The Violin Chronicles Podcast

Ep 2. Gasparo Da Salo Violin maker and Luthier part 2 This guy is going places.

Join me as I delve into the world of Gasparo Da Salo once again and discover what  guns, Monetverdi and a war in France have to do with his business.
I speak to Violin maker and expert John Dilworth, fashion historian Emily Brayshaw about the influence clothes and style on players of Violins, Violas and cellos and finally Fillipo Fasser a contemporary violin maker in Brescia, explains the importance of the master Luthiers of his city.
Music you have heard in this episode is by
Bach Violin partita No 2, Telemann Sonata in D maj for viola da gamba – Daniel Yeadon, Unfamiliar faces – All good folks, Budapest – Christian Larssen, Bloom by Roo Walker, Brandenburg Concerto No 4 – Kevin Macleod, Frost waltz- Kevin Macleod, Getting to the bottom of it – Fernweh Goldfish
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles, a podcast in which I will attempt to bring to life the stories surrounding the famous, infamous, or just not very well known, but interesting, violin makers of history. My name is Linda Lespets. I am a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French Violin Making School some years ago now.
Welcome back for part two of the life and times of Gasparo de Salo, instrument maker, musician, and man on his way up.  In episode one, we looked at what it would have been like to live in Renaissance Brescia in the 1500s.  The destruction and subsequent rebuilding of the city after its sacking in 1512.
This led to a flurry of activity amongst artisans and artists. And the role that this played in the rebirthing of the city of Brescia.  In this episode, we will look more in depth at instrument making in the city, and how Gasparo Da Salo started to make a name for himself.
The 1560s heralded in the golden age of piracy in the Caribbean. But closer to home, and an event that is more important to the history of the violin, but that I will only come to in a future episode, the then 10-year-old Charles IX of France becomes king after his brother Francis dies of an ear infection!
Not to worry. Catherine de Medici, Charles's mother, is more than happy to act as regent for her son.  But what is important to note here is that an Italian born queen, with her love of the arts and music, is wielding her power in the trend setting capital of Paris.  But back in Italy, as Gasparro Da Salo grew up, he became an organ builder's apprentice. And then, in his early twenties, disaster struck the family. When his father Francesco died, the decision was made, they would move to Brescia.  If Gasparo Da Salo was to become successful in both his musical career and instrument making, Violin making and lutherie, Brescia was the place to be.  But how important was Brescia in the role of instrument production at this time?
John Gagne.  I'm John Gagne, I'm a senior lecturer in history at the University of Sydney and I work mostly on European history from the 13th to the 18th centuries.
 There's a guy named Ugo Ravasio, who wrote a lot of books about Brescian violin making in the 1990s. And he claims in one of his like seminal articles that the word violino first appears in Brescian documents on the 17th of April, 1530.
There are other words before then for sort of other instruments like viola da braccio or lira da braccio, but the actual word like violino is apparently a 1530, you know, invention and he also tells us that the first document to record a maker of violini is the 11th of December, 1558.
That's very precise.
Yeah, exactly. It's kind of interesting. And this is the beauty of experts. I mean, this shows us that there's like, I mean, that's, it's more about language, I suppose, because as I, just said, like  in the 15th century, there are people in Brescia making instruments of all kinds, but the word violino and the actual identity of the maker of violini seems to be like 1530s to 1560, basically is when they're like, agglomerating as a self-named kind of group of people.
That's what Ugo Ravasio claims, that basically the word violino, yeah, is, is actually  Brescian, of Brescian origin.
The period in which Gasparo Da Salo moved from Salo to Brescia to set up his workshop coincided with the end of the Italian wars.  These were the series of conflicts we spoke about in the first episode where the city of Brescia was violently sacked by the French army. But now in this time of peace, trade was able to flourish.
The feelings the Brescians had towards the French a few years earlier were quite strong. One inhabitant of the city described the French as “The enemies of God and of humanity. Bloodsuckers and people without laws. Of faith not worthy to be called Christian”.  But now these bloodsucking heathens were paying a good price for instruments coming from Italy.
It was a rare moment of relative peace in this part of the world. So commerce prevailed.
Actually, there's a good story that you probably know that relates to Galileo, where Galileo, the scientist, was because he came from a musical family, obviously, his father was a theorist and a composer. And he asked a friend whether he should buy a violin from Cremona or Brescia and the friend asked Monteverdi, who at that point was like Maistro di Capella at St. Mark's in Venice. And Monteverdi supposedly replied “Brescian violins, you can get anywhere. But the ones that are incomparably beautiful are from Cremona.”  The answer he received when inquiring about purchasing a violin for his nephew Alberto, was, “I have conferred with the concert master of Saint Marks who told me they're easy found in Brescia but it's in Cremona that the best ones are made. I ordered one through Signor Monteverdi, whose nephew is in Cremona. In the end, he acquired a Cremonese violin, one that would be guaranteed to be singularly successful”, that ended up costing 15 ducats, handling and shipping not included. 
The key here is that Monteverdi was from Cremona, so there's a bit of, probably, local pride involved in that too.
But, you know, even if, if Ugo Ravasio is not right, I mean, it gives us a kind of, like window of time, at least in the Brescian documents, where the word and the sort of identity come into shape. It gives us a sort of timeline that, you know, 1530s. 1560s, and then this kind of efflorescence between 1660s, when the Brescian community is really becoming internationally known for producing great, great instruments.
Experts have found in surveys of lutei, or luthiers, or violin makers from 1550 to 1600, the number working in most of the Italian cities, which gives us a sense of like where the hubs of making was. And from 1550 to 1600, there were 26 violin makers in Venice, 21 in Brescia, 17 in Ferrara, 11 in Rome, 10 in Bologna, 10 in Padua and down the list and down the list. So it gives you a sense Venice, Brescia, I mean that that what hour less than an hour ride between Venice and Brescia shows you that I mean, and interestingly Cremona is not on that list, right? Cremona seems to grow a little bit after 1600 in terms of the number of violin makers.
The comparison between Brescia and Cremona keeps coming up in the story of Gasparo da Salo because the city of Cremona, which is 40 kilometers from Brescia, is the other great hub of violin making in Italy. But you will have to wait until the next series to hear about that.
Brescian instruments were extremely popular and sought after in the Renaissance period. In 1500, there were 14 instrument makers registered in the city, as time went on, that number kept growing.  Well, after the sacking of the city a generation earlier. Musicians and instrument makers had bounced back and by the time Gasparo da Salo moved with his family, the city was once again a bustling centre of trade and craftsmanship.
Walking down the colourful streets one could admire the many palaces in the Venetian style being constructed.  The boulevards aligned with bright picturesque frescoes adorning the walls, and many art loving Brescians would have the exterior of their houses painted by local artists in vibrant colours. Looking out past the city walls were fertile lands and rolling hills making up the Lombard plain. Brescia was once again famous for its wool, silks and arms manufacture.
There's an instrument maker in Brescia called Giovanni Giacomo della Corona, and he was a lute maker in around, around 1500 but he also sold anvils and meat. Yep. And he sold land, if you're looking to buy a place. And also he was selling off a stock of weapons. Okay, so a bit of everything. 
Dr. Emily Brayshaw is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney School of Design.
Because by the time Gasparo De Salo's working in Brescia, that's like almost sort of 50 years later and a lot happens and a lot shifts you know, we've had that big sack of the city, you know, which I think you talk about earlier on. And of course, that's going to have like a huge impact on, you know, who walks where. So, by the time Gasparo Da Salo moves, Brescia's kind of starting to get itself back on its feet and reestablish its, its industry as well. Particularly as what's been happening it was known for wool as well, like very fine wool. But of course, what's starting to happen is Venice is starting to tax the living daylights out of it.
By the end of the 16th century, beginning of the 17th  century, the merchants started to buy their wool from elsewhere because the quality had dipped because Venice is starting to tax it. And they're also starting to tax other industries as well really, really heavily. Also, you get a plague in Brescia between 1575 and 1577, like this two-year plague, and it took the lives of about 10, 000 people.
Things like these extreme events also had like a really interesting impact on the clothing of Brescia because what's happening with clothing at the time and what these guys are wearing is, there are all kinds of exchanges. So the rich, of course, are just mind bogglingly wealthy and you know, can afford to just get all the very finest made. But because it's so expensive, they're also quite thrifty. So there's a lot of a sale in second hand clothes. A lot of clothes are reused. The wealthy, if they were kind of a bit hard up for cash, they'd have private buyers coming to their houses to buy garments, to buy accessories. shoes, gloves, furs, you know, these things. But of course, and you know, you also have garments being made, remade, like it's the ultimate economy because clothing is so labor intensive to make and so expensive. But then also with events like plagues and a lot of people dying and moving, things like that, there's a lot of stuff left over. So that's also going to shape what people are wearing, the access that they have to clothes and to fabrics.
That's really interesting because Gasparo da Salo, so when Gasparo's in his, he's around in his thirties, he, his sister and brother-in-law die in the plague, and he has his three nephews living with him. He also has, ends up having about seven children, so lots of people in the house. And also he has a niece, a niece and a nephew from another sibling whose parents die in the plague and that, and the nephew they, find him a trade as a glove maker and perfumer.
Ah, that is interesting too. So, you know, as, as part of the, the plague as well, it is entirely possible that he inherited a lot of their textiles too and their clothing, so as to be able to again repurpose, refashion, remake, to be able to clothe this huge family that he's got. But of course, what also happens during plagues is that, you know, again, in Brescia, 10, 000 people dying, these cities weren't that big, and suddenly a lot of opportunities open up to move because, you know, people die. So, you know, you've got opportunities to move into these trades, and so people can perhaps move up socially, people can get opportunities, you know, maybe the apprenticeship had been promised to  Giovanni blogs and Giovanni blogs Children have all died. So here's the opening for someone else.
