bassoons, and Trombones the bass parts; the Violoni and theorboes play the
basso continuo. Consequently, these voices and instruments are used in such
large-[scale] compositions as Psalms and Masses […]. It seems that normally
the following instruments are used: two violins for the treble parts, a viola for
the alto part, and a viola, bassoon, or trombone for the bass, which can be used
in four-part music.”

Jean Rousseau, Traité de la viole (Paris, 1687), 9: “[…] we could not say that
the Basse de Violon that is currently played in Italy is a true Basse de Violon of
the same sort as the ones played in France, since in Italy they hold it in a way that
what is called the bottom part here, is actually the top part in Italy, because they
hold it on the arm, whereas the French have it stand on the ground.”
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

Walther: Violoncello ist ein Italiänisches, einer Violadigamba nicht

ungleiches Bass-Instrument, wird fast tractiret wie eine Violine, neml.
es wird mit der lincken Hand theils gehalten, und die Griffe formiret,
theils aber wird es wegen der Schwere an des Rockes Knopff gehänget
[...]. Wird gestimmet wie eine Viola.

Mattheson: Der hervorragende Violoncello, die Bassa Viola und Viola

di Spala, sind kleine Bass-Geigen in Vergleichung der grössern mit 5
auch wol 6. Sayten worauff man mit leichterer Arbeit als auff grossen
Machinen allerhand geschwinde Sachen, Variationes und Manieren
machen kan insonderheit hat die Viola di Spala, oder Schulter-Viole
einen grossen Effect beym Accompagnement, weil sie starck durch-
schneiden und die Tohne rein exprimiren kan. Ein Bass kan nimmer
distincter und deutlicher herausgebracht werden als auff diesem In-
strument. Es wird mit einem Bande an der Brust befestigt und gleich-
sam auff die rechte Schulter geworffen, hat also nichts dass seinem
Resonantz im geringsten aufhält oder verhindert.

In his Museum musicum theorico practicum (Halle, 1732) Majer

borrows Mattheson’s text almost verbatim, but he adds an
extremely important sentence about the fact that many players
of the violoncello, bassa viola, or viola di spala (sic) held the


Johann Gottfried Walther, Praecepta der Musicalischen Composition
(Weimar, 1708), 161: “Violoncello is an Italian bass instrument, not unlike the
viola da gamba, which is played almost like a violin, namely it is partly held
– and played – with the left hand, and it is partly, because of its weight, hung
from a button on the jacket, and it is bowed with the right hand. It is tuned
like a viola.”

Johann Mattheson, Das Neu-eröffnete Orchestre (Hamburg, 1713), 285-
286: “The excellent Violoncello, the Bassa Viola, and the Viola di Spalla are
small bass violins in comparison with the larger ones with five or also six
strings, upon which one can play all sorts of rapid things, variations, and or-
naments with less effort than on the larger instruments. Particularly, the Viola
di Spalla, or Shoulder Viola produces a great effect when accompanying be-
cause it cuts through strongly and can express the notes clearly. A bass [line]
cannot be brought out more distinctly and clearly than on this instrument. It
is attached with a strap to the chest and at the same time it is thrown on the
right shoulder, and that way there is nothing that can impede or prevent its
resonance.”
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

instrument between the legs, rather than attached with a rope

on the right shoulder:

[…] Es wird mit einem Band an der Brust befestigt, und gleichsam auf
die rechte Schulter geworffen, von vielen aber wird sie zwischen beiden
Beinen gehalten.
Eisel: Von dem Violoncello, Bassa Viola und Viola di Spala.
Wir wollen alle drey in eine Brühe werffen: Denn alles dreyes sind
kleine Bass-Geigen, auf welchen man mit leichtere Arbeit als auf dem
grossen Violon allerhand geschwinde Sachen, Manieren, Variationes
und dergleichen machen kan.

The documents speak for themselves: descriptions in various

European treatises in the half century preceding Corrette’s all reflect
this great diversity of bass instruments (even within the category of
smaller basses) with four or five strings on the one hand, but on the
other they also all refer to a bass instrument held on the shoulder.
Since almost every early 18th-century author mentions the instrument
as belonging to that one same category of violoncellos (the relatively
smaller bass violins) – though they omit to tell us how small these
violoncelli “da spalla” might be – I will consider them as a single
group at the end of this essay. I am evidently not claiming that the
violoncello da spalla is the late 17th- or early 18th-century cello as some
have done, but rather that it was one of the possible ways of playing
the violoncello, not a separate organological category.
Bologna has traditionally been considered the cradle of “true”
violoncello repertoire – though I will later question this assertion
– with compositions by musicians active in or around the San


Johann Friedrich Bernhard Caspar Majer, Museum musicum theorico
practicum (Halle, 1732), 99: “It is attached to the chest with a strap and at the
same time it is thrown on the right shoulder, but many [players] hold it between
their legs.” [emphasis mine]

Johann Philipp Eisel, Musicus autodidacticus (Augsburg, 1738), 44: “On
the Violoncello, Bassa Viola, and Viola di Spalla. We should throw all three in
the same bucket [=category], since all three are small bass violins upon which
one can play all sorts of rapid things, ornaments and variations, with less effort
than on the large Violone.”
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

Petronio Basilica: Petronio Franceschini, Domenico Gabrielli,

Giuseppe Jacchini, and others. However, to this group of
players, we should add a few musicians who also (or exclusively)
worked at the court of Francesco II d’Este in Modena. Even
Gabrielli wrote his cello pieces for the Modenese court, and so
did Giovanni Battista Vitali and Giuseppe Colombi. In the early
18th century, the period during which the instrument began to
become popular everywhere in Europe through the influence of
a few itinerant virtuosi, the solo repertoire (primarily with basso
continuo) quickly developed in a few musical centers such as
Rome, Venice, Padua, Vienna, Naples, Würzburg, Wiesentheid,
Leipzig, Dresden, Prague, Paris, London, and Amsterdam, to
name only a few of the most important. The central question
here is what type of cello(s) the cellists and composers active
in these different parts of Europe had in mind when writing
for the instrument. Given the diversity I keep alluding to – and
Corrette’s efforts to standardize the cello situation in 1741 – the
quest for answers to this inquiry would only make sense if we
explored each center separately, since no one single instrument
would be appropriate to function in all these regions. On
the other hand we do not need to be strict about identifying
Geminiani’s, Marcello’s, Vivaldi’s, Cervetto’s, or Barrière’s
specific cello when performing their music, particularly for the
compositions they published. Even in the 18th century, a French
cellist who decided to play sonatas by, say Geminiani or Vivaldi
would evidently have done so on his own instrument with his
own technique, without worrying too much about the particular
cello in use in London, Amsterdam, or Venice. Still, it never
hurts to have a sense of what types of sounds these composers
had in the back of their minds when conceiving their music. It
may seem somewhat artificial to make such regional distinctions,
especially since many musicians traveled from one center to
another, but given the fact that what we now call Germany
and Italy were not nations, but conglomerates of independent
states with their own political systems, languages, and cultures,
it would be anachronistic to discuss them using modern national
and cultural boundaries. For the purposes of this specific essay,
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

I will primarily concentrate my reflection on the situation in the

Italian peninsula, as well as on specific “Italian” cellists who
performed occasionally or worked permanently abroad. Rather
than taking a purely chronological approach I will instead
proceed by general area.

Rome
Centered in the households of princes of the church – usually
nobles and/or family members of popes with cardinal’s titles –
musical life in Rome, from the cellist’s point of view, primarily
gravitated around the orchestra of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni
at the Palazzo della Cancelleria, led by Arcangelo Corelli (1653-
1713). Other important households were those of the Pamphili,
Ruspoli, Borghese, Chigi, Barberini, and Colonna families, who
organized performances of oratorios and celebratory cantatas for
a variety of sacred and secular occasions and festivals, sometimes
indoors, sometimes outdoors, often using large performing forces.
In addition, some churches, such as San Luigi dei Francesi, San
Giacomo degli Spagnoli, San Marcello, San Lorenzo in Damaso
(in the Palazzo della Cancelleria), and many others, distinguished
themselves through the performance of large-scale vocal and
instrumental compositions in which Roman bass violin players
participated. Although Corelli’s Concerti Grossi Opus 6 appeared
posthumously in 1714, they were probably already in the works in
the decade preceding their publication; they were certainly not the
only such collection of pieces that opposed a solo group (concertino)
to a large ripieno orchestra (concerto grosso). Others include
instrumental and mixed (vocal and instrumental) compositions
by Giovanni Lorenzo Lulier, Alessandro Scarlatti, Giuseppe
Valentini, Antonio Montanari, Giovanni Mossi, Giovanni Battista
Costanzi, Pietro Locatelli, extant in numerous publications, but
also in manuscripts preserved in libraries in Rome, Dresden,
Copenhagen, and elsewhere. By taking a look both at the bass
instruments mentioned in the printed materials and in manuscript

See Agnese Pavanello, Il ‘Concerto Grosso’ Romano. Questioni di genere



e nuove prospettive storiografiche (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006).

1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

sources, and at the names of the players mentioned in the numerous

payment documents to musicians for special occasions we discover
a remarkable complexity in the nomenclature of the instruments
used. If we add the few iconographic sources to this, the picture
becomes even more heterogeneous.
Although the term violone seems to have been the most
“normal” term to indicate the bass instrument of the violin
family in early 18th-century Rome, we also start seeing the gradual
appearance of violoncello, beginning with its use in the Cantate
Opus 1 (1695) by Francesco Gasparini, whereas by the middle of
the century we still find violone in a sonata by Giovanni Bombelli
in the archives in Wiesentheid. According to Stefano La Via there
were, also in Rome, two groups of bass instruments, a smaller
type of violone – still larger than the later standard cello – and a
much smaller type, the violoncello, that may have had four strings
tuned either C-G-d-a or a fifth higher (G-d-a-e1), or possibly also
five strings, tuned C-G-d-a-d1. This last instrument is entirely
hypothetical but, given the sometimes high registers used in the
repertoire, it could be very plausible if Roman cellists did not yet
use the thumb position at that time. In documents from various
payrolls we mostly find bass instrumentalists listed under either
violone or contrabbasso (or violone grosso), along with violinists
and violists (suonatori di violetta), thus indicating that the violone
was definitely an 8-foot bass, and not an octaviating double bass.
In a letter to count Laderchi (1679) Corelli even mentions “violone
piccolo,” and often we find specific musicians listed once in the
category of violoncelli, then under violoni. Moreover, the term
violone ultimately gives way to violoncello in the early 1720s. Does
all this mean that in Rome violone and violoncello were the exact
same thing? I doubt it; I am more inclined to believe – as we can
see in some instruments by David Tecchler, luthier active in Rome


See Stefano La Via, “ ‘Violone’ e ‘Violoncello’ a Roma al tempo di Corel-
li. Terminologia, modelli organologici, techniche esecutive,” in Studi Corelliani
IV. Atti del quarto congresso internazionale (Fusignano, 4-7 settembre 1986), eds.
Pierluigi Petrobelli and Gloria Staffieri (Florence: Olschki, 1990): 165-191. For a
study on German instrument makers in Rome, see Bernhard Hentrich, “Nuove
notizie sui liutai Tedeschi operanti a Roma,” Recercare 13 (2001): 249-255.
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

from the 1690s on – that the smallish violone was the most common
instrument bass violin players used, and that the various types of
significantly smaller violoncelli began to appear where needed for
more virtuoso parts in the higher registers, as in many concertino
sections of concerti grossi, and in solo cello concertos and sonatas.
Earlier cellists active in Rome, such as Giovanni Lorenzo Lulier
(“Giovannino del violone,” c.1662-1700), Flavio Lanciani (1661-
1706), Quirino Colombani (?-1735), Nicola Francesco (1678-1729)
and his brother Giovanni Antonio Haym (or Haim), amateur
cellist Cardinal Domenico Silvio Passionei (1682-1761), and even
Giovanni Bombelli, may have primarily played the larger type.
After Bononcini’s arrival in Rome in the 1690s we can well imagine
that some musicians also adopted the Bolognese smaller type
he introduced; Filippo “Pippo” Amadei (c.1665-c.1725), Pietro
Gioseppe Gaetano Boni, Stefano Penna, Giuseppe Perroni, and
Boccherini’s teacher Giovanni Battista Costanzi (“Giovannino del
violoncello,” 1704-1778) may have preferred the smaller violoncello,
in the case of Costanzi even at times tuned in G-d-a-e1. In any case,
there is no great certainty about any of this, except that both types
were in use in Rome with a preference for the violone early on,
and for the various types of violoncello after 1720 because of the
growing demands in virtuosity.
In terms of playing techniques, illustrations show us the
coexistence (even within one single band of instruments) of
various sizes held most often “da gamba,” either held between
the players’ calves or on the ground; though we occasionally also
see instruments held obliquely, resting against the right knee,
somewhat resembling the modern classical guitar position; or
higher up yet, against the chest or near the right shoulder (“da
spalla”) (see Figure 4). The bow is generally held underhand,
the “viola da gamba way,” but we also know that Corelli liked
(as did Lully) the uniformity of (bow) motion in his orchestras,


See Michael Talbot, “Domenico Silvio Passionei and his cello sonatas,”
Recercare 23, nos 1-2 (2011): 189-215.

Pierre-Paul Sévin: Mass with 4 choirs (c.1660-1670), watercolor. Image avail-
able as Fig. 5.6 on http://girolamofrescobaldi.com/5-rome-1608-1615-st-peters/.
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

which may well indicate a uniformly overhand technique so that

strong beats are played downbow by everyone in the group.
Much of the music by several of these composers has fortunately
been preserved in manuscript in the archives in the Schönborn
castle in Wiesentheid in northern Bavaria.

4. Pierre-Paul Sévin: Mass in Rome with 4 choirs (c. 1660-70), watercolor

(Stockholm, National Museum)

Venice and Padua (and Vienna, Würzburg, Wiesentheid,

Dresden, Prague & Bohemia)
Since musical connections – at least concerning bass violin players
– between those different areas were fairly strong, I will consider
them together here. In the Repubblica Serenissima di Venezia,
which still included cities as far west as Bergamo, and regions of
Istria and Dalmatia in the southeast, the terms that refer to bass
violins in the early 18th century are primarily viola (and violotto)


For further bibliographic and archival information, see Marc Van-
scheeuwijck, “Bowed Basses in Corelli’s Rome,” in Arcomelo 2013. Studi nel
terzo Centennario della morte di Arcangelo Corelli, eds. Guido Olivieri and
Marc Vanscheeuwijck (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2015): 173-187.
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

and violoncello, probably both already instruments of the smaller

type with four or five strings, and played either da spalla (on the
right shoulder) or da gamba (vertically). (see Figure 5) In the
early years of Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) at the Ospedale della
Pietà, the violoncello quickly became a solo instrument: indeed,
after Bolognese cellist Giuseppe Maria Jacchini (1667-1727),
Vivaldi was the first to dedicate compositions (concertos) to an
obbligato cello with two violins, viola and basso continuo. He
probably wrote his 27 cello concertos (and one for two cellos) – all
preserved in manuscript – at two distinct moments in his career,
the first sometime between 1705 and 1712, and the second in 1721.

5. Andrea Celesti: Pope Benedict III visits the Church (1672),

detail (Venice, San Zaccaria)

Regarding the first creative period, we know that Vivaldi

produced at least eight concertos and three sonatas, because
Franz Horneck was sent to Venice in 1708-09 to collect
cello music for the amateur cellist Rudolf Franz Erwein
von Schönborn (1677-1754) from Wiesentheid, a small town
between Würzburg and Nürnberg. Also, Vivaldi had some
correspondence in 1711 and 1712 with one von Regaznig,
merchant from Mainz and ambassador in Venice, who was also

See also: http://www.artericerca.com/artisti_italiani_seicento/celes-



ti%20andrea/1.htm.
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

in charge of finding instrumental music for the noble Schönborn

cellist. The musical archives in Wiesentheid contain hundreds
of compositions for cello and basso continuo (sonatas) or for
cello solo and strings (concertos), dating from the first three
quarters of the 18th century, by composers active in Wiesentheid
and Würzburg (particularly Giovanni Benedetto Platti [c.1692-
1763], who composed 36 cello concertos and 12 sonatas), or
by others who were loosely affiliated either with the court or
with neighboring courts: Antonín Reichenauer (c.1694-1730),
working in Prague; Josef Antonín Gurecký (1709-1769), active
in Kroměříž and Olomouc; Andrea Zani (1696-1757), active in
Vienna; and Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783), Hofkapellmeister
in Dresden. In fact, this is the largest collection of compositions
for cello in Europe.
The second group of Vivaldi’s concertos, probably composed
for Bolognese cellist Don Antonio Vandini (1691-1778), the new
cello teacher at the Pietà, displays a much more developed
technique and extensive use of the higher registers, though very
little utilization of the lowest C string. Vandini, born in 1691, was
eventually hired at the Basilica del Santo in Padua on 9 June
1721 by violinist Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770). After a short spell
as a cellist at Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, he became
maestro di violoncello at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice from
27 September 1720 until 4 April 1721. We cannot exclude the
possibility that Vandini studied with cellist Giuseppe Maria
Jacchini in Bologna, but no documents can confirm this.
Although Vandini himself only produced six cello sonatas and
one concerto for his instrument, he was also the cellist for whom
Giuseppe Tartini wrote his two concertos for “viola.” The term
viola was common in the Venetian Republic to indicate a bass
violin of any sort, and Vandini is sometimes mentioned as a
player of the “violot[t]o,” etymologically a larger, somewhat


Fritz Zobeley, Die Musikalien der Grafen von Schönborn-Wiesentheid.
Thematisch-bibliographischer Katalog. I. Teil. Das Repertoire des Grafen Ru-
dolf Franz Erwein von Schönborn (1677-1754). Band 2: Handschriften, edited by
Frohmut Dangel-Hofmann (Tutzing: Schneider, 1982).
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

“chubby” viola. It was Vandini who insisted that Tartini follow

him to Prague to participate in the grand celebrations for the
June 1723 coronation of Emperor Charles VI of Austria as king
of Bohemia. In Prague Tartini and Vandini met and collaborated
with Johann Joseph Fux, Antonio Caldara (c.1671-1736), a
Venetian cellist active in Vienna and in Bohemia (who also
wrote several cello sonatas and concertos), and lutenist Sylvius
Leopold Weiss, among many others. Upon completion of the
festivities, Tartini and Vandini decided to remain in Prague
and enter the service of the family of Count Kinsky. They also
established musical contacts with Prince Lobkowitz and stayed
in the Bohemian capital until 1726.
Here again the question rises as to what these cello-type
instruments precisely were, and how they were played, and
again the apparent variety is astonishing. As far as Vivaldi’s
earliest concertos preserved in Wiesentheid are concerned, and
based both on Venetian iconography relative to the Pietà and
the technical demands of the compositions, cellos used by the
young ladies’ orchestra were probably of the larger bass violin
type tuned in the standard C-G-d-a. On the other hand, it is
not impossible that count Rudolf Franz Erwein von Schönborn-
Wiesentheid owned more than one instrument, even more than
one single type of instrument. We will of course never know his
technical level as a player, but after studying the entire repertoire
extant in Wiesentheid, collected for his own use, we can certainly
hypothesize that he played at least a larger-type “violone” with
four strings, and possibly two or three instruments of the smaller
violoncello type, two with four strings (tuned C-G-d-a, and the
other G-d-a-e1 or d1), and one with five, likely tuned C-G-d-
a-d1. Some sonatas and concertos indeed strongly emphasize
the lower and middle registers, which works perfectly well on
a larger-type instrument; others do not go beyond the middle


Marc Vanscheeuwijck, “In Search of the Eighteenth-Century “Violon-
cello”: Antonio Vandini and the Concertos for Viola by Tartini,” Performance
Practice Review 13, no 1 (2008), Article 7/1, http://scholarship.claremont.edu/
ppr/vol13/iss1/7
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

of the upper a-string, while dwelling mainly on the beautiful

tenor register of the smaller C-G-d-a-strung violoncello. A last
group of compositions clearly emphasizes higher alto and treble
registers that leap a fifth to an octave higher than the previous
group. Some of these compositions do not use any pitches below
G, whereas others engage the full range from low C to g2. If we
knew that the count was capable of playing virtuoso passages
in thumb position, all this music could indeed be played on the
standard C-G-d-a-strung violoncello.
However, we also know that five-string cellos and smaller
instruments tuned a fifth higher were quite common in these
regions of the Veneto, Austria, Bohemia and Bavaria, and one
could thus surmise that Count von Schönborn may also have
played some of the more demanding repertoire on a five-
string cello (tuned C-G-d-a-d1) and on a smallish four-string
violoncello tuned G-d-a-e1 or d1. In any case, when not in the
hands of a seasoned professional, a cello with higher strings
undoubtedly sounds better and more open than a standard
classical instrument played with thumb position.
On the use of the bow, we have some detailed information
about Antonio Vandini from musicographer Charles Burney.
On 2 August 1770 Burney wrote:

It was remarkable that Antonio [Vandini], and all the other violoncello
players here [in Padua], hold the bow in the old-fashioned way, with
the hand under it.

Even though the only image we have of Vandini playing is a

caricature by Pier Leone Ghezzi, (see Figure 6) it is clear that
he did indeed use the underhand bow grip, in common with


Charles Burney, The Present State of Music in France and Italy (London,
1773), 142.

There is also the picture of a friar-cellist playing a small instrument with
underhand bow grip assumed to be Vandini by Van Der Straeten. See Ed-
mund S. J. Van Der Straeten, History of the Violoncello, Viol da Gamba, their
Precursors and Collateral Instruments (London: William Reeves, 1914): 162. See
also: http://violncello.blogspot.com/2013/10/blog-post_4572.html
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

most musicians who played the instrument da gamba. As Burney

states, this underhand bow-grip was old-fashioned by 1770, but
it indicates that when Vandini learned the instrument early in
the century, the standard way was then underhand.

6. Pier Leone Ghezzi: d. Antonio Vandini famoso sonatore

di Violoncello al servizio della Capella di S. Antonio in Padova
fatto da me Caval. Ghezzi [Fossombrone, Biblioteca Civica Passionei]

To conclude my short story about Venice, a word is required

about some of the most standard cello pieces in the modern
Baroque cellists’ repertoire: the sonatas by Benedetto Marcello
(1686-1739) and Antonio Vivaldi. A Venetian nobleman, dilettante
di musica, and Vivaldi’s archrival, Benedetto Marcello published
a set of Sei Suonate for the violoncello and basso continuo in
Amsterdam c.1732 as his Opus 1 (later republished in London
by Walsh as Opus 2). Although not of a high level of virtuosity,
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

these compositions can cause some technical difficulties to the

modern Baroque cellist, unless he or she uses a small instrument
tuned a fifth higher. Indeed, except for one low E at the end of
the first Allegro of Sonata II, the low C-string of the instrument
is never required, whereas most of the melodies dwell in the
tenor register. Since the one lower note can easily be played an
octave higher without making any difference to the music, the
sonatas can best be played on an instrument tuned G-d-a-e1. On
the other hand, Marcello’s second set of pieces, 6 sonatas for
two cellos or two violas da gamba, printed in Amsterdam c.1734,
probably require a five-string instrument tuned C-G-d-a-d1, so
the upper two strings are the same as those of the bass gamba.
Vivaldi’s nine or ten sonatas – the “tenth,” anonymous, but
extant in one set of manuscripts in the collection of Wiesentheid
with the 6th and the 9th sonata – were never published as a
single set. Three sonatas (numbers 1, 7, and 8) survive in an
undated manuscript in the library of the Naples Conservatory,
and another set of six sonatas (numbers 1-6) is preserved in the
Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. In 1740, Boivin and Leclerc
published this last set, though without Vivaldi’s authorization.
Whereas the sonatas preserved in Naples and Wiesentheid
may have been played on four – or five-string instruments, the
group that circulated in France before their publication one
year before Corrette’s Methode appeared, was probably played
on the standard violoncello we know, and with overhand bow-
grip, thus belonging more to the Parisian than to the Venetian
context.
The presence of Vivaldi’s three sonatas in the Neapolitan
Conservatory library is not completely accidental: a thriving
tradition of cello-playing had been developing in Naples since
the late 17th century with Rocco Greco, brother of the better-
known organist Gaetano Greco. First a student, and then a
teacher at the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo from
1677 to 1695, when he was appointed at the royal chapel in
Naples, Rocco Greco taught stringed instruments and was both
a violinist and a cellist – fairly common in the four Neapolitan
conservatories at the time. I will come back to Naples as an early
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

center for the development of the violoncello in the next section

of this essay.
Several Italians, whose origins we often do not know – such
as Andrea Caporale, the Sephardic Jew Giacobbe Basevi (named
“il Cervetto,” 1680-1783), and the cellist from Forlì in Romagna,
Giovanni Battista Cirri (1724-1808) – developed their careers in
London as well. Again, their published sonatas for cello strongly
emphasize the upper registers of the instrument, and although
iconographic sources mainly show four-string instruments,
there are also indications of both five-string instruments and
smaller cellos tuned a fifth higher, particularly for use in sonatas
published for violin or for cello, the latter playing exactly an
octave lower than the violin. A five-string instrument is also
an option in performing the sonatas of Milan-born cellist
Giorgio Antoniotto (c.1692-1776), who published a set of five
cello sonatas and seven more in Amsterdam (Opus I, 1736) to
be played on either the cello or the viol, before establishing
himself in London. What does not seem to appear in England
is cellists holding the instrument “da spalla,” a position that
even in Northern Italy was probably primarily reserved for less
demanding bass parts.
Another Italian immigrant in London was violinist Francesco
Geminiani (1687-1762), who in 1746 published a set of six excellent
cello sonatas often performed today. Born in Lucca, Geminiani
learned his trade with Alessandro Scarlatti and Arcangelo
Corelli in Rome after having spent some time in Naples. By 1714,
he was in London where he had a brilliant career more as a
violin virtuoso than as a composer. He spent most of his life
in London, except for a few years in Dublin and some short
residencies in Paris, and in the Netherlands, where the Sonatas
Opus 5 were published simultaneously both in their original
version for cello and basso continuo, and in a transcription for
violin and bass. By that time, the standard “Corrette cello” had
made its way into England and the Netherlands, and younger
cellists began to generally adopt the four-string cello we know
today.
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