All your competition's dead. You can just go on. Exactly. Exactly. That's exactly what happened. There's also access to property and interestingly to gloves and perfumes, dare I say, often worked hand in hand because a lot of the time too, leathers would be scented.  To a delicately perfumed for sale to yeah, I heard it's because they stunk they do so part of the tanning process of course was to use urine  and It's disgusting, but by the time, you know, it gets to your fine kid glove The urine's not no longer there, but it still smells Ow,
and I saw that at that point time, a recipe for making your hair like golden and beautiful involve urine?
Oh yeah, yeah. They're chucking that in everywhere. Everything, mate. Everything. Well you know. Add a bit of urine to that?
 It’s acidic as well. You know, and it's, it's cheap raw material, you know.
There was an Australian violin maker who had this theory that the wood like, seeped in urine was superior for violin making, and so he would come over and pee in a bathtub in his backyard and he'd have this wood and then when he died his stock of wood was bought by another workshop and a friend of mine worked there and every time someone had to cut a piece of this wood someone would yell out I’m cutting the piss wood and then all leave the room because she just said it reeked it just  It was in the wood.
Yeah, and it, does, it really absorbs. And so, you know, particularly these big tanneries, which is, you know, let's just say they weren't particularly hygienic.  Yeah. And then also he's so that his nephew became a glove maker perfumer, his niece married a shoemaker, and they seem to be quite closely in cahoots with shoemakers.
And there's a lot of violin makers whose parents or siblings are shoemakers.
Another, I mean, the other thing that's interesting that also relates to this. Period around 1530 is that's also when the Beretta firm is founded, which is still in operation, which is producer of handguns.  Brescia of course is still today an industrial city. In fact, I mean, my personal story is that I was one Sunday when I was a student, I was trying to go to Verona and I took the wrong train and the conductor said to me, you've got the wrong ticket. You could go to Brescia, but you don't want to go to Brescia because it's an ugly industrial city.  I went. And yes, I mean, it's industrial but that's the kind of amazing thing about the city is that it has this 500-year-old history of industry, basically ironworks and like, you know, sort of woodworks and that kind of thing, and they've got this beautiful sort of Roman culture that's still totally on view.
So what's interesting, I suppose, going back to my original point, is that, In the 1530s you get this kind of identity of the violin maker and you also get this, like, firm that's still in operation that's making handguns. So sort of violins and guns, that's what's coming out of Brescia for the rest of the 16th century basically, into the 17th century.
If you were a Brescian, would you  have a very close link to Venice more so than any interaction you would have with Cremona? Because Cremona is 40 kilometers south of Brescia and Venice is 180 kilometers to the east of Brescia. Yeah.  You know, that's a really good point.  I would say politically that the distance is less important because the rectors of the city, basically the people who run the city, as a kind of dependency of Venice, are Venetian. So it's a, it's in a way, it's kind of like a Venetian colony city so your political traffic is coming and going that longer distance to Venice. By comparison, Cremona belongs to the Duchy of Milan. So they're under a different sort of, you know regime. But yeah, I mean, obviously, that, there are no borders. There's no border patrol. It's very easy to travel between the two cities.
Could you go and sell an instrument without having to pay any tax or duty?
No, probably not, because, I mean, that's where the borders do exist, is that you've got each, sort of, duchy, the Republic of Venice and the Duchy of Milan had protections against untaxed sales and that kind of thing, so you would probably have to  pay some kind of duty if you wanted to.
So it is, I mean, in a way, a kind of an international border that you'd have to cross for sales between those two, two cities as close as they were.
So, Brescian violin makers would, it would be easier for them to go to Venice to sell or people to buy and trade between Venice and them.  I mean, you know, obviously there are ways of getting around.
I don't know anything about the black market and instruments. But usually, I mean, I think there would be obstacles that would make it challenging to do massive you know, trade and get around the taxation. There may have been, you know, agreements to make the trade functional and easy. But, you know, from what I know from documents in the 16th century, there's a lot of complaining, obviously on the part of merchants of all wares about the difficulties they have selling across borders. So it wouldn't. Shocked me if there were more, if there were equal difficulties with, you know, instruments.
Violin smuggling. Exactly.  I'm sure it happened.
 These taxation and border policies would have directly affected Gasparo Da Salo’s business. And it just goes to show that artisans of the day had to be both skilful in their trade and business savvy to make their enterprise a success. Juggling border administrations, currency exchanges, and language communication between different provinces was not given to everyone. It kept you on your toes,  and still does today.
Far from the cliche of the struggling artist, Gasparo Da Salo thrived in the music loving Renaissance Brescia. He is cited as being a very talented violone player, so the violone at this time was a double bass sized instrument, not a violin. It's confusing, I know.  Gasparo Da Salo immediately rented a house and set up a workshop in the Quadro seconda San Giovanni.
John Dilworth talking about instruments made in Brescia.
I don't know why there wasn't, there doesn't seem to have been a demand for double bases in Cremona, but there clearly was in Brescia and that's another thing we know that Gasparo Da Salo himself did play the double base. And there's records of him that he played at a wedding. But the other thing is hes strict about it, it, they weren't actually double bases. They were violone there. There was definitely a different tradition in Brescia and viols and violas are much more important in Brescia than violins. The emphasis throughout seems to have been on making violas more than violins and I think that comes from the, the viola da braccio tradition, which was strong in Venice and Brescia, but you don't see much of that at all in Cremona. And it's, it's just, yeah, it's just a different musical style and the, and in the early history in the Venetian instrument making, they, there's a predominance of the viola da braccio is the instrument that everybody wanted and you made them in various sizes from, well, the soprano, but it's, it's still bigger than a violin and down to quite a big tenor instrument. So they, they clearly had, you know, consorts or little gangs of Viola da Braccia players.
And the collective noun for a Viola da Braccia is a gang?
Is a gang. Right. Okay.
No, no, you say it, you said it a little bit.
I'll sign up to that, yeah. Take responsibility for that. And it's also, it's a thing, it was used primarily for vocal accompaniment. It's, you know, the Bracci, you have, it has about seven or eight strings, you know, and they're played as drones, and so it's, and the, I get carried away with this, sorry. But the organ is a very, the church organ is a very significant thing. And I, if you, If you listen to a gang of viola da braccio, it's like hearing an organ because you're hearing sustained drone notes and they're playing chords.  So, it's the portable,
a portable organ.
Exactly. And, and the thing about double basses as well I've also got this bee in my bonnet about it, people were working hard to get a portable bass instrument, which I think was in order to duplicate the church organs. In a, in a church organ, you can just keep on building the pipes as big as you like. There's no limit really. And you can go right down to, you know, Wagnerian earth shattering. profound bass notes.  Perfectly straightforward, there's no difficulty. But if you move out of the church, and you want to start making music in a place that doesn't have an organ, or outdoors, you suddenly, well, we haven't got a bass, how are we gonna, you know, structure the harmony and all that stuff? And in collections of ancient instruments, you constantly see these attempts to make, you know, double bass trumpets and, well, everything.
 I saw there's a lot of Venetian civic ceremonies that were held outside. They seem to be very into outside festivals and hence the, the need for the bass instruments, I suppose what you're saying, and it would Cremona, if Cremona's tradition was less outdoor carnival.
Yes. I, I don't know what defines it, but yes, all these images of parades and people on wagons playing violins and viol, whole viol concerts, consorts installed on a wagon and trundling through the town and I can't imagine, you know, the noise of the wagon wheels rumbling on the cobbled streets, you know, and there's a bunch of vial players in the back.
You know, I can't imagine what, what it sounded like, really.
 I saw music and it was written for three trumpets, a hurdy gurdy and a violin.  And I was like, wow, they really love a good trumpet. And I love how they just aren't afraid of whacking in a bagpipe.
Yes Absolutely. And it's, it's in such a volume and certainly, there's a different culture in Cremona for sure.
And would Brescia have had that sort of outdoor tradition that Venice had as well?
Yes, Yeah, Well, I think, you know, Brescia, you have to think of really as, as part of the Venetian  state. It's part of the Veneto and yes, there's a lot of connections and the early Venetian makers, well, there's, in fact, there's Giovanni Maria, who's known as Giovanni Maria da Brescia, who was working in Venice and making these viola braccio and viols, all sorts of things. And they're very stylistically, not that far away from Gasparo Da Salo.  I mean, there's this fantastic, it's in the National Gallery in London, but Titian of him, the artist, playing a violone at it's the, the wedding at Cana is the title of the, and, and the artist is prominent in it, playing this huge violone.
Yeah, because Titian was working at the time that Gasparo da Salo was working, he was painting churches.
Yeah, that tradition died out in Venice and Brescia, and the, the Cremonese tradition won.  And it's the string playing tradition that we know now. 
An interesting observation is that while Brescian musicians liked to play in groups, they often stayed within the Venetian territories. Perhaps there was such an abundance of work that they had no need to travel afar.  Whereas the Cremonese musicians tended towards a different model. At the time they were under Spanish rule and their musicians would travel alone and play anywhere they offered work. They would travel to foreign courts, especially to Paris.
So while the Brescian makers were working on instruments to be played in ensemble playing, particularly the medium to large instruments, the Cremonese were concentrating on the solo soprano instrument.  As an artisan, Gasparo da Salo quickly got to know his neighbours who worked in other skilled trades.  For the past three years, Gasparo da Salo had been working long, hard hours to set up his business and earn a reputation as an instrument maker.