Paris
In closing our brief exploration of the early 18th-century violoncello
as it was diffused by Italian cellists, we must return to Paris to
take a look at the situation in place before Corrette’s 1741 plea to
standardize the instrument. We have seen how he described that
even in his day, there were still various “schools” of cello playing
in France. Indeed, in 1703 Sébastien de Brossard writes in his
Dictionnaire de Musique, published in Paris: “Violoncello. C’est
proprement nôtre Quinte de Violon ou une Petite Basse de Violon
à cinq ou six Chordes.” According to de Brossard the instrument
was thus not considered a bass but rather a baritone instrument in
the beginning of the century, and (also remembering Rousseau’s
description) probably played more often “da spalla” than “da
gamba.” The early days of the small bass violins in France are still
somewhat vague.
The larger basse de violon had been used throughout the 17th
century, but the smaller type probably arrived to Paris through the
rather “underground” movement that promoted Italian music in
the late 17th-century around the concerts spirituels series of the Abbé
Mathieu in the presbytery of the church of Saint-André-des-Arts,
and even more so during the Regency of Philippe d’Orléans after
Louis XIV’s death (1715-1723). In the Paris opera orchestra too, the
smaller Italian violoncello made its entrance at about the same time
as the large 16-foot double bass in the first years of the new century.
On the other hand, the cello still had a strong competitor in the
bass viol as a solo and basso continuo instrument, and was not
easily accepted in more conservative pro-French musical milieus.
In his famous pamphlet against Italian influences in French music
published in Amsterdam in 1740, the Défense de la basse de viole,
Hubert Le Blanc describes the cello as follows:

Le Violoncel, qui jusques là s’étoit vu misérable cancre, haire, &

pauvre Diable, dont la condition avoit été de mourir de faim, point de


Sébastien de Brossard, Dictionnaire de Musique (Paris, 1703), 221: “Vio-
loncello. It is precisely our Quinte de violon or small bass violin with five or
six strings.”
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

franche lipée, maintenant se flatte qu’à la place de la Basse de Viole, il

recevra maintes caresses; déjà il se forge une félicité qui le fait pleurer
de tendresse.

Although Le Blanc acknowledges the successes of the cello over

the viol, he profoundly dislikes the instrument because of its
approximate intonation and loud, rough sound. He concludes
his 148-page long essay by writing that:

Ceci est composé seulement pour réhabiliter la Viole dans ses droits, &
non pour vanter ceux qui en jouent par-dessus les joueurs de Violoncel.
Au contraire ces derniers, vainqueurs de travaux si immenses que cela
fait trembler de les entendre preluder, sont très estimables, on doit en
convenir, mais jamais que leur Instrument soit aimable.

The battle was indeed virtually lost for the viola da gamba at
that point, at least in France. The first cellists to appear on the
French scene had been primarily foreigners: one of the first was
Tuscan cellist of German descent, Jean-Baptiste Stuck (1680-
1755), who appeared in Paris in 1705. Another foreign cellist,
Giovanni Battista Canavasso (Jean-Baptiste Canavas, 1713-1784)
from Turin, probably arrived in Paris in 1732, but his two sets of
cello sonatas only appeared in 1767 and 1773, respectively. One of
Canavasso’s teachers, Giovanni Battista Somis (1686-1763), also
from Turin and son of violinist and cellist Lorenzo Francesco
(1662-1736), studied with Corelli in Rome and performed several
times in Paris in the 1730s, though he never lived in France.


Hubert Le Blanc, Défense de la Basse de viole contre les Entréprises du
Violon et les Prétentions du Violoncel (Amsterdam, 1740), 36-37: “The Violon-
cello, which up to now had been regarded as a miserable dunce, a poor hated
Devil, who had been dying of hunger, with no hearty free meals, now flatters
himself that he will receive many caresses instead of the Viol; already he imag-
ines a happiness which makes him weep with tenderness.”

Ibid., 147-48: “This has been written solely to rehabilitate the Viol in its
rights and not to praise those who play better than the Violoncellists. On the
contrary the latter, having done such immense efforts that it makes us tremble
to hear them improvise, are very respectable, we need to admit it, but never
that their Instrument is amiable.”
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

However, in 1738 he published twelve beautiful sonatas for the

cello in Paris, though they might have been originally intended
for performance by his Turin colleague, cellist Salvatore
Lanzetti. Sixty-two-year old Giovanni Bononcini first appeared
in Paris in the same year as Canavasso (1732), before going to
Madrid and Lisbon a few years later, and although he was there
mainly to perform some of his vocal compositions, he must have
made a strong impression, given Corrette’s comments about his
innovative cello technique. An oft-forgotten though important
composer and instrumentalist is Venetian-born Giuseppe Fedeli,
known as Mr. Saggione (fl.1680-1733), who is credited with
having introduced the double bass in the Paris Opéra along with
Michel Pignolet de Montéclair. More important for the history
of the cello in France is the publication in Paris (1733) of Fedeli’s
Six Sonates a deux violoncelles, violes, ou bassons. Qui peuvent
se jouer sur deux violons en les transposant à la quinte, followed
by un menueto, una chiacona e una musetta. Technically these
six duets are remarkably challenging, almost of the level of Jean
Barrière’s compositions, with a three-octave range (C – c”) and
a great predilection for broken chords, arpeggios, double stops,
chords, and extremely large leaps.
Among the French-born cellists, Martin Berteau and
Jean Barrière (1707-1747) allegedly became cello virtuosi after
having heard the Neapolitan cello legend Francesco Alborea –
Berteau, whose 1748 Sonatas for cello and continuo published
in London under the name of “Signor Martino,” have caused
him to be confused with Sammartini. Barrière, originally from
Bordeaux, probably never studied with Alborea, but spent some
time in Rome between 1736 and 1739; between 1733 and 1739 he
published four books of cello sonatas extremely demanding
from the point of view of technique. Indeed, his compositions
not only consistently explore the upper range of the instrument
– again implying the use of the thumb position, or of a five-

See Jane Adas, “Le célèbre Berteau,” Early Music 17/3 (1989): 368-380.



See Mary Cyr, Style and Performance for Bowed String Instruments in
French Baroque Music (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013): 187-197.
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

string instrument – but they also present passages in double

thirds, arpeggiated chords, and multiple stops. Stylistically, they
are perfect representatives of Les goûts réunis in their merging
of French and Italian stylistic elements.
Although it is easy to imagine that much of this music, printed
in France from 1726 on could have been played on instruments
of the more standardized kind (including the use of the thumb
position where necessary), we cannot entirely exclude the use
of larger basses de violon for some of the amateur repertoire,
and even five-string instruments (more often tuned C-G-d-a-d1
than with an e1-string on the top) for some of the compositions
by Berteau and Barrière. However, in their use of violoncellos,
players in France, England, Spain, Austria, the Papal States
(Rome, Ferrara), and the Duchies of Modena, Parma, and
Mantua, seem to have preferred four-string instruments. On the
other hand, in Bologna, there seems to have been a larger number
of cellists who played with a more varied number of strings and
tunings: some cellists, such as Antonio Maria Bononcini, were
first trained as violinists and may have played the instrument da
spalla, though we will return to that specific topic in the final
section of this essay.
Dutch iconography of this period still displays so many five-
string cellos at the time that it would be absurd to posit that
cellists in the Netherlands only used four-string instruments. In
terms of bow-grip, all seem to have favored underhand position.
Overhand bow-grip began to prevail at that time, probably as


See Gregory Barnett, “The Violoncello da Spalla: Shouldering the Cel-
lo in the Baroque Era,” Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society
24 (1998): 81-106; Brent Wissick, “The Cello Music of Antonio Bononcini: Vi-
olone, Violoncello da Spalla, and the Cello ‘Schools’ of Bologna and Rome,”
Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music 12, no. 1 (2006): https://sscm-jscm.org/
v12/no1/wissick.html; Lambert Smit, “Towards a More Consistent and More
Historical View of Bach’s Violoncello,” Chelys 32 (2004): 49-56.

A large database of iconography (and bibliography) including various
bass violins throughout Europe is available on line through Joëlle Morton’s
excellent stable website http://www.greatbassviol.com/home.html to which I
will refer many times again in this essay for images.
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

much through the influence of Bolognese violinist/cellists who

played in da spalla position and began to advocate for a typically
da braccio bow grip even on da gamba-held instruments, as
through the influence of the bow-hold in the official French
court ensembles. It became almost standardized by the second
half of the century. It is only after Corrette’s publication of the
Methode in 1741 that the Parisian cello scene began to emerge as
one of the most progressive in Europe, with its standard mid-
size, four-string violoncello played with overhand bow-grip.
In sum, I propose that the small 17th-century violoncino/
bassetto/violoncello/violongello only gradually began to
dominate as a vertically-played instrument during the first third
of the 18th century, while its size also gradually increased to reach
modern dimensions. Finally, it makes sense to accept that – just
as with the variety of violoncellos – performers, particularly
of the 18th century (when the repertoire evolved in terms of
technical challenges), were not as reluctant as we are today to
retune their instrument and use the appropriate string gauges in
a way that optimized not only resonance, but especially the ease
with which a particular composition could be performed.

Small Bass Violins before 1700

Terminology
As we now know, the term violoncello did not appear before
Arresti’s 1665 print. There is however plenty of iconographic


We should not forget that all tunings that differ from the “normal” C-G-
d-a tuning are referred to as scordatura or discordato, literally meaning “out
of tune,” a description that began to be used later in the century as soon as a
standard tuning was perceived as such. See Ephraim Segerman, “The Name
‘Tenor Violin’ ” Galpin Society Journal 48 (1995): 181-187. Although the C-G-
d-g tuning was certainly not uncommon in the seventeenth century, Luigi Ta-
glietti (in Brescia), in his Suonate da camera À Tre due Violini, e Violoncello,
con alcune aggiunte à Violoncello solo…, Opus I (Bologna: Silvani, 1697), adds
“Discordatura” over the four notes of the tuning (C-G-d-g) he provides on a
Capriccio à Violoncello solo, though this is only by comparison to all the other
Capricci which are in the C-G-d-a tuning.
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

and documentary evidence that smaller bass violins have been

used since the earliest development of the violin family in the
beginning of the 16th century.
Bonta mentions terms as violoncino and its variants, bassetto,
viola, violetta basso, violone piccolo, etc., which etymologically
refer to a smaller type of bass bowed instruments, in fact mostly
to instruments of the viola da braccio family, so it is clear that
relatively small instruments were capable of playing in the bass
register. Whether the use of wire-wound gut strings was a factor
in calling these smaller basses more consistently violoncelli, as
Bonta claims, is not entirely pertinent, I believe, though there
is no doubt that their increasingly generalized use between 1670
and 1730 for the lowest string(s) contributed to the eventual
standardization of the smaller-type bass violin over its larger
cousin. Even though it is often fairly clear from the extension
of the musical line of the bass instrument whether a small or a
large-type instrument is most appropriate, it is still not always
useful to separate the two, since there is no reason for excluding
one or the other instrument from a certain type of repertoire
or musical genre. We should also be considering the fact that
for example in Italy the C-G-d-a tuning seems to have been
used on both types, whereas lower tunings tend to apply to
larger instruments only, and higher tunings to smaller types.
In England, on the other hand, smaller instruments were more
often tuned B♭1-F-c-g, whereas in France that lower tuning
was the only one used on the larger basse de violon, as Marin
Mersenne mentions in his Harmonie universelle. Thus, even
though the term “violoncello” only appeared in the second half
of the 17th century, in this section I will consider the first two
centuries of the history of the bass violins as one large category.