He had family, his mother and siblings, to support.  Still, after a hard day's work as he leant against the doorframe of his workshop that led into the cobble lined streets of Brescia, he watched the sun slowly set behind the Lombard hills.  Here I would like to have him smoking a cigarette and drinking a coffee, but unfortunately, tobacco and coffee beans had almost, but not quite hit the streets of Northern Italy yet.  Well, he thought maybe it was time. He started a family of his own. And then it happened a few doors down on the other side of the Contrata de la cossere a door opened and a vision of loveliness appeared dressed in a simple woollen dress, her hair shimmering in the fading sunlight.  It was Isabella Cossetti, the daughter of Giovanni, the artisan potter and glassmaker.
Well, I would like to think it happened like that. In any case, at the ripe old age of 24, Gasparo Da Salo married the 18 year old Isabella. She moved out of home and across the road and became Signora Bertolotti.
 Gasparo Da Salo turned 25 and Isabella 19. They had their first child, Francesco. Their good friend, Girolamo Virchi, one of the most prominent craftsmen in the city became godfather to the first of their seven children. Girolamo Virchi belonged to a family of woodcarvers, who at first specialized in clogs, but then moved on to make instruments, notably organs.
You see, Brescia is famous not only for its stringed instruments, but its organ makers as well.  Girolamo Virchi’s two brothers were also wood carvers. One made citterns, a cittern is a stringed instrument similar to a lute, but with a flat back. And the other would always refer to himself as a luxury clog maker. Throughout Gasparo Da Salo’s story shoe makers have a tendency to pop up a lot.
John  Gagne, one of the things that's interesting about the sort of situation is there seems to be a, a strong, tradition of decorations for churches, especially organs and the sort of style of Brescian organ design had to do or had a lot to do with woodwork, sort of intarsia, you know, sort of cut wood that you insert into other pieces of wood to make designs that have and you often see it in like choir stalls in churches, you know, you can picture like, the seats that choir boys flip down are often decorated with inlaid wood and, and so one of the interesting facts about violin makers in this mid-16th century is that they work in a kind of triangle of interrelated woodworking jobs, one that's often cited is  Benedetto Virchi, who was like the brother of a famous violin maker, Girolamo Virchi, and he was listed on a document as an intarsia master, you know, inlay master an instrument maker, and a shoemaker. We have a lot of Venetian shoes, women's shoes from the mid-16th century, that are sort of platform shoes.
The Chopines.
Yeah, and some of them are inlaid as well, so there's actually like, it makes sense in a way if you're a master of kind of inserting small bits of wood into planes of wood, that you can do it, you know, in an organ stall in a church, you can do it for a woman's, you know, special order of shoes, or you can do it on a violin too.
So you go, you buy your violin.  You get your pair of Chopin's and off you go and you wobble out of there Because weren't they really tall?
Yes, I mean some of them are, maybe, you know How much were you saying? Yeah, like 10, centimetres or something but some of them, yes, they're kind of like, you know 30 centimetres  But I think it shows that there's an interesting, let's say Trajectory in the history of violin making That's not self-evident like they're sort of pulling a lot of related specialisms into a developing school of arts.
John Dilworth.
There are several violin makers in Venice. Well, in the following century who were, and they belong to the shoemaker’s guild.  And they're described as clog makers. It does come up quite often.
 Girolamo Virchi was a noted woodcarver in the city. And the fact that Gasparo Da Salo had a close friendship with him shows that he was making it, moving in influential circles already.  Brescia was a city of artisans, where one discipline could easily converge into another. For example, a man called Bernardo was a well-known shoemaker in the first half of the 16th century. His son, Bernardo II, became a renowned organ builder. If you can make a shoe, why not try an organ?  In Brescia, there are records of three brothers. Two are violinists, and the third is a shoemaker. Again.
In 1568, over in England, whilst Queen Elizabeth was throwing Mary Queen of Scots in prison, Gasparo da Salo was lying on his tax return about his age, shaving off a few years.  At the age of 28, Or 26, as he preferred to see it. Things are looking up.  Gasparo Da Salo now has two sons, Francesco, three years old, and another little boy, three months old. His 12 year old sister, Ludovica, is also living with them. He has a busy workshop and a warehouse with a stock of instruments ready for sale. He is officially a master violin maker, and he still finds time to play the double bass for a bit of extra income.  But what would have been happening in this typical Brescian instrument maker's workshop?
Filippo Fasser. 
But I think that not only in Brescia, but in all these big workshops, because we have to think that this workshop is not like we made to imagine like the first 20th century in which the violin making, for example, is working on in its own workshop, not.  This workshop in the 15th century and 60 and 70 was a big workshop with many people that work as a chef and different people that work, in different level, of responsibility in the, in the workshop and in this big workshop, So till the middle of 18th century, they make different instrument, not only bow instrument, but gamba. But plucked instruments. So in the same workshop, make lutes, make gamba, make it is workshop that make, I think  I think also for me today is workshop that makes tools for make music for the musicians
In workshops today we tend to specialize in a certain family of instruments you have people who deal in instruments of the string quartet. You have different people making guitars. If you want a harp, you go to a harp maker, for example. But as Filippo Fasser explained, these workshops made all manner of instruments.
Musicians also would have been able to play a variety of different instruments to ply their trade.  So imagine the atmosphere of a workshop, in which harps, viola da gambas, or double basses could be in the process of being constructed simultaneously add to that a network of relationships with musicians, composers, monasteries, and wealthy patrons, it's not hard to imagine the birth of the violin family.
As Filippo Fasser said, it didn't just appear out of thin air, it was more a question of evolving, making an instrument that fit the demands of the Luthier's clients.
It was not an artist, or it was not I don't know, an event, or that today, I don't know, today I invented violin, no, no. It was the musicians that want good tools for make music so it's obvious that the artisan make viol it's not the, not the opposite, no. 
The place of the instrument maker was still as a tradesperson making a tool for musicians or wealthy patrons, although it is significant that Gasparo Da Salo, for instance, signed his work by inserting a label into the instrument with his name on.
Artists also started signing their work during the Renaissance. This takes these objects from being not just a luxury item, but a luxury item made by someone.  And that someone is important. At the same time, makers are collaborating with musicians, composers, and the nobility to meet their varying needs.
And the second thing that That I, I think, is important to, to know is that in this period, the, instrument was the family was the consort. Today we think we, yes, we think that the violin is 30, 35 and the viola is.  41 and the cello is 75. I don't know, but it's not. So when made the violin is different size and the viola is different size and the cello is different size because there's a few of different kinds of sound in there.
For example, it's late, but for example, the orchestra in France that I don't remember, there's 12 kinds of different type of instrument because maybe you want to. A range of sonorities so different that they wanted this kind of sound.
Today we have more or less standard sizes for violins, violas, and cellos, but as Filippo Fasser explains, at this time it was not so much the case.
Violins could come in a range of sizes and be tuned differently according to their size.  Today we might say that they are three quarter or half sized instruments, or the larger ones may have been reduced or cut down in size to meet modern day requirements. But in the 16th and 17th centuries, it was not so strange to have a large range of sizes.
So today if you see a string ensemble, you will see four or five different sized instruments. But walk into a 17th century noble court, and you could see up to 12 different sized violins, violas, or cellos. This was the consort.
Today we have decided that in this last century, we decided the violin is, is one, the viola is one, and the cell is one. Is the reason that why I think, for example, the Gofriller cello today is cut down.  There's not one that is original state because probably is too big.  For our idea today. 
To explain the abundance of violas made in this period, when we look at strings, we have the violin as the soprano instrument, and the cello as the bass. The double bass is an even lower bass. But in between the violin and the cello, there is a large gap that left room for two voices. The alto and the tenor. And so, two sized violas were made.  Today, very few tenor sized violas remain, as most have been cut down to a smaller size. But in the past, four-part ensembles would often have one violin, two violas, and a cello, or a five part ensemble would have three violas as the middle register instrument.
And so, it is not so strange that Gasparo made such a quantity of violas.  As Danny Yeadon was explaining in the first episode, a lot of music at the time was played in consort. So, in effect, you had lots of different sized violins, violas, cellos, and basses. Today, we have much more standardized instruments.
And this explains why many of these older instruments have been modified. Sometimes they are enlarged, sometimes reduced to fit the modern standards we have today.  There are pros and cons to this, of course.  Some people say that it's a shame to transform such an old instrument from its original state. Others would say that because they are modified, they are being played and maintained. Something that might not happen if it stayed in its original size.  A great topic to throw at a dinner party of violin makers. It's a bit like asking a vegan if a mushroom is a plant or an animal.  Think about it.
In Gasparo Da Salo’s workshop, so much is happening. He and his employees are working on many different types of instruments. He's making double basses for monasteries to accompany the organs, viola da gambas for wealthy families in Verona, Violas for religious processions in Venice. Violins and viols for the French. There are intricate inlays on the more costly pieces. The scrolls are often sculpted or decorated, depending on the client's wishes.  Music and the demand for instruments was great. By now there were 18 monasteries in Brescia alone, all centres of art and music.
John Dilworth.
Gaspar had his son and Giovanni Paolo Maggini working with him. I think the degree in which techniques are passed from father to son and workshops through the generations that stay unique to that family indicate to me that it was all done in house, you know, everything they did. was between the, within the little family circle. It's the Ole Bull Gaspar da Salo in Bergen. But I, I've been to see it a few times now, and I'm absolutely sure it's absolutely right.  And it's got this fantastically carved head. And the amazing thing is in Brescia itself, um, there is an organ loft, which was  supposedly, built by this chap Gasparo Da Salo was associated with.  And that whole organ loft in the church is festooned with these exact same characters.