In her article “The Cello in Britain: A Technical and Social History,”
Galpin Society Journal 56 (2003): 77-115, Brenda Neece concludes on p. 89 that
“Bass violin indicated the cello’s place in the violin family, violoncello signaled
the arrival of Italian cellists who brought both instruments and terminology
with them, and bass viol demonstrated the cello’s similarities (rather than kin-
ship) to the viola da gamba and usually referred to church cellos.”

Mersenne, Harmonie universelle, IV, 184-85.
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

A major reason for this approach is that there is a continuum

in the use of various instrument sizes, which began to decrease
only in the early 18th century. Also, the fact that a few solo pieces
appear in Bologna and Modena in the last quarter of the 17th
century does not sufficiently justify them to be discussed as a
separate category isolated from the context out of which they
emerged.

Treatises
There is no space here to discuss all the treatises that provide us
with some basic information about tunings of the members of the
violin and viol families, such as those of Martin Agricola (Musica
Instrumentalis Deudsch, 1529 and revised in 1545), Giovanni
Lanfranco (Scintille di musica, Brescia 1533), Silvestro Ganassi
(Regola rubertina & Lettione seconda, Venice 1542/3), and many
others. However, some which offer important information we
need to take into account include Lodovico Zacconi’s Prattica di
musica (Venice, 1592; IV, 218); Adriano Banchieri’s Conclusioni nel
suono dell’organo (Bologna, 1609, 53-54) and L’organo suonarino,
Op. 25 (Venice, 1611, 43); and Michael Praetorius’ Syntagma
Musicum, Tomus secundus De Organographia (Wolfenbüttel,
1619, 25-26, 48 & Sciagraphia XXI). These last three authors all
mention bass instruments of the viola da braccio family tuned
in fifths either on F (F-C-g-d1) or on G (G-d-a-e1); this does
not quite cover what moderns call the bass register, which we
assume is equivalent to the 8-foot register of the organ, starting
on bottom C in bass clef. On the other hand it is also useful
to understand what specifically was meant by basso as opposed
to contrabbasso register in the period under consideration. In
the Renaissance any pitch below Gamma-ut (the low G in bass
clef) was referred to as “in contrabbasso,” but this qualifier also


See Marc Vanscheeuwijck “The Baroque Cello and Its Performance,”
Performance Practice Review 9, no. 1 (1996): 78-96; and my Chapter 13 “Violon-
cello and Violone,” in A Performer’s Guide to Seventeenth-Century Music, ed.
Stewart Carter, revised and expanded by Jeffery Kite-Powell (Bloomington &
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2012): 231-247.
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

indicates the entire register below that Gamma-ut (or F of the

6-foot register) and applies to any string or instrument capable
of reaching even just the E below it. In that sense Banchieri’s
Prima Violetta, Basso (tuned G-d-a-e1) is a true bass instrument
(see Figure 7).

7. Adriano Banchieri: L’organo suonarino, Op. 25 (Venice, 1611), 43

1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

Besides a tuning in F-C-g-d1, Praetorius also mentions

another tuning in C-G-d-a for the Baß Viol de Braccio. Finally,
leaping forward to the last quarter of the century, Bartolomeo
Bismantova provides a Regola p[er] suonare il violoncello da
spalla in his Compendio Musicale (Ms. Ferrara, 1677 & 1694) in
which he writes:

Il Violoncello da Spalla alla moderna s’accorda in quinta, salvo che il

Basso che in vece d’accordarlo in C sol fa ut, bisognerà accordarlo in
D la sol re, e questo si fa p[er] la commodità del Suonatore, ma però si
può ancora accordare in C sol fa ut.

Bismantova further gives an entirely diatonic fingering chart for

the strings (D-G-d-a), using 0-1-2 on the D-string, 0-1-2-3 on the
G – and d-strings, and 0-1-2-3-4 on the a-string (for the pitches
a-b-c1-d1-e1), which is only possible on a fairly small instrument,
probably played da spalla. Finally, he adds (on p.[120]) “Le
Regole et Arcade sono l’istesso di quelle del Violino,” actually
implying an overhand bow-grip.

Repertoire & Iconography

Although iconographic sources in most European areas show
us plenty of examples of small-type instruments with both four
and five strings, only a limited number of compositions available
to us call unequivocally for a small-type bass violin. The
first of these is Giovanni Battista Fontana’s Sonate published
posthumously in Venice in 1641, the ninth of which calls for


Bartolomeo Bismantova, Compendio Musicale (Ms. Ferrara, 1677 &
1694), [119]: “The modern violoncello da spalla is tuned in fifths, except that
the lowest string, instead of being tuned as C, should be tuned as D, and this is
done for the ease of the player, but it could also be tuned as C.”

There are tens of iconographic sources that show small-size bass violins:
I suggest exploring Joëlle Morton’s rich website http://www.greatbassviol.
com/iconography.html. A few specific examples are found in the following
images: http://www.greatbassviol.com/iconography/hont1.jpg; http://www.
greatbassviol.com/iconography/maes.jpg; http://www.greatbassviol.com/ico-
nography/troost2.jpg and http://pmg3alain.free.fr/Resources/28cello_bacana-
le_corn%2374BF1.jpg.
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

a Fagotto ò chitarone ò violonzono con violino ò cornetto. The

extension is limited to (D)F-c1, which could work on a small
instrument tuned F-c-g-d1, although all other pieces that call for
a fagotto – such as Bartolomeo de Selma y Salaverde’s Canzoni,
fantasie e correnti (Venice, 1638) – have a much larger extension.
Other collections that require a violoncino include Francesco
Cavalli’s Musiche sacre (Venice, 1656), notated in bass and tenor
clef with an extension of D-f1; Domenico Freschi’s Messa e salmi
(Op. 1, Venice, 1660; extension E-d1); Simpliciano Olivo’s Salmi
di compieta a 8 (Op. 2, Bologna, 1674; extension D-d1); Gasparo
Gaspardini’s Sonate a 3 (Op. 1, Bologna, 1683; extension D-e1); and
an undated Laetatus sum a 2 by Ferrarese composer Giovanni
Battista Bassani (extension D-d1). On the other hand, particularly
in and around Modena, Ferrara and Bologna (the region now
known as Emilia), we frequently encounter the terms violetta,
bassetto and bassetto viola in the latter part of the 17th century,
for example in Sebastiano Cherici’s collections Op. 1, 2, 3, and 4
(1672, 1698, 1686; extensions D-d1 or D-e1). Agostino Della Ciaia’s
Salmi a 5 voci (Bologna, 1700; extension C-g1) juxtapose violetta
and violoncello, as does Antonio Caldara in his unpublished
Messa a 4 composed in Venice (I-Bc); we also find these terms
in various printed collections by Giuseppe Colombi (active in
Modena), Giovanni Paolo Colonna (active in Bologna), Stefano
Filippini (Rimini), Andrea Grossi (Mantua), Isabella Leonarda
(Novara), Giovanni Battista Mazzaferrata (Ferrara and Faenza),
and so on. Based on the frequent occurrence of bass violins
played either vertically or horizontally in Emilia and in the
Veneto, we can surmise that this kind of repertoire that calls for
small bass instruments could be played on a smallish four – or
five-string violoncello (an instrument we have erroneously tended
to call violoncello piccolo) either in a da spalla or in a da gamba
position. These terms seem to be completely interchangeable
with violoncello, which we find in many printed collections
since Arresti’s Op. 1 (Bologna, 1665), though again mainly in the
region of the Po Valley in Northern Italy. In many of the cases


Composers include Pirro Capacelli Albergati, Giovanni Battista and
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

mentioned in note 48 as well, violoncello can be any small bass

violin played da gamba (with underhand bow grip) or in some
cases even da spalla, with tunings including C-G-d-a, C-G-d-g,
D-G-d-a, F-c-g-d1, G-d-a-e1, G-d-a-d1 or with five strings, tuned
C-G-d-a-d1, C-G-d-g-d1, D-G-d-a-d1, D-G-d-g-d1, and others as
the music requires.

Bologna & Modena

The now standard narrative dealing with the early history of the
violoncello has established that Bologna and Modena are the
cradle of its development. Indeed, since the term first appeared
in a print by Arresti, organist in Bologna, it seems sensible to say
that it originated there. However, this can only be affirmed with a
substantial caveat: what is meant is the fact that there we find the
earliest compositions written explicitly for violoncello solo, two
violoncellos, or cello and basso continuo. The term used at this
point is “violoncello.” In a way, this also means that in our cello
histories we are actually recreating the history of a term more
than the history of an instrument and its repertoire. By now it
is clear that other terms also refer to small bass violins, and that
these instruments were used well before the term violoncello
was established. On the other hand it is also true that from
sometime in the mid 1670s a number of bass violin players began
to show a particular interest for this violoncello and dedicated

Pietro Degli Antonii, Attilio Ottavio Ariosti, F. C. Belisi, Bartolomeo Bernar-

di, Giovanni Bononcini, Giovanni Battista Borri, Giovanni Paolo Colonna,
Bartolomeo, Lodovico Filippo and Pietro Paolo Laurenti, Ferdinando Anto-
nio Lazzari, Giacomo Antonio Perti, Domenico Gabrielli, Giuseppe Maria
Jacchini, Giuseppe Torelli (all active in Bologna); Giovanni Maria Bononcini
and Tommaso Antonio Vitali in Modena, Evaristo Felice (Modena, Munich,
Brussels) and Joseph-Marie-Clément Dall’Abaco (Brussels, Verona), Dome-
nico Della bella (Treviso), Giuseppe Cattaneo (Lodi), Elia Vannini (Raven-
na), Antonio Maria Fiorè (Turin), Giulio de Ruvo (Naples), Giulio and Luigi
Taglietti (Brescia), Girolamo Bassani (Venice, Würzburg) Francesco Maria
Zuccari (Assisi); Antonio Caldara and Benedetto Marcello in Venice. Most of
these composers wrote sonatas with solo cello(s). See also Ute Zingler, Studien
zur Entwicklung der italienischen Violoncellsonate von den Anfängen bis zur
Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main, 1967).
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

several compositions that feature it as a true soloist, and that is

indeed remarkable. General contexts in which this occurred are
two: first, the instrumental ensemble of the Cappella Musicale
of the San Petronio Basilica in Bologna; and second, the court
of duke Francesco II d’Este in Modena. In the payment lists of
San Petronio, we see that in 1674 – the year Bolognese composer,
organist, and organ builder Giovanni Paolo Colonna was hired
as the new maestro di cappella – violone player Giovanni Battista
Vitali begins to be mentioned as suonatore di violoncello. When
Vitali left San Petronio to become one of the two vice maestri
di cappella of the ducal chapel in Modena, he was replaced in
1675 by Petronio Franceschini (1651-1680), who has left us sacred
compositions for choirs, trumpet(s) and string orchestra and
operas, but no cello music. After his death, Franceschini was
succeeded by Domenico Gabrielli (“Minghein dal Viulunzèl,”
1659-1690), a 21-year old Bolognese cellist who produced, among
his sacred and secular vocal compositions, a few sonatas for
trumpets and strings that contained rather virtuosic cello solos.
When Gabrielli took regular service with the duke of Modena
in 1687, he continued to appear in San Petronio for one more
year, but then definitively moved to Modena. It is for that court
that he composed the 7 Ricercari for cello solo, one Canon for
two cellos, and two sonatas with basso continuo, both preserved
in two versions. All compositions are extant in manuscripts in
the Biblioteca Estense in Modena. In fact, they are the earliest
solo pieces explicitly written for the violoncello; while Giuseppe
Colombi and Vitali wrote a few solos, probably a few years
earlier (also in the Modena library), the manuscripts mention
violone and not yet violoncello.
The twelve Ricercate sopra il violoncello o clavicembalo by
Bolognese organist and trombonist Giovanni Battista Degli
Antonii (1636-1698), printed in 1687, have been considered to be
the earliest compositions ever published for solo cello. We now

Marc Vanscheeuwijck, Domenico Gabrielli: Ricercari per violoncello solo;



Canone a 2 violoncelli; Sonate per violoncello e basso continuo. Facsimile, in-

troduction and critical apparatus (Bologna: Arnaldo Forni Editore, 1998): 5-12.
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

know that the printed violin part was lost, and that the Biblioteca
Estense possesses a manuscript with the Ricercate per il violino,
which is the violin part to these duets. Both part-books have
been newly published in 2007, and cellists should no longer
think of these pieces as solo compositions. It is astonishing that
in the Ricercata Ottava, the range of the cello part is C-c”, a third
or fourth higher than any other late 17th-century composition for
bass violin, which could indicate that a five-string instrument
might have been intended.
Another important cellist was Giuseppe Maria Jacchini,
who grew up as a choirboy in San Petronio, and was employed
between 1680 and 1688 as an additional cellist for special occasions
(such as the feast of San Petronio, Bologna’s patron saint, 3 and
4 October); and finally became a regularly paid member of the
Cappella in 1689. Jacchini also wrote a few sonatas for cello and
continuo (two in his Opus 1 of c.1695, and two in his Opus 3 of
1697), and the earliest concertos for cello obbligato, two violins,
sometimes viola, and basso continuo (Opus 4, 1701). Reputed an
excellent cellist, particularly in accompanying singers, “Gioseffo
del Violonzino” had been a pupil of Gabrielli, and studied
compostion with Giacomo Antonio Perti (Colonna’s successor
as of 1696), who also included some virtuoso cello parts in some
of his own sacred compositions. Among the cellists active in
San Petronio in the last decades of the 17th century was also
Angelo Borri, but we have no compositions for the cello from
him. In addition, there are the Sinfonie, Sonate, and Concerti for
one, two, and four trumpets, some also with oboes, and strings
by tenor violist Giuseppe Torelli (1658-1709) that contain a few
cello solos. Furthermore, the archives in San Petronio own an
extraordinary Laudate Pueri a Canto solo col violoncello obligato
by Antonio Maria Bononcini, dated 19 February 1693. The cello


See Marc Vanscheeuwijck, Giovanni Battista Degli Antonii: Ricercate
sopra il violoncello o clavicembalo e Ricercate per il violino. Facsimile, score
edition and Preface (Bologna: Arnaldo Forni Editore, 2007).

Marc Vanscheeuwijck, Giuseppe Jacchini: Sonate a violino e violoncello,
Opus I (1695). Facsimile, score edition, introduction and critical apparatus (Bo-
logna: Arnaldo Forni Editore, 2001): 5-14.
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

part is so demanding, with its double and triple stops, arpeggios –

indeed a primarily harmony-filling part – and fast passage work,
that he might have reflected an approach to realizing a basso
continuo part, as I have proposed elsewhere. Except for those
cellists who played the instrument on the shoulder, iconography
seems to confirm that most players used underhand bow-grip on
their four- or five-string small bass violins in all these Bolognese
and Modenese repertoires. Indeed, as far as the 16th and 17th
century are concerned, I have found only a few images in which
the player holds the bow in overhand grip.
Finally, and to conclude this section, even when we encounter
the term basso (which, again indicates only the part, not the
instrument!), viola (if notated in tenor, baritone or bass clef, as
in the Sonate concertate of Dario Castello), or basso viola, we
may consider using a small bass violin. The basso viola does seem
to be more often identifiable with the violone, that is, a larger
instrument of either the viola da gamba or the viola da braccio
family, or, perhaps even more likely, some “hybrid” of the two
(see next section). In all these situations, considerations about
the complete range of the part, and an understanding of where
the part is mainly “situated” on the instrument, should determine
whether to use a small or a large bass violin. In terms of types of
repertoire, the instrument was most often used in chamber/dance
music and as a solo higher bass instrument in sacred and theater
music during the 17th century. Later, as Mattheson claimed, its
penetrating sound had a good effect also in bass parts.


See Wissick, “Bononcini”; and Lowell Lindgren, Preface to Antonio
Bononcini: Complete Sonatas for violoncello and Basso Continuo, Recent Re-
searches in the Music of the Baroque Era 77 (Madison, Wisc.: A-R Editions,
1996): vii-xxiii; and Marc Vanscheeuwijck, “I Bononcini e il Violoncello,”
forthcoming in The Bononcinis: From Modena to Europe, 1666-1747, edited by
Marc Vanscheeuwijck (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2020).

See Crispijn de Passe: Student Music (1612) [Den Haag, Gemeentemu-
seum] at: http://www.vanedwards.co.uk/month/jan01/month.htm and Nicola
Cosimi: Sonate da camera a violino e violone o cembalo... Opera prima (Amster-
dam, 1702), frontispiece: engraving by J. Smith [London, British Library] at
http://www.haendel.it/compositori/cosimi.htm.
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

Naples and its Influences on European Violoncello

Playing beyond 1700
In his Dialogo Vincenzo Galilei, father of the astronomer, wrote
that: La Viola da Gamba, & da braccio, tengo per fermo che ne
siano stati autori gli Italiani, & forse quelli del Regno di Napoli.
Although we traditionally think of the early development of
these instruments as a result of the post-1492 Jewish diaspora
into the Alpine region and Northeastern European areas
(Poland), there is a case to be made that they were also
introduced through another route: that of the direct Spanish
influence in the Kingdom of Naples (a vice kingdom of the
Spanish crown) and in the late fifteenth-century papal court of
the Borgias in Rome.
In considering the history of the bass violins, we can actually
develop a similar hypothesis. Here too, as mentioned earlier
musicologists have traditionally thought of the violoncello as an
instrument that developed in Bologna and Emilia. Given that
during most of the seventeenth century the larger violone was
the more common bass of the violins in Italy, the first appearance
of the term violoncello in a publication by Arresti in 1665 gave
historians the impression that the violoncello was indeed a
specifically Emilian novelty. Also the presence in Emilia of
some of the earliest solo cellists and their repertoire specifically
intended for the violoncello has led music historians’ thinking
in that direction. There is no doubt indeed that around the
Cappella Musicale of San Petronio in Bologna and at the court
of Francesco II d’Este in Modena, there was a great variety of
bass violins of different sizes, numbers of strings, and even ways


Vincenzo Galilei, Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna (Florence,
1581), 147: “I am convinced that the viola da gamba and the viola da braccio
were created by the Italians, perhaps those from the Kingdom of Naples.”

Ian Woodfield, The Early History of the Viol (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1984), 61; Holman Four and Twenty Fiddlers, 15; Stefano Pio,
Viol and Lute Makers of Venice 1490-1630 (Venice: Venice Research, 2011), 22-51;
and Anne-Emmanuelle Ceulemans, De la vièle médiévale au violon du XVIIe
siècle. Étude terminologique, iconographique et théorique (Turnhout: Brepols,
2011), 116.
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

of playing (holding the instrument vertically while standing or

sitting, or holding it horizontally while standing). However, this
does not mean that other regions/nations in the Italian peninsula
did not have their own traditions.
Although we know that in the four Neapolitan conservatories,
violin instructors were responsible for teaching all instruments
of the violin family, from treble to bass, i.e., from the violin to
the violone (whether assisted by the mastricelli or not), the term
violoncello first appeared in 1708 in Naples, in the payment lists
of the Cappella Reale. Among the basso continuo instruments
listed, we find “Violoncello de Spagna: Checco Supriani.”
However, the fact that the (Emilian) term violoncello was rarely
found in documents in Rome or in Naples, does not mean that
this smaller type of violone did not exist. On the contrary, if
violone was the most common term in Rome for the bass of the
violins, in Venice, Padua, and in Naples viola (sometimes even
violetta) was more often utilized, even for bass instruments.
In these cases, viola refers to the organological category, and
only when necessary the specific register was added, as in viola
contralto or alto viola, tenore viola, and basso viola (da braccio).
I agree with Guido Olivieri’s hypothesis, also confirmed by the
earliest compositions for the instrument, that the four Sonate
a due viole by Rocco Greco (c.1650-1718), and the duets for
two bass instruments by Cristoforo Caresana (1681) and by
Gregorio Strozzi (1683) are undoubtedly pieces for some type
of bass violin. Moreover, we could also wonder why for instance


Marc Vanscheeuwijck, “Sulle tracce del violoncello nel repertorio tar-
do-seicentesco in area padana,” in: Barocco Padano 7, edited by Alberto Col-
zani, Andrea Luppi, and Maurizio Padoan (Como: A.M.I.S., 2012): 109-144.

Guido Olivieri, “Cello Teaching and Playing in Naples in the Early Eigh-
teenth Century: Francesco Paolo Supriani’s Principij da imparare a suonare il
violoncello,” in Performance Practice: Issues and Approaches, ed. Timothy D.
Watkins, Ann Arbor: Steglein Publishing, 2009), 109-136, see 116-17 and 109-11.

Ibid. 117.

I-MC, Ms. 2 D 13 (old shelf mark 126 F 14 op.1 in the Biblioteca di Mon-
tecassino), dated 1699. For a description, see the chapter of Matteo Malagoli
in this volume.
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

a document that mentions maintenance done by luthier Nicola

Vinaccia in 1734 on “Violini, Viole, Contrabasso et altro delli
figlioli del Conservatorio di Sant’Onofrio a Capuana” does not
mention the violoncello. Most probably, the category of the
“Viole” already included it. An additional quest would be to
comprehend what particular type of bass violin was in use in
Naples, or whether there were several, as in Emilia.
The standardized cello, as described in Michel Corrette’s
1741 method was an ideal compromise between the larger violoni
(somewhat awkward for virtuoso repertoires), and the small
violoncini or violoncelli (violongelli), that were more adapted
for bravura parts, but less so for continuo playing, even though
Mattheson praised its penetrating sound in a basso continuo
context. Of course, then the question arises of where that ideal
compromise instrument came from, and why we suddenly find
it in Paris in the 1730s. I propose that this was a consequence of
the impact of Neapolitan cellists – in the first place, Salvatore
Lanzetti (c.1710-c.1780), who arrived in Paris in those years – and
of their followers who launched this “new” instrument and its
technique that had probably already been in use for a couple
of decades in the Neapolitan conservatories and in Neapolitan
musical contexts in general.
Since evidence in favor of such a hypothesis is not direct, I
will explore some examples of indirect evidence. First, we know
very little about Neapolitan instrument making, except for
some names of luthiers such as Natale Mattone (or Mautone),
Jacovo Lodi, Lorenzo Cotugno, the Gaglianos, Calace, Filano,
Fabbricatore, the Vinaccias and a few others, who built violins
and viole. On the other hand, the small number of surviving


Francesco Nocerino, “Gli strumenti musicali a Napoli nel secolo XVIII,’
in Storia della musica e dello spettacolo a Napoli. Il Settecento, ed. Frances-
co Cotticelli and Paologiovanni Maione, 2 vol., (Naples): Turchini Edizioni,
2003), II/ 772-804, see 787-88.

Francesco Nocerino, “Liutai del sedicesimo e diciasettesimo secolo a
Napoli: contributi documentari,” Recercare 13 (2001): 235-246, see 243. See also:
Ernesto De Angelis, La liuteria ad arco a Napoli dal XVII secolo ai nostri giorni,
edited by Francesco Nocerino (Florence: Olschki 2009). On German luthiers
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

instruments – provided that they are authentic (!) – has been too
deeply altered and adapted to subsequent aesthetic requirements
to have any historical organological value today. Approximately
fifty makers of bowed and plucked string instruments were
active in Naples at the time, a fact that does at any rate suggest
a substantial production.
Iconography too is of little help in the case of Neapolitan
viole or violoncelli: one of the few images of a cello is in the
Cappella Reale of Naples in 1732, in a famous painting done by
Nicola Maria Rossi for the Viennese residence of the Viceroy
of Naples, Count Aloys Thomas Harrach. Furthermore, the
portrait of a cellist, painted by Martin van Meytens, an Austrian
artist of Dutch-Swedish descent (often seen in an engraving
by Johann Jakob Haid) could possibly represent Francesco
Alborea. There is only a handful of other images, including the
putative portrait of Salvatore Lanzetti. Based on these, we can
at least indicate some common characteristics: the instruments
are usually relatively small; they consistently have four strings;
players hold them quite low between the calves, even on the
floor; the bow-hold is always overhand (as opposed to the
underhand grip that was the “norm” in most of Italy); and the
fingers of the left hand are positioned (almost) perpendicularly
on the strings. All these elements are in fact those of “classical,”
practically modern, cello technique. Finally, the presence in
Naples of five-string instruments in the early eighteenth century
seems doubtful, since we have no proof either from iconographic
and documentary sources, or from the music itself. Again, the
use of instruments smaller than the standardized size (c.75cm of
case length) cannot be excluded.
When studying the cello repertoire from the earliest obbligato
parts for the cello to the better-known sonatas and concertos,

in Naples, see Luigi Sisto, I liutai Tedeschi a Napoli tra Cinque e Seicento. Storia
di una migrazione in senso contrario (Rome: Istituto Italiano per la Storia della
Musica, 2010).