So, I mean, I'm perfectly willing to concede that Gasparo Da Salo passed that on to his sculptor friend to carve.  But there's also the possibility that he was trained in the same way, and he could probably do all that anyway. There is this close link between him and Girolamo Virchi, and there's organ lofts, and there's various other  things attributed to Girolamo Virchi, and, and I've seen this organ loft, and it took my breath away, because the little putty, little cherubs carved around it and they were exactly the same, but there were quite possibly a, you know, a whole gang of people in Brescia who, that was their job. They went around carving these things into churches because like, again, like all Italian towns, there is almost literally a church on every street corner, and it was a huge amount of labour going into them all through the period.
I still get this image of these early makers. just in a little cottage with a, with a bench and a little opening shopfront where they could actually deal with customers. But it was very small scale, really, you know, it's not the idea, sort of grand idea that Victorian writers have of a huge workshop with dozens of apprentices and out workers and, you know, so on an industrial scale.
I mean, we know there's an amazing amount of Gasparo Da Salo’s tax records and things still available, and those indicate that he did, he did get quite rich and he had a country house and was selling barrels of olive oil and, and wine. You know, he, made enough to establish himself as a farmer with, you know, a country estate.
And in his tax returns, I think he's, he makes a point that most of his work actually is being sent to France, and that's where his income is from mostly. And there's a period where he's asking for a bit of relief on his taxes, because there's a war going on in France, and his, and business is, you know, not so good. But it's all coming from this very small workshop. Well, not a big, it's, it's not work on an industrial scale as, as we would see it now. And, and the, the essential thing also, the difference between Brescian work and Cremonese work is that Brescian work is clearly done very quickly.  It's very spontaneous. It's not, it's not immaculately finished. I think, you know, he was churning these things out. And the other difference is that he was making quite a broad range of things that you find. Double basses, which you never find in Cremona at all.  Until well into the 18th century. 
Gasparo de Salo is making viols, viola da braccios, citterns, violins, a whole variety of Renaissance instruments.
Viols and citterns are particularly beloved in the Venetian state, and so the orders flow in. Gasparo da Salo is sourcing quality materials and fulfilling commissions for important patrons as his reputation continues to grow. 
So, so yeah, there's this cliche of the struggling instrument maker working by the light of a candle just trying to make ends meet but Gasparo De Salo basically from the beginning he had quite a successful workshop and he had he had actually quite good connections he was good friends with a guy called Girolamo Virchi who was come for came from a family of organ builders  And organs are really quite important.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you've got to have one in the church too, right? Yeah. And so these famous Brescian organ builders and Girolamo Virchi becomes godfather to Gasparo Da Salo's children. There's also this, uh, these instruments that, that the style of carving from the organs. can be recognized in the style of carving on some of the scrolls of Gasparo De Salo's instruments.
So it could have been a style from Brescia. It could have been Girolamo Virchi, we don't know. Yeah. But in Gasparo De Salo's workshop, he wasn't just, he, he was making viols, viola da braccio, citterns.  Citterens are like a lira, a type of flat backed  lira. Violones, so a violone is a what we call a double bass today, but maybe with just three strings, right? And that seemed to have been something that he was quite well known for the the violonis, the basses and the violas Which were, the viols and the citterns, they were, a lot of music was written for them. When he was in his late 30s, in around 1578, he had, he had like so much work, he had an, an assistant.
He had a French assistant called Alessandro de Marcellis.  Alex from Marseille, Europe.  And his son, Francesco, would have been working with him. He would have been 16 around about now, but he probably would have started working with him when he was about 13.
Sure, but also would have been in the workshop growing up as a kid. You know, and so, you know, we fashion and dress scholars, we talk a lot about like haptic knowledge and as a craftsman or crafts person, you know about this as well. You get a feel in your hands for how something should be. And when you're a tiny tucker growing up in this environment, kids suck up so much from their parents, so much knowledge. So even though you might start working officially for your dad at age 13, you're playing with the strings when you're a little kid, you're playing with the offcuts, you're watching dad  sand down the wood, you're watching all of these processes and just like really absorbing everything, so. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was very kind of family affair. Yeah. And often the workshops were integrated into the house. You'd have the workshop on one level and you would be living behind it or above it. Yeah.
 John Gagne,
I guess, you know, the, the simpler point is that there clearly  interested in sourcing the best wood, sort of no matter where it comes from, and maybe the, the local forests were not always the best.
Sort of like the best resource, you know, the decorative schemes of a lot of these Bressian instruments, which, you know, take advantage on one hand of like intaglio work, which is, you know, you where you scrape into the wood sort of a design or intarsia, which is the, you know, inlay. And then like also sculptural work, which is amazing. I mean, there's one famous  cittera in Vienna, which, which culminates at the end of the neck in a figurine of the suicide of Lucretia which is, you know, dramatic, very dramatic thing to put on an instrument. And that was probably ordered specifically by the Archduke of Tyrol, who, if you, you can travel from Brescia up to Innsbruck pretty quickly. And he had a huge palace full of, you know strange oddities, naturalia art armour, and also instruments and so clearly he had an eye, like the Archduke of Tyrol had an eye on the Brescian makers and probably asked for this unusual instrument. But even, I think, some of the ones that we've got in, in Sydney, right, are, they're beautiful, they're beautifully made with, you know, unusual designs that tend then to get flushed away by the 17th century.
In 1578, Gasparo De Salo is in his late 30s. His workshop is bursting with activity. He has so much work. In fact, he has needed to take on an assistant, Alessandro De Marseillis.  Francesco, his eldest son is 16 and has been working alongside his father for the last three years already. The French are good clients, always looking for Italian instruments. He's making more and more instruments from the violin family. Sometimes he feels a slight regret that so much of his best work leaves abroad and he will surely never see those pieces again.
There's a, a, a beautiful letters of gas in which he wrote,  I, I don't remember exactly, but he wrote that, he don't want that his own arts  goes like always in France.
At this point, he was selling a lot of his work to France,  uh, as one of his main clients. A lot of his work was being sent via an intermediary.  So that's really interesting because Marc Antonio Martineño de Villachara, who we were speaking about before the Bressian military general who wrote the collection of madrigals, he was very, very well connected with the French court as well. And so, you know, we can see this guy almost welcome from Brescia, rocking up. These connections are there. Everybody's traveling around in each other's pockets. And also because of the, the geography. For us today, for example, getting from Brescia to Villa Ciara, it’s,  you know, it's a short drive. But if it's there halfway between Brescia and Cremona, it's still 25 kilometers. You go there, you spend the night, you know, maybe two nights, and then you go back, you know. So you have sort of slower time to. build these deep relationships and these deep connections as well. And within that too comes the opportunities really again to study dress, to study fashions, to study what everybody else is wearing, and you see that too with some portraits from the era as well. So, you know, it might be a nobleman from Italy. But he'll be wearing clothes in the French style, which will sort of, you know, show that he's got diplomatic connections with France, or he's spent a lot of time at court. These kinds of things too.
It's not just the instruments that are getting exchanged as well, it's ideas around fashion, it's ideas around dress. One of the really interesting things that comes up time and time again throughout, you know, the Renaissance is this idea of the rough, you know, and you think of the Renaissance and you think of Elizabethan and you think of, you know, the big roughed collar, and that just traveled throughout Europe, even though it was kind of, you know, we do think of it as an Elizabethan thing, an English thing. It was incredibly popular all through Europe and particularly by the aristocracy because they just became larger and larger. They used a lot of fabric. A lot of the time you could only wear them once. It holds up your head and your neck, so you look kind of snooty, and you know, it's like the ultimate fashion prestige thing. If you're wearing a ruff, you can't really do much but wear a ruff and hold important conversations and sign important documents, you know?
Why, why could you only wear them once?
Because they were so delicate. You know, they might have been nothing but lace, they're a mixture of linen and lace, and, and they were just. It's so delicate and so large and they might often kind of just like crush or fall apart. Sometimes they'd, you know, sew jewels and precious metal onto them. And once you apply any kind of weight to these super fine fabrics, it can tear very, very easily.
And so you know, they started originally as an extension of a man's shirt, but you know, they grew larger and larger and of course transitioned into their own separate piece.  Wow. Yeah. Crazy. So yeah, the ruff travels through France with the instruments and with, you know, violas, ruffs. It's all, it's all on.
Cool. And I got this feeling that the Italian violinists were quite the thing. The French was sort of like, Oh look, we have Italian violinists because they're the best. And then the, the English who are often wanting to be kind of do whatever the French are doing are like, well, we too have Italian violinists.
Yeah, and that's really interesting too, and I think if you grow up with these instruments, I mean, as you know, as your listeners will know, you start learning the instrument when you're three or four. You grow up with it, right? And so if you're growing up in the environment where these exciting new instruments are going to be made, you're going to be testing them out and playing them from You know, knee high to a grasshopper.
And so unlike perhaps a French or an English musician who will be playing a much older style of instrument, you'll be able to speak to this more, you know, there might be differences between a Rebec and one of these violins that I don't know about, but perhaps technically they're quite different. If you grow up learning the Rebec, and then suddenly you're given one of these new fangled instruments. You're not really going to be as great as an Italian who's grown up fiddling around with this stuff, playing this stuff. You know, so these are the reputations. And what we're also seeing as well with this idea of them being the best, there's this wonderful portrait called Portrait of a Musician by a Cremonese Artist, and it's painted around the time of Gasparo De Salo. And we don't actually know if it's Gasparo Da Salo or Monteverde.  We don't know. It looks like it could be a young Monteverde, but there are definitely Gasparo da Salo instruments  hanging in the background there. We've got, that looks like the one that Ole Bull famously had with the ornate fingerboard and impression type.