Nocerino, “Strumenti musicali,” II/ 800-04.

Including the Serenata Diana amante by Leonardo de Leo (dated 1717,
See Olivieri, “Cello Teaching,” 114.); a concerto by Giuseppe de Majo (1726,
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

we notice a high cello-technical level seen before 1736 only in

Naples (except for the published compositions of Jean Barrière
in France between 1733 and 1739). It is indeed the Kingdom
of Naples that produced the first truly virtuoso cellists; these,
beginning in the early eighteenth century, and thanks to their
emigration or occasional employment in Spain, Austria, France,
and England, established an approach to this smaller type of bass
violins that ended up being much more influential for future
generations than did the Emilian tradition of Gabrielli and
Bononcini. While in Northern Italy and in Rome, the violone
and violoncello with four or five strings, played in a variety of
positions and with underhand bow grip, kept coexisting well
into the eighteenth century, Neapolitan players of the four-
string violoncello with their overhand bow grip and advanced
technical virtuosity made a decisive impression both on visiting
foreign musicians in Naples and on audiences and critics in
France and England.
Francesco Paolo Alborea (1691-1739), nicknamed il
Francischiello (“little Francis”) and student of Giovanni Carlo
Cailò (1659-1722) at the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto,
was very young when he began to serve in the Cappella Reale; in
1726 he was hired by Emperor Charles VI in Vienna, in whose
service he remained for at least thirteen years. Appreciated by
Quantz, Benda, and Geminiani, his life was enwrapped in

see Dinko Fabris, “Neapolitan Cello Concertos.” Liner notes to Neapolitan

Cello Concertos: Leonardo Leo, Nicola Fiorenza, Giuseppe de Majo, Giovanni
Sollima. Giovanni Sollima, I Turchini, Antonio Florio. Glossa GCD 922604,
2012, see page 8-9.); the four concerti/sinfonie (with two violins and bass) for
solo cello by Nicola Fiorenza (1728-29, in I-Nc, M.S. 2179-2183.); six concertos
by Leonardo Leo (1737-38, in I-Nc, Rari 1.6.15/1-6.); the Sei Sonate by Pasquale
Pericoli (Bologna, 1769); the Solo for Violoncello, two violins and basso con-
tinuo by Nicola Sabatino (in A-Wgm); the Toccate and Sonate by Supriani (in
I-Nc, M.S. 9607), Alborea (in Cz-Pnm, mss. XLI B 17 & 18; the attribution of
these two sonatas to Alborea is doubtful); and the three published collections
of sonatas by Salvatore Lanzetti (Op. I, II, and V).

Jean Barrière, Sonates pour le violoncelle avec la Basse Continüe, Livre Ier
(Paris, 1733); Livre IIe (Paris, 1733); Livre IIIe (Paris, 1733); Livre IVe (Paris, 1739).

Olivieri, “Cello Teaching,” 112-13.
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

legend. There is a story (probably apocryphal) that the French

gambist Martin Berteau (1708-1771) switched to the violoncello
after hearing the divine playing of Alborea, thus becoming the
first French cello virtuoso (and teacher of Duport, Janson, and
others). From then on, the instrument quickly developed in the
French capital.
Probably the first musician to be documented as a regular
“violoncello” player at the Cappella Reale – thus providing the
earliest use of the term in Naples – was Francesco Supriani –
or Sopriano, and whose name is sometimes spelled Scipriani
– in 1708. Along with Alborea, Supriani (1678-1753) was one
of the great cello virtuosi of early eighteenth-century Naples.
He produced a short manuscript treatise on the basics of
cello playing (Principij da imparare a suonare il violoncello); a
Studio per violoncello; a Sonata di violoncello solo; and a set of
twelve Toccate for solo cello. These toccatas he transformed in
a second manuscript into sonatas, with a basso continuo part
and an ornamented (or rather, an extremely elaborate) version
of the original toccatas. Although undated, these manuscripts,
now in the Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella in Naples,
probably go back to the late 1720s, a period that marks the
beginning of a real explosion of repertoire for solo cello. This
may be a consequence of the commissioning of cello music
by such passionate Neapolitan amateur cellists as Marzio
Domenico IV Carafa, Duke of Maddaloni and the Marquis
Ottavio de Simone, who organized regular esercizi (concerts)
in their private palaces in Naples, where they invited virtuoso
cellists and other composers to present their latest pieces for
the instrument. Most cello concertos by Leonardo Leo (1694-
1744), Nicola Fiorenza (?-1764), Nicola Sabatino (1705-1796),
and Giuseppe De Majo (1697-1771), but also the cello sonatas


I-Nc, M.S. 9607.

Cesare Fertonani, “Musica strumentale a Napoli nel Settecento,” in Sto-
ria della musica e dello spettacolo a Napoli. Il Settecento, ed. Francesco Cotti-
celli and Paologiovanni Maione, 2 vol., (Naples: Turchini Edizioni, 2003), II/
925-64, see 933-34.
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

by well-known Neapolitan opera and sacred music composers

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736) and Nicola Porpora
(1686-1768), were intended for these musical events. This is one
of the reasons why this repertoire was never published: the
pieces presented were meant for a one-time performance by
professional musicians whose technique included high registers
up to a fourth or fifth above the middle of the upper string (d2 or
e2), large leaps over two strings, arpeggios, batteries, chords and
double stops, and complex and variegated articulations. In such
pieces the use of the thumb position is practically unavoidable,
and a smaller instrument is definitely preferable for ease of the
performer. However in the most technically complex pieces,
such as Supriani’s eighth sonata, a small instrument with four
strings can improve their feasibility, even without the use of the
thumb.
Another, often forgotten, composer in the Neapolitan cello
repertoire is Giulio de Ruvo (fl. 1703-1716), whose cello sonatas
(1703) are preserved in the Milan Conservatory library, and who
was thought to have been active in Northern Italy. However,
recent research indicates that he may have originated in Ruvo
near Bari, and that he was professionally active in Naples.
Indeed, several of his compositions are dedicated to the Duke of
Bovino, a nobleman from Puglia who resided in Naples.
It is probably no coincidence that around the time another
important Neapolitan cello virtuoso, Salvatore Lanzetti, played
at the Concert Spirituel in Paris in May 1736, French composer-
cellists such as Jean-Baptiste Barrière began to publish virtuoso
cello sonatas in a style and at a technical level comparable to


I-Mc, Noseda O-46, 12-16.

Danilo Costantini and Ausilia Magaudda. “Ruvo, Giulio.” Grove Music
Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed June 20, 2019,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/24187.

In 1736, Salvatore Lanzetti played his own cello pieces in three perfor-
mances at the Concert Spirituel in Paris: on Ascension Day (10 May), Pentecost
(20 May), and on Corpus Domini (31 May). He was the very first cellist to
perform there as a soloist. See Constant Pierre, Histoire du Concert Spirituel,
(Paris: Société Française de Musicologie, 1975), 244.
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

Lanzetti’s. In fact, the last three compositions in Lanzetti’s first

set of twelve cello sonatas (Opus I, 1736), and some of the sonatas
of Opus V (1745), are not playable without extensive use of the
thumb technique, which allows for more stability and flexibility
of the left hand in the highest positions. In contrast with the
repertoire performed in the esercizi in the Neapolitan palaces,
the situation of Lanzetti and his sonatas is different: he was an
ambitious musician who sought employment abroad at the court
of Savoy, and performed in the most prestigious concert venues
in Europe. Indeed, he used his 1736 publication as a calling card
to present his work as a composer-cellist, thus disseminating the
Neapolitan cello style and technique throughout Europe.
This technique of the use of the thumb as a capo tasto in high
positions was first described by Michel Corrette in his 1741 cello
tutor, along with detailed illustrations of the overhand bow grip.
Even in France, the “normal” bow grip had been underhand on
the basse de violon, except in Lully’s Vingt-Quatre Violons du
Roy in Versailles, so Corrette’s assertion of this exclusive use of
overhand bow hold was, as we have seen, indeed revolutionary.
It is highly unlikely that any of these innovations were not
affected by the presence and influence of not just Neapolitan
cellists, but also by the popularity of Neapolitan music in France
(and in London) in general.
As mentioned before, Jean-Baptiste Barrière (1707-1747)
from Bordeaux, a great virtuoso who is said to have studied in
Italy c.1737-38 (though it is not known where and with whom),
published four books of sonatas between 1733 and 1739, in
a style that is halfway between the devilish viola da gamba
solos of Antoine Forqueray and Salvatore Lanzetti’s sonatas,
and that display technical features comparable to those of the
Neapolitans. We should not forget that in the 1740s France
was in the middle of the Querelle des Bouffons, which opposed
traditionally French musical aesthetic principles to the Italian
(i.e., Neapolitan) ideas, that eventually prevailed. We can thus
not ignore the obvious link between this exported Neapolitan
approach to the cello and its French emulation in the repertoires
of such cellists as Martin Berteau and Jean Barrière, and later
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

also of Louis-François-Joseph Patouart, Jean-Baptiste Janson,

Jean-Baptiste Bréval, and Jean-Louis Duport. The last two
(especially Duport, 1749-1819), were the first cellists to obtain
teaching positions in cello at the brand new Paris Conservatoire
one generation later. We can then hypothesize that the new
standardized “violoncello,” as proposed and described by
Corrette in 1741, was in fact the codification of an instrument
and its technique as used by Neapolitan virtuosos passing
through Paris in the 1730s, a codification that presents all the
characteristics of the practically modern “classical” approach
to the cello. The general success of the Neapolitan galant style
and the curriculum of the Neapolitan conservatories also deeply
influenced the curriculum of the Paris Conservatoire a few
decades later. This Neapolitan-inspired approach to virtuoso
cello playing finally also flourished in London with Lanzetti
and Pasqualino De Marzis, and was emulated by the Cervettos.
In this sense, it was not really the Emilian tradition but the
Neapolitan cello school that was the true foundation of the
“classical” cello school, as it would develop over the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries.
In conclusion, we have seen that in the late seventeenth
century, the bass instruments of the violin family was still
designated as viola or violone, but by the end of the first decade
of the new century, musicians such as Alborea and Supriani are
mentioned as players of the violoncello. Even with the limited
iconographical sources and extant instruments available, we
can hypothesize – based mostly on the repertoire – that the
Neapolitan violoncello was almost certainly an instrument of
relatively small size, with four strings and tuned C-G-d-a, or in a
few cases also a fifth higher (G-d-a-e1). The earliest compositions
– Concerti, Sonate, Toccate, Studi, Soli, Sinfonie – are extant in
manuscripts from the middle of the 1720s, and within a decade
cellists were diffusing their approach to playing technique not
only in the Kingdom of Naples, but also throughout Europe.
From the 1730s on they had certainly disseminated a technical
level that includes thumb position, allowing players to develop
the highest registers of the instrument, combined with all kinds
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

of pyrotechnical features that reflects those of their violinist

colleagues. It was thus in Paris – partly through performances
by Neapolitan virtuosi such as Lanzetti; partly thanks to the
publication and circulation of Corrette’s cello tutor; and partly
also through the imitation and dissemination of Neapolitan
examples (e.g., Barrière) – that the “classical” cello began its
long and fruitful career as a soloist in the mid-1730s. Perhaps
without knowing the full extent of his assertion, Vincenzo
Galilei was in a way correct in writing that the instruments of
the violin family and by extension, its basses were established in
the Kingdom of Naples, and not in Emilia, as has always been
claimed by modern scholars.