 It's very hard to draw a violin. And sometimes you see like artists, you're like, you got it. And then sometimes you're like, Ooh, that's probably what you thought a violin would look like.
 It's like those memes you see where you know, it's like  man says to medieval artist, can you draw me a picture of horse? Yeah, yeah. I can draw a horse. You know what a horse looks like, don't you? You know how to draw a horse. Yeah, yeah, and then you see it and it's like this wonky half goat thing that's, ha ha ha. So yeah, we do, we sort of see, you know, like in this portrait, the bridge isn't positioned between the F holes, for example.
Right down the bottom. Right down the bottom. And the cut out is like really pronounced, but, you know. Yeah, you get the idea. You still get the idea in general that it's a violin, but what I think is really interesting about this. is this, this musician ain't no starving artist.  So, he is quite pale, and yeah, I guess you are, and he's also, his hands are quite fine and pale, suggesting like he spends a lot of time indoors on his craft, you know, on learning the instrument, you know, he doesn't have rough worker's hands.
But,  we can see here, he's got really fine lace cuffs and, and ruffley cuffs in the style of the Ruff, and, you know, that tells us you know, there's like this virtue, purity, possibly devotion, this pure devotion to music. Interestingly too, he's not wearing a Ruff. Because he can't actually play the violin in a rough, but he is wearing a collar that we see in other portraits of the time, and it's a big white big collar that's turned over and, you know, trimmed with a fine lace as well. And this is like a really sort of stark contrast against his all black ensemble, his black doublet. You know, this looks to be quite a fine wool.  And there are slashes on the arms and we see the lining underneath and that could well be a darker silk. His buttons are also darker. They might be sort of a a darker silk buttons to match the, um, match the trimming. Yeah, they all had lots and lots of buttons. The doublets, you know, obviously some of the super rich could have them all made out of gold or you'd have them, you know, sometimes made out of leather.
I think, you know, I'm not sure if these trimmings are silk or velvet underneath, but they're definitely matching that. And so he's, he's quite.  richly dressed, quite richly dressed as well and there's a high degree of realism in Brescian paintings that really does tell us what people wore and doublets were often made in wool and this could also be like, appropriate to his connections to the wool industry, to the sheep industry as well.
You know, so there are these things too. Black was so important at the time too, because it was unchangeable and permanent. And so  it kind of represented like this steadfastness, this single mindedness and firmness, that was associated with a masculine virtue and action and strength. And so we really see from this black clothing of this musician as well that he is completely, 100 percent dedicated to the life of being one of the best musicians, a manly, a manly musician, but also like a really dedicated musician, dedicated to the craft as well. Yeah. One of the finest in Europe, you know? 
Yeah. It's interesting. Like you, how, how much you can tell by what you're wearing, where your instrument was played. What you're playing, you're telling this whole story of your position in society.
And Gasparo da Salo's position in society was here, amongst the wealthy artisans of Lombardy. He would never be on the level of the nobility, but he would have interacted with them, or at least their agents. And he would have Orbited around the world of the wealthy, he would've known how to hold himself and to speak to them.
Musicians also at this time could be the subject of portraits and what's more, they had the money to commission one in the first place.
I would like to say a very big thank you to my guests, Maxime Bibeau, Dr. John Gane Filippo Fasser. John Dilworth, Dr. Emily Brayshaw. I would also like to thank the Australian Chamber Orchestra's cooperation.  I hope you'll join me for the next episode of the Violin Chronicles. And Maxime Bibeau, double bassist in the Australian Chamber Orchestra, will be talking to us about the wonderful Gasparo da Salo instrument he plays on, and its story.
 
 

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

Join me as I explore the life and craftsmanship of Gasparo da Salò, a master luthier whose contributions shaped the course of violin making history. From his early beginnings in Brescia, Italy, we uncover the secrets behind his distinctive style and celebrated instruments.
Discover the allure of Gasparo da Salò's double basses, renowned for their robust tone and striking aesthetics. In this episode I speak to Violin maker and expert John Dilworth as we delve into the techniques and innovations that set his instruments apart, captivating the ears and hearts of musicians across generations.
Through expert insights and captivating anecdotes, we unravel the legacy of Gasparo da Salò and the profound impact his creations have had on the violin-making tradition. Explore the stories behind his violins, viola and cellos in The Violin Chronicles Podcast.
 
Music you have heard in this episode is by
Bloom - Roo Walker, Szeptuchy part 2 - Maciej Sadowski , Brandenburg Concerto No 4 – Kevin Macleod, The penny drops – Ben McElroy, Frost waltz- Kevin Macleod, The waltz from beyond – Albert Behar, Wandering Knight – Giulio Fazio, Telemann Sonata in D maj for viola da gamba – Daniel Yeadon, Budapest – Christian Larssen, Unfamiliar faces – All good folks.
 
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles, a podcast in which I will attempt to bring to life the story surrounding the famous. infamous or just not very well known, but interesting violin makers of history.  My name is Linda Lespe. I'm a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French violin making school some years ago now.
In this episode we will be looking at one of the very first violin makers known to us. His name is Gasparo Da Salo. Gasparo Bertolotti is confusingly known as Da Salo because of the town he came from, called Salo.  He is perhaps best well known for his basses.
 I'm Maxime Bibaud, I'm the principal bass of the Australian Chamber Orchestra. I have the pleasure of playing a bass by Gasparo Da Salo for the last eight years.
Gasparo Da Salo, maker of the double bass that I get to play every day, was born in the mid 1500s, past early 1600s.  He is known to be the first maker of double basses, if not the first. Very close to being the first. We believe there are no more than ten of his instruments surviving these days.
And I’m one of the lucky ones that gets to play one of those. I should also say about Salo that, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but he was known to have created the modern violin. 
Ooh, it's a touchy subject.
Okay, I will stay out of it.
To answer some of my questions about Gasparo de Salo, I had a chat with John Dilworth, a violin maker and restorer in England. He is one of the people who literally wrote the book on Brescian violin makers called Lutai in Brescia. Here he is. 
Well, there's two people at the beginning of the violin, Gaspar de Salo and Andrea Amati in Cremona. And it's still very moot which of them made the first violin. Nobody really knows.  Gaspar, in all the old literature they all say, without any doubt, that  Gaspar invented the violin. But, you know, subsequent research finds that Amati and  Gaspar were  virtually, they were working at the same date, and the big problem is that, uh, in Brescia, the whole...All the violin makers in Brescia, they never put a date on their label, which is really annoying.  So we don't actually know when any of them were made, whereas in Cremona, right from the get go, Andrea Amati was always very careful to sign and date  his labels, so we know where we are with those. 
The jury is still out as to the birthplace of the violin.Was it Brescia? Or a small town 40 kilometers south, in Cremona? We don't quite know, and as John Dilworth explained, the fact that the Brescian makers didn't date their instruments also adds to the confusion, or creates it.  You see, most, but not all, violins have a label on the inside, glued to the back.  In Cremona, for example, Andrea Amati would have on his label made by Andrea Amati of Cremona in the year 1560, for example. But in Brescia, these labels would have “Gaspar Da Salo in Brescia” with no date. A lot of these labels were printed and the date filled in by hand. You see the printing press came at about more or less the same time as the violin, and I imagine that it would've been terribly modern of them. And a question of pride to have a printed label. So herein lies the conundrum. One group dated their instruments  and the others didn't.  But then again, why would you? Artists at that time didn't necessarily date their paintings.  And perhaps Gasparo de Salo identified more with the painters in his city than anyone else.  Who knows?
The year is 1585 in the northern Italian region of Lombardy. At the feet of the Alps lies the ancient city of Brescia.  The city is a hive of activity, full of wealthy merchants and tradesmen. The Brescians are renowned for their lavish dress made of costly fabrics. Their lively jousting tournaments, their production of superior weaponry, and their music. Not only their music, but their talented musicians, and most of all their instrument makers.  It was around about this time that a recent arrival was becoming more and more in demand amongst the instrument makers of Brescia, and they were the instruments of the violin family.  If you took a stroll down one of the busy streets near the city centre of Brescia and turned into the Contrada della Corsera, you would eventually happen upon the workshop of Gasparo Bertolotti, one of the most popular violin makers in Brescia.
When we talk about a Brescian violin or the Brescian style, what do we mean exactly?  Well, we are mainly talking about a period in the city of Brescia from the middle of the 1500s to the middle of the 1600s.  Where the instrument makers worked in a particular fashion and their instruments have characteristics that we would recognize as being unique to them and Brescian school.
I'm John Gagne. I'm a senior lecturer in history at the University of Sydney, and I work mostly on European history from the 13th to the 18th century. Maybe the, the place to start is to talk about the city and sort of where it fits into the geography and the culture of Northern Italy of the, of the Renaissance.
And I suppose, so one of the things is, there's an old Roman road that runs from Venice to Milan. And on that Roman road, you have, You know, Padua and then, uh, Vicenza, Verona. Brescia Bergamo. So they're all like, that's the, a string of cities that over the course of the late Middle Ages, we're in this tug of war between Milan and Venice.