Large Bass Violins in the 17th Century

Definitions – Iconography
Much ink has been spilled on trying to understand exactly what
the violone was in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and
probably the very question itself is primarily responsible for the
confusion. The violone is not one specific instrument; indeed,
it does not even denote one specific family of instruments.
For example, scholars have often posited, based on only a
few treatises, that violone in the 16th century was synonymous
to viola da gamba as a family. Although this could be accurate,
in a specific period and in a specific place, it is too restrictive.
Even though terminology may seem at first sight haphazard and
confused, it was on the contrary quite precise and specific when
we bring the exact time and location into the equation.
Etymologically violone means large viola, and we should
accept that it is no more specific than that. Even the strict
separation between viole da gamba and viole da braccio is
artificial and anachronistic, particularly when it comes to large
instruments. Most iconographic and documentary sources
considered together would end up indicating that violoni were
almost all “hybrids,” if we were to observe the characteristics that
have become standard in our descriptions of both instrument
families, as we have discussed earlier. Indeed, whether we look
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

at paintings and engravings from Italy, from the Netherlands, or

from elsewhere in Europe, we find relatively large bass violins
with four, five, six and even eight strings, some presenting
what we would recognize today as “pure” viola da braccio
characteristics, and some with elements that also remind us of
the viola da gamba family. Again, even in the case of larger-
type bowed bass instruments, we should let regional or even
more local practices, repertoires, and customs at a specific given
time inform us about what instrument to use and how to play it,
rather than to try to find a one-size-fits-all solution for the entire
early modern period throughout Europe.

Instruments
In a 1994 article Rodolfo Baroncini mentions the existence of a
Contrabbasso di viola da gamba (a 17th-century term borrowed
from Monteverdi) tuned in G1 (12-foot) based on the famous
miniature of the musical chapel of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria
by Hans Mielich. It is in Venetian contexts that this low tuning
in G1 first appears; such as Lodovico Zacconi’s 1592 Prattica di
musica, and Monteverdi’s use of the Contrabbasso di viola in
Orfeo (1607), which necessarily refers to an instrument capable
of playing at a lower pitch than the bassi da brazzo and bassi
da gamba. A same or similar use appears again in the 1624
Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda and in the 1610 Vespers.
At least until c.1675, “violone” without further specification was
a non-transposing eight-foot viola da braccio instrument of the
larger type with possible extensions into the 12-foot register


See examples at https://www.greatbassviol.com/iconography/boulogne.
jpg; https://www.greatbassviol.com/iconography/falcone-concert.jpg; https://
www.greatbassviol.com/FB%20images/lely.jpg; https://www.greatbassviol.
com/iconography/molenaer.jpg; https://www.greatbassviol.com/FB%20im-
ages/puget.jpg; https://www.greatbassviol.com/iconography/sara1.jpg; etc.

Rodolfo Baroncini, “Contributo alla storia del violino nel sedicesimo
secolo: i “sonadori di violini” della Scuola Grande di San Rocco a Venezia,”
Recercare 6 (1994): 61-190. See Hans Mielich: Orlandus Lassus and his Musicians
of the Hofkapelle in Munich (1565-1570), Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek:
https://www.greatbassviol.com/FB%20images/mielich.jpg.
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

(F1-C). Such a violone could be shaped like a traditional viola

da gamba (with six strings, tuned G1-C-F-A-d-g, often called
the G-violone); or a bass violin (with five or four strings); or
anything in between (as we can see in some paintings by Evaristo
Baschenis). It could possibly correspond to Praetorius’ Groß
Quint Bass (tuned F1-C-G-d-a) and the five-string instruments by
Hans Krouchdaler preserved in the Musical Instrument Museums
in Brussels, Berlin, and Nürnberg. It should also be noted that
so much 17th-century printed repertoire offers the alternative
between theorbo and violone for a melodic bass part (often
independent of the basso continuo), that some correlation must
exist between the two instruments; if we accept 12-foot violoni
as a possibility, the theorbo presents the same extension and the
two become easily interchangeable. Both are fundamentally non-
transposing 8-foot instruments with a possible extension into
the 12-foot range (down to F1 or G1). On the other hand, if 17th-
century composers or printers meant to include an instrument
capable of playing most of the bass line an octave below the
written pitch, they identified an instrument larger than the bass
by adding modifiers such as grande, grosso, doppio, contrabbasso,
in contrabasso, or any combination of these, as Stephen Bonta and
Tharald Borgir hypothesized already in the late 1970s. In most
of the 17th century these violoni in contrabbasso were only used
in exceptional situations, mostly in sacred polychoral concertato
Venetian/Bavarian, Bolognese, and Roman contexts. They
became more frequent and eventually standardized in 18th-century
opera and large-ensemble contexts throughout Europe. In most
performance situations in which the standard instrumentation
was one-to-a-part, a 16-foot transposing double bass was virtually
never used in the 17th century, and it was still a rarity during most
of the first half of the 18th century.


See: https://www.greatbassviol.com/iconography/basc3.jpg.

Tharald Borgir, The Performance of the Basso Continuo in Italian Ba-
roque Music (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1987).

See Richard Maunder, The Scoring of Baroque Concertos (Woodbridge:
The Boydell Press, 2004), and Andrew Parrott, The Essential Bach Choir
(Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2000).
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

Repertoire
As we have seen, virtually all Italian 17th-century music that calls
for a violone (in B♭1-F-c-g or in C-G-d-a) is thus to be played at
pitch, that is, not transposing, except for the possible extension
into the 12-foot register along with (or instead of) the theorbo
and/or the 12-foot short organ pedal if one uses a six-string
viola da gamba (the so-called G-violone), a five-string viola da
braccio (tuned G1 or F1-C-G-d-a), or any “hybrid.” Here again,
these various instrument types are fairly interchangeable, and it
is only the regional context that will dictate certain preferences,
though without being specifically prescriptive.
In the case of the larger bass violins an overview of the
repertoire will also be necessarily incomplete and condensed.
One of the earliest occurrences of solo parts for the “violone” as
a (probable) bass violin, however, are the two Sonate in Milanese
composer Giovanni Paolo Cima’s Concerti ecclesiastici (1610).
Here the instrument is used in its full range (including the
lowest pitches) from C to d1, that is, in first position on a four-
string instrument tuned C-G-d-a; but given the quick passage
work on the lowest string, the instrument should be large
enough to have sufficiently thin strings in pure or loaded gut
to provide acceptable sound. An argument could also be made
for using a large bass violin tuned in B♭1-F-c-g, thus avoiding
the lowest open string, or even a G-violone, and avoiding the
lowest string altogether: in both cases the lowest “good” pitch
would be the 8-foot C. In fact, in his Il Scolaro per imparare a
suonare di violino, et altri stromenti (the only 17th-century tutor
book for instruments of the violin family), published in Milan
in 1645, Gasparo Zannetti gives tunings for the three sizes of
violin family instruments and a long collection of dances for this
typical three- or four-part violin band in both musical notation
and in tablature, with occasional indication of bowings. Thanks
to the tablatures it is easy to deduce from the regular g-d1-a1-e2-
tuning of the violin, that alto and tenor use the same tuning, a
fifth lower than the canto (soprano), that is, c-g-d1-a1, and that
the bass is tuned two fifths lower again than the alto/tenor, or
in B♭1-F-c-g.
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

Particularly interesting because of their older viola bastarda

“division” style are the Alcune opere di diversi auttori a diverse
voci, Passaggiate principalmente per la viola bastarda, ma anco
per ogni sorte di stromenti, e di voci (Venice, 1626) by organist
Vincenzo Bonizzi of Parma. Bonizzi reiterates in his preface Alli
studiosi di musica that although his divisions on famous tunes by
Sandrin, Striggio, Willaert, Créquillon, and De Rore are intended
first and foremost for the viola bastarda, they could also be
played on any other instrument that can handle the range. Highly
virtuosic in true bastarda style – the diminutions go through all
parts of a polyphonic texture from bass to soprano (reflected in
the use of all clefs) – these pieces with basso continuo have an
extremely wide range of three octaves and a fifth (G1 – d2), which
would work on a six-string “G-violone”, and even better on the
instrument with two additional higher strings as represented by
Pier Francesco Mola. Literally a “hybrid,” the viola bastarda is
again not a specific organological category, but a way of playing
an instrument. However, it needs to be an instrument with a very
wide range, as also required in other viola bastarda literature,
for example by Girolamo Dalla Casa (Il vero modo di diminuir,
1584), Aurelio Virgiliano (Il Dolcimelo, c.1600), and Francesco
Rognoni (Selva de varii pasaggi, 1620).
Also, we should not forget that only in Modena and in Parma
(again, in Emilia), and perhaps under French influence, the parts
for violone consistently ask for a low B♭1 both in solo and in
ensemble music: see for example Giuseppe Colombi, Giovanni


Pier Francesco Mola: The Viol Player (mid 17th century), Bellinzona,
Palazzo del Governo, see: https://www.greatbassviol.com/new%20gamba%20
pics/mola.jpg.

In his various solo pieces for violone preserved in manuscript at the
Biblioteca Estense in Modena, Colombi often used B♭1, but an oddity appears
in his Op. 4 Sonate a 2 violini con un bassetto viola se piace (Bologna, 1676)
where the extension is also B♭1-e1, thus practically invalidating my theory that
bassetto would preferably indicate a small bass violin – unless in Modena the
situation was similar to that of the bass violin in Britain (see above). Also Gal-
li’s Trattenimento musicale sopra il violoncello à solo (Parma, 1691) are written
for “violoncello” and use the same low tuning.
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

Maria Bononcini (Op. 1, 3, and 4; 1666, 1669, and 1671), Marco

Uccellini (Op. 9; 1667), Giovanni Battista Vitali (Partite sopra
diverse sonate per il violone; Ms. I-MOe, c.1675-80), Domenico
Galli (Trattenimento, 1691) and others. All the other violone parts
we have, either in print or in manuscript, tend to stay within the
C-e1 range with a few exceptions to f#1 and g1, though such higher
parts often are given to a violoncello/violoncino/bassetto. Another
tendency is the gradual abandonment of the 8-foot violone (at
least as a term) after the 1680s in favor of the violoncello.
In summarizing bass violin terminology, tunings, numbers
of strings, and playing techniques in pre-1700 Italy, it is useful
to keep the following observations in mind. First, in terms of
regional usage, we see that in Venice (and sometimes in Mantua)
basso da brazzo (da gamba) and basso viola are the most commonly
used terms; in Ferrara, Ravenna, Rimini, and Mantua: bassetto (di
viola); in Bologna: violone, violoncello, and violetta; in Modena:
violone (in B♭1), violoncello, and bassetto; and in Rome, Naples,
Lecce, and Florence: mostly violone, but gradually also more
often violoncello in concertino parts of concerti grossi. Second,
in some cases violone and violoncello are interchangeable (for
example in Florence and Brescia). Third, violone remains the
normal term in Rome and in the South until c.1720, and it is
usually a non-transposing 8-foot bass, except when otherwise
specified (in contrabbasso, grosso, grande, doppio…), whereas
in Modena and Parma the violone is usually tuned B♭1-F-c-g.
Fourth, bassetto is frequently used in Emilia and in Romagna


A long list of composers’ names includes (among others) in alphabet-
ical order Albergati, Albinoni, Aldrovandini, Alli Macarini, P. degli Antonii,
Baldassini, Bassani, Bellinzani, Bernardi, G. M. Bononcini, Caldara, Cazza-
ti, Colombi, Colonna (as a 16-foot double bass), Corelli, Franchi, C. Grossi,
Legrenzi (who often uses viola da brazzo), Leonarda, Merula, Migali, Milan-
ta, Monteventi, Natale, Passarini, Penna, Prattichista, Predieri, Ravenscroft,
Reina, Silvani, de Stefanis, Stiava, Tarditi, Torelli (as a 16-foot double bass),
Uccellini, Urio, Valentini, Veracini, G. B. Vitali. See also Manfred Hermann
Schmid, “Der Violone in der italienischen Instrumentalmusik des 17. Jahrhun-
derts,” in Studia organologica: Festschrift John Henry van der Meer, ed. Friede-
mann Hellwig (Tutzing: 1987): 407-436.
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

(except in Bologna), and refers to a smaller violone (most

likely played da gamba); in Bologna however there seems to
be a tendency towards an occasional use of the violoncello da
spalla, probably for practical reasons of space in the organ lofts
and other balcony-type placements. These violoncelli (whether
played da gamba or da spalla) have both a variable tuning and
a variable number of strings (C-G-d-a; C-G-d-g; D-G-d-a; or 5
strings: C-G-d-a-e1; C-G-d-a-d1; C-G-d-g-d1; D-G-d-g-d1). Fifth,
violoncino and violonzino are parallel terms of violoncello used
in Northern Italy (Venice, Bergamo, Parma), though nothing
proves that the difference with violoncello is determined by the
presence on the cello of at least one wire-wound gut string as
Bonta claimed. And finally, a tendency towards the correlation
between “size of the instrument – number of strings – playing
position (da spalla or da gamba)” seems logical; it should be the
repertoire and/or the sort of musical writing to determine the
choice of a specific instrument with a particular tuning, number
of strings, playing position and bow grip (over- or underhand).
Most of these concepts and remarks regarding small and
large bass violins, their many variants, and their use and playing
techniques are to be extended back to the 16th century as well,
but their vast Renaissance repertoire – partly improvised, partly
borrowed from vocal music, and partly consisting of dances
and other polyphonic compositions for no more specified
instruments – would be the object of an extensive “cello story”
still to be told another time. Regarding the Baroque cello
however, we have seen that there are far more stories to be told
than the one limiting its narrative to the standard cello and the
violoncello piccolo we have heard for too long.