Brescia is one of those, it's one of the larger cities. And what makes it interesting in relationship to Venice is that it's an older city. So Brescia is a Roman city, and you can see it when you go to Brescia today. The old Roman forum ruins are right there in the city.  Venice, by contrast, was founded in 421. So last year was its was its 1600th birthday. Brescia is interesting because ultimately it was a Much smaller city than Venice, but it had greater antiquity. And so the people who lived in Brescia were very proud of their, you know, ancient heritage, but over the course of the 15th century, uh, starting in 1426, they fell under Venetian rule.
The other thing to sort of introduce here in terms of the 16th century is the, the so called Italian wars or the wars of Italy, which started in the 1490s when the French kings invaded and Brescia was sacked violently in 1512. By 1512, it was a city of about 50, 000 people, and about 30, 000 people died or fled after the sack.
So these Italian wars were a period in Italy's history that lasted from 1494-1520 Gasparo de Salo as he's known, was born sometime in 1540. So he was almost 20 when these wars finally ended.  It's quite hard to keep track of who was fighting who, but basically the French army arrived and everyone started fighting everyone else in a complex power struggle.  Involved were France,  Spain, Milan, Venice,  the Habsburgs, the Holy Roman Empire, Flanders, even England and the Ottoman Empire wanted a piece of the action. During these wars, even if your town or city was not the target of an invading army, having thousands of soldiers abiding by no particular law tramping through would have been just a bit terrifying.  Amidst the chaos of these years, Brescia found itself caught up in a spectacular conflict between the French and the Venetians. Brescia was a fantastically wealthy city. It was a center of the arts, a place of science, literature, and architecture. Famous for its musicians and music. It shared all the benefits of trade, wealth, and culture with Venice.  During the Italian Wars, the French had taken control of the city, and the King of France thought of it as his possession. But the Brescians identified more with the  Venetians, and so, when Venice recaptured the city, the Brescian people were happy to return to the Venetian state.  Only the French were not going to let go of such a rich prize so easily.  The French king, Louis XII, sent his fiery young cousin, Gaston de Froix, aka the Thunderbolt of Italy, to take back the city.
So in 1512, on a freezing February day, 25 years before our violin maker, Gasparo, was born, under torrential rain, Gaston and his soldiers attacked the city of Brescia, ordering his men to take off their shoes to be able to walk through the squelching mud.  This probably didn't help the soldier’s bloodthirsty mood.
The French went on to sack the city in what has been described as one of the most brutal sackings in the Italian wars.  And that's saying something because what was happening elsewhere was extremely violent. 4, 000 cartloads of goods were taken away worth three to four million ducats. That's about 600 million US dollars, according to one source. and many of the French soldiers after the sack just went home.  They had just hit their biggest payday.  This ended up creating a crisis for the French army as they lost so many soldiers, retiring basically.
The French eventually left Brescia, or what was left of it, to Venice.  But did they give up?  No. The memory was raw, but the people of this city threw themselves into the restoration of their city in a momentous way.  There were building projects, monasteries were constructed, six new churches arose, a modern hospital, houses were restored, and businesses recommenced. Brescia was still a luxury brand Venis wanted in its collection.
What? you are asking yourself, do these Italian wars have to do with violins? Well, the ransacking and destruction of the city during Gasparo's parents’ generation created a sort of post traumatic growth in the city during Da Salo's lifetime. And this is when the violin emerges. It's the renaissance and never more so than in the city that had to rebuild itself physically and creatively. And perhaps this created the right mindset for the violin or the viola to be embraced.
John Gagny. So you can think of the beginning of the 16th century, starting with a crisis, which was where all the houses of elites were ransacked, where people had to escape the city. And it took basically the rest of the century to recover from that experience at the beginning of the 16th century. So by the time we get to the sort of violin makers of the 1530s through, you know, 1590s, that's part of the story of cultural recovery is, you know, people coming back into the city, having reasons to spend money and, you know, build up artisanal culture again.
And would they have had a memory of the sack?
 Yes. 
So,  Gasparo, for example, would his parents have,...
Lived through it?, probably. But actually, I mean, to give you an example there is a mathematician named Niccolo Tartaglia. Who wrote a book of, you know, math book basically in the 1550s, and he writes about his experience as a young boy where he was stabbed in the jaw by a soldier. And the reason his last name is Tartaglia is because that's the Italian word for stuttering. Basically, his, mouth was so disrupted and, you know, injured. So yes, I mean, they're, so basically he's living in the 1550s around the time when Gaspar was a 10 year old. So there is, you know, that generation takes a long time to die out. It would be, you know, ever present. The, the, the question I have about Gaspar in terms of this Brescian political history is, you know, Salo, where he's from, is up the west flank of Lake Garda you know, 30, 40 kilometers away. So, unless you were in the city, which the walled city during the sack, as a boy, he probably would have, and his family might have been able to escape the worst of it.
 
Yeah. . But I imagine that people his parents age, they'd be like, oh.  The French...
I mean, there was evidence of this that, you know, took, the rest of the century to overcome. And that's in a way, part of why the 16th century is a century of huge, civic development in terms of architecture, because they're really trying, they have the opportunity, not desired, but sort of forced upon them to rebuild some of the city. And so, that's part of, you know, there are a lot of new structures, churches that go up in the 16th century and in relation to, you know, music and instrumentalists, that is the hub of. Artisanal work for music makers and decorative arts is churches, right? So the fact that there's a chance to rebuild some churches and, you know, refresh them, uh, I think is part of the story of the growth of the artisanal sort of class in the 16th century.
So we find ourselves with these early violin makers in a city rebuilding itself, literally. There's new infrastructure going up. The economy is back in swing by the time De Salo arrives in Brescia and the wealthy citizens are back commissioning art and music, and most importantly for our story, buying instruments.
I'm now talking to Filippo Fassa, a contemporary violin maker in Brescia, who is also a coauthor of the book Lutai in Brescia, a reference book on Brescian instruments.
 I'm Filippo Fassa, I'm violin maker in Brescia. I was born in Salò, like Gaspar Oda.
 So are you  Filippo da Salò? 
Exactly.  Yes, but I am just, uh, was born in Salò, after I live in Brescia.
The thing you have to remember here is that Filippo is Italian and he speaks with his hands. This, sadly, is lost in the audio medium, so you will just have to imagine them,  the hands… remember. 
Yes, first I think that it's important to know that Italy in this period, in this age, was,...  It's made up of different countries, different states. The Republic of Venice, that's the Vatican, that's the  Bourbon in the  south, that's the little Florence, and Bologna, and Ferrara, and Pisa,  and Genoa, and Milan.  Many, many, many, many different state. And in this age, I don't know, from, uh, 15 to  the end of 18 is, is a  really particularly player in Italy. You know the Renaissance is the all arts develop  really  fast and, the richer people, particularly the, also the Pope, but not only, the king, uh, the different kingdom, wanted to, have the better artist, arts, generally. Close to the, develop of the music, is  obviously that many artisans that make the instrument for, is the reason, I think, why in different part of Italy start more or less together this, uh, this practice. 
So we have competing city states in Renaissance Italy all trying to outdo each other in art and music. Could this be the reason the violin appeared on the scene in Brescia and other areas at around the same time?  Remember, after the sack of the city, it was almost as though they had to start from zero again. And perhaps this was the perfect environment for a new instrument to make its mark.
The year 1540 was the year that King Henry VIII of England both married and soon after divorced Anne of Cleves, who managed not only to keep her head intact, but also outlived all of Henry's other wives. Bravo!  It was also the year Gasparo Bertolotti was born, in a northern town in Italy, and grew up in the small lakeside town of Salo.
This is where we get the name Gasparo da Salo from. It literally means from Salo.
Gasparo da Salo was born in this village that's called Salo. Really not in Salo, the Salo  called Pulpenazza.
Salo, on the shores of the magnificent and ancient Lake Garda, is the largest lake in Italy and home to the Benacosaurus. A monster in the lake, and close rival, or maybe a cousin, to the Loch Ness Monster.  The area of the lake the Bertolatti's came from was well known for its fine musicians and musical ensembles.
Gasparro and his family lived on the Contrada of Villanorum, or Violin Street.  He was raised in a musical family. His grandfather was a musician and a flock holder. Some think he produced gut strings for instruments from his livestock.  His father, Francesco, also played music. He was registered in tax records as being a musician and painter, although he was mainly a musician.
In this busy household with six boys and two girls, Gasparo would have learnt music from his father and perhaps other family members.  His uncle was also an accomplished musician, and his cousin became a virtuoso player on the violin and trombone.  This cousin would go on to work in the nearby courts of Ferrara, the Esté Court.
In Mantua, for the Gonzaga family, and eventually in Rome for the Pope. 
Dr. Emily Brayshaw is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney's School of Design.  She will be explaining the importance of fashion and dress that would have greatly impacted the world and lives of people in Renaissance Italy during de Salo's lifetime.
I do love Brescia, I love that they're all about the lower half of the string family, like violas, double basses. Bring it.
And like Brescia's a really great place to get yourself established because it's sort of like catered on this frontier Milanese States It's also bigger than Verona. It's bigger than Vincenza.  It's bigger than Bergamo. It's richest. It's the most strategically located of these Venetian cities. So there's a lot of opportunity there for him and also an opportunities for patronage as well.
So I don't know if de Salo got that, but you've got influences of feudal nobility and feudal privilege on the city as well. So, you know, some of these sort of feudal guys, these nobilities had a lot of their own court musicians. So one of the leading guys, guys, I sound like a jerk. One of the leading,Uh, nobility Noble Families was the Martino family and Mark Antonio Martino de  Vira collected Madrigals so that he collected and published a volume of Madrigals in 1588.
A magical, is a secular vocal music composition.  In simpler terms, it's the Backstreet Boys of the Renaissance, without the music.
And he was a military general from Russia, but he was also a nobleman and a composer himself. He was incredibly well connected in the courts of Europe and super richly dressed. He would have had like a nosebleed, lavish wardrobe because diplomatic relations.  were very much also about how well you dress too. So if you rocked up to a court poorly dressed, that really besmirched your honour, it besmirched the honour of the nobility of the court as well that you were trying to build contacts with. So, you know, he would have been really set to dress. Right. So he was like representing Brescia. .. And Venice as well, like in the state of Venice to like represent, you know, he actually lived in Villa Ciara, which is halfway between Brescia and Cremona.
And He had his own court composer too. So,  you know, these people are incredibly, not just sort of military, sporting, but they're also, you know, really at the forefront of the artistic endeavours of the day, of culture, of music making, and It's really quite an exciting life that they led.
 And when you say he collected madrigals, did he write them or he heard them and he sort of collated them into a...
So this collection is fascinating because what it sort of did as well, uh, aristocratic life of the era was marked like by this spirit of competition. So there were lots of duels and jousts and this was sort of central to this expression of masculine virtue. Right? Which we can talk about a bit later when we're talking about the colour black, because that's a big reflection of it as well.
But what he was doing as well, sometimes musicians would challenge each other to duels as well, and they would compose upon the same melody and perform in front of a panel of judges, right? So what he did though, like, this is fascinating because he composed a poem and set it to music, and then he sent that around to 17 different composers, like really notable composers around Italy, inviting them to set this poem to the, like, write their own music for this text.
And this is his collection. And it's really quite important because it shows, you know, the different regional styles in the late Renaissance around Italy of these key composers. And it also doesn't surprise me, therefore, that guys like De Salo benefiting and really honing their art in this region and making the very Finest instruments that they can.
I can imagine In the workshop, them going, oh, did you hear about, you know, what was his name?
Uh, Mark Antonio Martignago.. Like, have you heard about Martino's latest poem? His collection of.  It's like really early rap.
 I don't know about early rap, but what's really interesting if we start sort of thinking about what these guys were wearing as well is, a lot of it was really about,  creating their own identities and curating  their own identities. So it's like...  Early, I guess, social influences, early social media, you know, curating your identities and we see this in the portraits of what they're wearing as well. So, you know, a lot of these portraits show them almost, like, it does give us a really great idea of, you know,  what they wore, sometimes it's aspirational, sometimes like they pose to,  you know, the poses are all like significance and it shows what they want to be, who they want to be. They'll reflect things like their occupation, or their cultural station, their social station.
 We see DeSalo is working in an environment in which noble patrons really wanted to impress and say something with their wealth. How they dressed, the houses they lived in, and the ability to employ musicians and supply their instruments was definitely a part of this story.
And this is where our instrument maker enters the scene.  His profession places him between worlds, much like the musicians of the day whom he would have spent a lot of time with.
John Gagne, again, speaking about what it would have been like to be a musician at this time and the Gonzaga Court.
There is a whiff of disreputability associated with the theatre, but of course musicians also work in churches and  Music also, you know, there are theorists of music who are becoming quite renowned and respected. Um, you know, performers who are taking on a, a life, you know, that brings them in shoulder to shoulder with princes and that thing. So I probably, I imagine there's, you know, depends on who you are, right? Like if you're a rough and tumble commedia dell'arte troupe, who's traveling, you know, City to city, you're not going to be necessarily invited into great company. But if you're one of these, theorists, like there's a, there's a famous Brescian theorist from the early 16th century named, Lanfranco, Giovanni Lanfranco, who writes this book called scintillii di Musica or sparkles of music. And that's, you know, that's complex musical theory, mathematics,, ideas about, you know, the movement of the spheres. I mean, like that guy, I imagine he's probably at the level of. associating with professors. And so, you know, I mean, like there's.
 If I picked up a book called the sparkles of music, I would not expect  such a heavy topic.
 Exactly. I can show it to you. It's beautifully illustrated too. It's got all kinds of, you know, diagrams. And so that, I guess the, one of the interesting things is how aware. contemporaries were of the quality of Brescia, like they were sought out for those qualities. The two that I was, you know, trying to remember to talk about today were, you know, the Archduke of Tyrol who has more than one,, Brescian instrument and they're like extravagant instruments. And then the other place where it seems there was a lot of traffic in terms of the specific desire for Brescian instruments was Mantua, where the Gonzaga court was like very musically advanced in the 15th century already and, you know, sought out all kinds of the best musicians and makers, the Gonzaga collection seemed to have quite a few Brescian instruments as well.
So there, I think, you know, it shows you about, let's say, the connoisseurly eye of some of the princely families in the greater region who, you know, developed a love for these instruments and really wanted to put them into their, into their collection.  Isabella d'Este marries into the Gonzaga family in the 1480s, you know, she's probably one of the best known collectors of the Renaissance, intensely interested in music. You know, she is one of those people who, she was also courting Leonardo da Vinci, trying to get him to do all kinds of work for her, and does the same with. almost all aspects of her life, Um, clothing, perfumes, musicians, singers, poets. She knows exactly who she wants, and she targets them by sending out her guys, like her agents, to harass them basically into, you know, doing whatever she wants with, you know, greater or lesser success. But it makes perfect sense that she would be quick to sort of like, get the aroma of the quality of Brescian instruments in certain makers, even before this like explosion of, of their prominence, she dies in  1539. So, I mean, this is, this is even before this sort of take-off of the, uh, of the real sort of like  the known masters.
She sounds like a real, an influencer.
Absolutely, she totally was.
An IT girl.
 Isabella's husband, Francesco Gonzaga, was, you know, a soldier collector. So he's sort of, you know, a man of the, army and a man of peace and the arts.  He did, in the last 10 years of his life, he died in 1519. Suffer from terribly from syphilis. So he was out and about, let's say, but there's a new book by, a great scholar, at Monash, Carolyn James, who spent 30 years working on Isabella d'Este and she's, her book is about their partnership basically as rulers, collectors, uh, patrons, that thing. And how Francesco and Isabella worked together. To sort of, you know, both rule a state and produce great art.
I was going to say the Brangelina of the Renaissance, but that didn't end so well. But you know, did, were they happy? 
I think they were. I mean, that's part of what, this book is tracing is the, you know, they had a lot of respect for each other.
Um, and the great thing that Carolyn has discovered is the way that Isabella could dish out just as much as Francesco could, could give, you know, that sort of, he would sometimes scold her for things and she would say, look, We agreed I was going to do X. And so I did X and you can't get angry, so, I mean, I think it did, it did turn out well.
And so they drifted apart. Let's say they started living apart, but frankly, that happens often with, power couples is that they have jobs they've got to do and they don't, they can't always work together.
They  had their own castles on  twin castles.
The Gonzaga court where Gasparo's cousin worked had a long history of patronizing the arts. And when historians talk about the importance of Brescia in the history of instrument making, they will often refer to Isabella d'Este, who in 1495 ordered a set of vials from an unknown luthier in Brescia.  If Isabella had ordered them from here, believe me it must have meant that they were the best.  You see, Isabella came from the important house of Este, in Ferrara. Growing up, she was given an excellent education, and her little sister, though she loved her dearly, was her main source of competition.  They took sibling rivalry to the next level.  At the age of ten, the Duke of Milan offered for her hand in marriage, but she was already promised to the Marquise of Mantua…You had to be fast with these things.  But no problem. Isabella's little sister, Beatrice, was free, so he accepted her. A wealthy, influential d'Este bride was still a wealthy, influential d'Este bride.  This meant that her youngest sister would be a Duchess, and she was just a Marquise. One point to Beatrice.
The two sisters were both intelligent, trendsetters, and very wealthy women of their day.  Leaders in fashion, patrons of the art, and in Isabella's case, an astute diplomat.  If you can remember the Italian wars we were talking about previously, the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, he was that bright spark who invited the French to invade Naples, and then all hell broke loose.
Well, that was Beatrice's husband. Isabella's husband, on the other hand, Francesco, was captain general of the Venetian armies.  So, while he was off fighting whoever was attacking them at the time, Isabella was literally holding the fort back home, probably grinding her teeth wondering what her genius brother in law would do next.
Despite the whole wars, invasions, and sacking of cities thing, the sisters still managed to compete in their own way.  Beatrice was rubbing it in that she had two healthy sons, whilst Isabella was finding it hard to fall pregnant. When she did, she had girls.  Well, Isabella is also an accomplished musician, so when she adds to her collection of beautiful Renaissance objects, she has a set of vials made in Brescia. So you can imagine these were the best money could buy.
So in the violin making histories of Brescia, this story will always come up of, Isabelle d'Este ordering,  uh, a set of vials from, Brescia  because she was, uh, well known for, for ordering the best of everything. It's sort of, it’s, it put into prominence the importance of  Brescian, uh, instrument making. And, I love this, the stories about her and her sister, how they, they grow up and they're very, uh, competitive. And there's, there's this whole exchange of letters between them and it was about a family funeral and really what they were talking about was one sister was going, so I'm actually going to be wearing this dress. And I've got this painter to paint a picture of me, and I'm sending it to you, just so you know what I'm wearing, and you don't wear the same thing.
And this was actually incredibly important. Emily Brayshaw. Because, you know, there's a lot been written and researched about the role of dress and fashion at funerals, particularly in Florence around the time. But again, these customs extend because.  Uh, you know, to show, it's sometimes to show disrespect, to show up in the same clothes.