The Violoncello da Spalla:

A 21st-Century Aberration?

Twenty years have passed since Gregory Barnett published

his groundbreaking article on the violoncello da spalla; it has


Vanscheeuwijck, “Sulle tracce,” 122-24.

Barnett, “Shouldering the Cello.”
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

also been almost fifteen years since several (mostly) Baroque

violinists – led by Sigiswald Kuijken and his followers in Brussels
and stimulated at first by Russian luthier Dmitry Badiarov –
have (re-)invented an instrument played on the shoulder, or
rather against the chest, which they have called the violoncello
da spalla. Treatises, documentary sources, and iconography
attest to the existence of bass violins played “horizontally,”
or “da braccio,” but a number of misunderstandings and
misinterpretations, combined with a few falsi storici have led
to this tiny 21st-century violoncello da spalla becoming all too
accepted in the world of historically-informed performance. I
propose here to rectify certain assumptions, and to re-evaluate
written sources and iconographic materials musicians have
recently used to play Baroque solo concertos and even 6 Bach’s
Cello Suites on these small instruments. Taking into account
organological characteristics, strings, playing techniques, and
repertoire (primarily in Italian and German-speaking areas) I
will show that this modern invention is in fact an aberration
based on a double anachronism.
Given that the violoncello played da spalla seems to occur
primarily in the iconography of the Po Valley, with an even higher
occurrence in Emilia, and that the majority of the situations
seem to indicate sacred contexts, we could hypothesize that the
instrument was played on the shoulder mostly in this kind of
repertoire. On the other hand we do see the da spalla position
in illustrations of concert and chamber music contexts as well.
Reflecting further on the elements that appear to be constant in
these different contexts, the reasons for playing the instrument on
the right shoulder are less a question of the player’s abilities – for
example, a violinist playing a bass part on a larger instrument, and
who does not feel comfortable playing vertically – than practical
and acoustical. When playing in an organ loft, or even in the
balcony of a concert hall or ballroom in many Italian regions,
but certainly in Emilia, there is often not enough room for a
bass violin player to sit down and play. More importantly, the


See image in Bologna, Archivio di Stato, Anziani Consoli, Insignia, vol.
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

balustrades in such lofts are usually in plain wood and at least

80cm high, which completely muffles the sound of an instrument
that does not emit its sound above them. Not only are all
articulations lost, but the volume of the sound is also strongly
reduced. A large violone in contrabasso still has an important
part of the instrument producing sound above the balustrade
when playing standing, but the smaller bass violins do not. It
is thus quite conceivable that such acoustic considerations led
players of small bass violins to place the instrument horizontally
– above the balustrade, or even with its shoulder leaning on top
of the balustrade – to produce a stronger and more articulate
sound. This suggests that such a way of holding a relatively large
instrument probably limited the musician to performing simple
bass parts only, while performing virtuoso solo compositions
seems extremely uncomfortable and quite unlikely. In a
chamber music situation, where only the harpsichordist had
the score, the continuo cellist can effectively get closer to
the notation by standing and holding the instrument on the
shoulder. This explains why the violoncello da spalla should
not be considered as a specific organological category, but just
a regular violoncello played in a different position, and indeed
virtually all iconographic sources show us that the instruments
played da spalla were usually relatively large, and always utilized
in accompaniment situations. When practically and acoustically
possible, we can well imagine (at least from our 21st-century
perspective) that the preferred position was probably da gamba
with the instrument placed between the calves, on the floor, or
on a little stool.
On the other hand, the treatises sometimes attest to
differences in regional practices, or advantages of a certain way
of holding the instrument, but except for the rare mention in

IX, ff. 105v-106r (II bimestre 1705), detail, reproduced in Vanscheeuwijck,

“Sulle tracce,” Ill. 7, 141.

See Stefano Ghirardini (attr.): Concertino (c.1730), private collection
(photo: Stefano Martelli in: Rassegna storica Crevalcorese 4 (December 2006),
94) reproduced in Vanscheeuwijck, “Sulle tracce,” Ill. 9, 143.
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

Mattheson’s Neu-eröffnete Orchestre of 1713 of the shoulder

instrument being one of the smaller types (among other small-
ish instruments), nothing in the 17th or first half of the 18th
century indicates anything resembling the instrument that is
used nowadays as a violoncello da spalla.
When this violoncello da spalla emerged in 2004, I was
interested in the idea, given what Barnett had presented in his
article a few years earlier but, as a cellist I found the sound of
the instrument unconvincing at best. Brent Wissick’s 2012 article
on Antonio Bononcini convinced me that playing horizontally
on even a “regular-sized” instrument was a possibility, though I
disagree with what he proposed as a potential repertoire, which
includes the solo sonatas of Domenico Gabrielli, Giuseppe
Maria Jacchini, and Antonio Maria Bononcini. In addition,
when I discovered that the alto (i.e., a 4-foot instrument,
probably tuned c-g-d1-a1) of the five late 16th-century instruments
of the Freiberg cathedral in Saxony – and made by Paul Klemm
before they were installed in the hands of the angels in the
funeral chapel of Moritz von Sachsen in 1594 – had precisely
the same measurements as what was being used as an 8-foot
violoncello da spalla (tuned C-G-d-a), I realized that something
was not quite working.
Indeed, the models Dmitry Badiarov worked from were
three instruments, allegedly from c.1714, c.1724, and c.1732, from
the musical instrument museums in Leipzig and Brussels, the
earliest being an Egidius Snoeck “tenor,” the other two being
viole pompose made by Johann Christian Hoffman. These


Cf. the treatises of Rousseau, Walther, Mattheson, Majer, Eisel, etc.,
mentioned in footnotes 17-24.

Wissick, “Bononcini.”

Eszter Fontana, Veit Heller, and Steffen Lieberwirth, eds. Wenn Engel
Musizieren. Musikinstrumente von 1594 im Freiberger Dom, 2nd edition with
English summary (Leipzig and Dößel: Stekovics, 2008), and Vanscheeuwijck,
“Sulle tracce,” 119, n. 21.

See https://www.thestrad.com/violoncello-da-spalla--story-of-a-redis-
covery/6455.article and also Karel Moens, “Les voix médianes dans l’orchestre
français sous le règne de Louis XIV: les instruments conservés comme source
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

instruments are known to be some of the few predating the

1760s. Given their dating, they could indeed be eligible to be
the violoncello da spalla that Mattheson mentions. However,
problems arose when the Badiarov instrument needed to be
strung up, particularly at 8-foot pitch, when measurements of
these “historical” instruments oscillated between 43-47cm body
length (Badiarov’s are 44-46cm) for a vibrating string length
of 41-43cm (Badiarov: 43cm). Setting up even a regular wire-
wound cello C-string on such a small instrument caused it to be
too loose to be playable. Subsequently, Mimmo Peruffo, string
maker and owner of Aquila Strings in Vicenza, was asked to
make an 8-foot-pitched C-string that would work. He proposed
a doppia filata or double-wound gut string, the earliest mention
of which he had found in a letter dated late 1767 or early 1768
by Jean-Baptiste Forqueray (le jeune). That string then finally
yielded a tension high enough to play a decent-sounding 8-foot
C at an a1=415Hz pitch.
Unfortunately, the Snoeck and Hoffman instruments, like so
many so-called originals of the Baroque period, seem to have
been recut and/or reassembled in the early 19th century, and have
lost their historical value. On the other hand, plenty of post-1765
instruments of this smaller size – large violas, or tenors, even
with five strings – have survived unaltered in the collections in

d’information,” in L’orchestre à cordes sous Louis XIV: Instruments, repertoires,

singularités, eds. Jean Duron and Florence Gétreau (Paris: Vrin, 2015), 119-138.

For comparison, the standard modern cello has a 75cm-body length for
a vibrating string length of 69cm, while the viola typically has a body length
of 39-44cm for a vibrating string length of 37-43cm, obviously making the low
8-foot C-string on a violoncello da spalla only a couple of centimeters longer
than the 4-foot c-string of a viola.

Forqueray actually rejects the “double filée” string in his letter to the
Prince of Prussia, which was discovered by Yves Gérard in Merseburg and
published in 1962. See Yves Gérard, “Notes sur la fabrication de la viole
de gambe et la manière d’en jouer, d’après une correspondance inédite de
Jean-Baptiste Forqueray au Prince Frédéric-Guillaume de Prusse,” Recherches
sur la musique française classique 2 (1961-62): 165-171. A pdf of the original man-
uscript is available at https://www.greatbassviol.com/treatises.html where the
relevant passage can be found on p. [2r.].
1. Violoncello and other Bass Violins in Baroque Italy 

Berlin, Nürnberg, and Prague, probably because of the existence

at that point of the double-wound strings.
In sum, the violoncello da spalla that Badiarov has created in
the early 21st century is based on a double anachronism, if used
as an 8-foot instrument to play music from the first half of the
18th century or earlier. First, the model is based on very deeply
altered (that is, reduced in size) instruments, the falsi storici I
mentioned before; and second, because in order to make such
tiny instruments work at 8-foot pitch, a double-wound string
is indispensable – but it is not documented before the mid-
1760s. If an instrument of this size indeed existed before the
extant examples of the 1760s and later, it most probably played
at 4-foot pitch, as the Paul Klemm viola in Freiberg, and could
well have been the tenor viola used in 17th-century Italy. It might
even be a viable candidate for the still problematic quinte de
violon used in the 24 Violons du Roy. I could also imagine a
tuning in G (an octave below the violin) or even in F (a fifth
below the viola) for such an instrument, but the tension of a
pure gut or single-wound gut string would still be too low at
a 400 or 408Hz pitch, making the instrument functional only
on the upper three strings. This could theoretically be fine; the
resonance would obviously be enhanced by a larger case and
the lower, even loose string, but it would remain an alto or tenor
instrument, never a bass, let alone a solo bass instrument to use
in Vivaldi’s cello concertos or Bach’s Cello Suites, as some have
done. On these grounds, it is obvious that this small type of
violoncello da spalla is not acceptable as a possible historical
instrument to play any Baroque repertoire. On the other hand,
in some compositions, such as Sammartini’s Violoncello piccolo
concerto, and in some later repertoire, the instrument is indeed
a possibility as a 6- or 8-foot small bass – once the double-
wound string has been introduced, i.e., probably around the
middle of the 18th century.
In conclusion, then, bass violins of larger and smaller sizes,
that is, violoni and violoncelli, were indeed played horizontally
when space did not allow for a vertical position in basso
continuo situations, but it was clearly not the preferred way. If
 Marc Vanscheeuwijck

referred to as a violoncello da spalla, da braccio or da collo,

the term never referred to a specific organological category, but
only to the way it was held by the player – probably to indicate
the contrast with more standard practices. Once standardized
in the 1730s in France, and later elsewhere, the violoncello was
generally played in its classical way, including the overhand bow
grip, which originally (and until the 1720s at least) was used
exclusively by the 24 Violons du Roy and the Neapolitan cellists.
The small violoncello da spalla in its 21st-century invented
version, incompatible with the body of evidence we have, has
no utility for historically-informed performances of pre-1760s
music.

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