It's all very carefully curated, like so maybe some of the lead mourners might wear the very finest clothes, and then the next group of mourners might wear sort of like the next, next rank down and things like that. So it's a social occasion, but also, you know, if you're caught wearing the wrong thing, and this applies to men and women as well, you get ridiculed, you get laughed at.
It's like, nah, like you just, it's a big thing. So even though there is that sort of sibling rivalries, if you will, it makes absolute sense and that, you know, they wouldn't want to be wearing the same thing, they'd be curating their outfits, but, uh, you know, I can imagine it'd also be sort of within the context of what's appropriate to wear to a funeral as well.  What's interesting too is like collecting this set of instruments, I read that apparently women didn't play these stringed instruments so much at this time. It was considered more suitable for the ladies to play sort of keyboard instruments. So, it would be fascinating to know if she wanted them for her court, if she wanted them for, you know, to have a bash herself, if she was quite an accomplished player, Um, because also, you know, a lot of very, very wealthy women of the era, also had like the agency to be able to sort of buck the trend as well. You know, it's like, well, you know, I want to play the viola. I don't care if I'm a woman. I'm rich. I've got nothing else to do. I'm going to play the viola. You know,
I think she did play the lute,  which was a ladies.
A lady's instrument, but I get the feeling the violin definitely wasn't a lady's instrument. It did come a lot later.  Hmm.
So far we have looked at the environment in which our violin maker lived, the history of the city, the different ways people would display their wealth, and what they wanted to portray to people through how they spent their money. It is the Renaissance and art is a big thing, but what are people listening to?
Although we call Gasparo de Salo a violin maker, he did in fact make many different types of instruments. Gambas and viols were extremely popular and would have encompassed a large part of his production.  Music made on these instruments would have filled noble houses and courts of the day.
Here I'm speaking to Danny Yeadon about these instruments.
So my name's Danny Yeadon, and I play the cello and the viola da gamba, and I have a full time post at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music as a lecturer in cello and chamber music and historical performance.  The main transition that happened in terms of compositional technique, from Renaissance into the Baroque, uh, was, uh, one from polyphony, which was the predominant technique of the Renaissance, where all the people involved, get a chance to, to sing or play the, key melodies.
So the, the transition was from that to, uh, what's, called monody or sonata writing, where one instrument is the predominant instrument for the melody.  Monteverdi is a good example, actually, because he wrote, he left us all these wonderful madrigals in which the part writing is equal, pretty equal, but he started to explore more soloistic, if you like, or idiomatic writing for the voice in pieces like Vespers  and, his operas like Orfeo.
So my most familiar context for the console is vile console playing, because I play the the viol, which of course is the family of instruments that predates the violin family by a couple of hundred years.  And originally comes from the Vihuela, which is the medieval equivalent of the vial.  A vial consort consists of usually one or two treble viols, one or two tenor viols, and one or two bass viols. Um, and they're all instruments that are played.  They rest on the lap and they're played with an underarm bowing technique. A lot of it does, of course, originate in dance music. Galliards and, and jigs, yes.
 Is that easy to do on the viol or is it easier on a modern instrument? The sort of the baroque, more sustained note for a very long time? Is that, as you're playing, do you find, , as you're playing different types of music, that it's easier?  on your period instrument or is it easier on a modern instrument to play different types of music?
What's interesting is that, the early instruments, the viol and the, and the cello when it's set up as a baroque cello  in conjunction, so with, with gut strings and then in conjunction with a baroque bow which is of course tapered, , it's easier to emulate speech and to get nuancing into the sounds with a tapered bow than it is with a modern bow. Because a modern bow is with the heavier tip, and likewise with a viol, a bass viol, and, uh, and a viol bow, which is also long and tapered. It's actually easier with uh, the modern setup to play long legato phrases than it is with historical instruments.  So it's as if the historical instruments were designed for lots of rhetorical nuancing and ease of articulation. And with a, with a modern bow, with its heavier tip, it's easier to play these longer sustained notes and phrases. To some extent, the materials inform us.  how to play the music, which is, that's fascinating in its own right.
  So the French, there was a certain amount of consort writing in France, but the French really championed the bass viol or the viol de gamba, as they called it. And, uh, there were a couple of composers that really particularly championed the instrument and wrote.  Much more soloistic music for it in the 17th century., so that was Marin Marais, and also Antoine de Forqueray  I think he's called. Forqueray  It's fun to pronounce, isn't it? There was Foucault, the scientist, wasn't there?
In England it was played both in courts and in relatively wealthy households.  I'm pretty sure also in the courts of northern Italy, and I imagine the same, the same was the case in France and Germany. France and Germany had multiple composers that championed the viole family and, wrote legato lines for the instruments within larger works.
So Bach, for example, included it in some of the most poignant arias in the passions. 
And would, the Nobles play as well, or is that seen as the, what was sort of the, the.  role or reputation of a, a musician.
So there were, there were nobles who, who played and engaged musicians in their courts.
So, and quite a lot of the nobility were into playing these instruments themselves, and the wealthier ones employed, they had multiple musicians in their employ. There were probably both, uh, musicians playing viol family, but also the, the violin and actually the flute was a really, really popular.
The baroque flute was a very popular instrument with male nobility.  There are, I've seen in several museums in Europe, walking sticks that doubled up as baroque flutes.
 You never know when you need to, like, whip that out.
Exactly, just play a tune.  Start piping up. To appease the enemy.
Okay, and then do you think that, all this music was then just picked up by the, the violin family afterwards? Is that what we've done? Have we, is there a lot of music that we think, think of as, you know, music for the violin family today? That was actually written for the, 
Yes, I imagine that at the time in the, in the, 17th and 18th centuries, uh, music from earlier from the Renaissance period was being played by people on instruments from the violin family. But at the same time, the sonata was being cultivated as a compositional form. And, uh, in the Baroque period the music for the members of the viol family really, shone a light on, it was idiomatic, so it was really was specifically for those instruments.
Right, so the, the sonata is like in the Baroque period and you're saying that that's where we see more of the violins coming into more prominent role in the Baroque?
Yes, so through the 17th century and then into the 18th century.  So there are early sonatas for the Baroque violin specifically, quite a lot of those are from Italian composers like Castello. And so ornamentation is a whole thing, that whole feature of music throughout the whole period. So a lot of the composers from the Renaissance period wrote out ornaments in addition to expecting players to do their own ornamentation.
Whereas As we move into the Baroque period, there's a sense that, uh, composers expected the players to, to do more of their own improvisation. So we have, examples, for example, Corelli's Violin Sonatas. Corelli has, uh, it's a wonderful, the Opus 5 Sonatas, the original manuscripts and engravings show simple version of the violin part above the basso continuo, and then above that, Corelli writes out his own ornamented version. Right. Of the simpler version of the melody. So that really gives us an idea of, of what composers expected musicians to do spontaneously.
I get the feeling that it was very, the music was very, open to interpretation and the musicians themselves could put, could add their personality to  the works.
Yes. A lot more so than today. Yes.That's a Yes. That's definitely, definitely the case in my opinion. Yes, I think we've become very allied to the score these days, scores from through the ages, but we do know from pedagogical writings and treatises that musicians were expected to, to very much to have their own input.
Increasingly, you're seeing brave musicians who are writing their own  cadenzas from music of any period., like they're saying, this is your improvisation.
 Okay.  And we've become quite, like, today, if you just went off and started mucking around with the adding or augmentation to a very well-known piece, it might be a bit shocking.
Yes.  Although, although there is a return to that practice. Yes, lots and lots of brave performers are doing that more and more.
And do we get the word concert from the consort?
 Quite possibly, yes.  Yes. I'm not 100 percent sure, but... 
I'm going to a consort. And  it turns into I'm going to a concert. 
Concert and concerto, of course.
So the Brandenburg Concertos are a very good example because  There are many different instruments involved from one concerto to the next. It's as if Bach wanted to give a real solo highlighting spot to instruments in turn. And that's where you needed a lot, a quite powerful instrument.
  Yes, yes. And he wrote for violin.
He did, yes, yes. Much more for the violin family than for the, for the viol family. In the, in Brandenburg six, that scored for two violas da gamba Okay And two violas from the violin family, so that's a really, really beautiful texture. Gives us an idea that Bach was just as fascinated by the viol family as the violin family, even though the violin family was the, was becoming by far the dominant family of instruments.
It's a bit like chicken and egg, isn't it? Which came first? Did they, did they produce those amazing, powerful instruments  and that  inspired writing or all  were they exploring?  Writing styles that led to even more powerful instruments.
I could imagine a musician going, “Look,  I've got this Bach piece.  I want people to hear me more. I don't, I feel like I'm getting drowned out by the others.  I'm special. Come on”.  Is it harder to get a very loud sound from,  It's not about power, is it, the gambas? 
No, no, definitely in terms of decibel level. It's much softer than the cello,  but it's fascinating because it does have quite,  there's something penetrating about the sounds. For example, Brandenburg Six is played in large concert halls, and the viola da Gamba players in that piece really, really have to  play at maximum volume a lot of the time in order to be  heard. But it does work, it is possible.  You need so many facets on there, that, as you say, these things that tie in. I'm trying think how like, the, it sort of was overtaken by the violin family.
Um, and  I think also one of the things was it was easier to take a violin outside, it was, it's probably a bit more fragile to go walking around out in the damp Venetian air with a with a viol. Yes. With a viaol, yes.  And uh, also in terms of outdoors, of course, violins transportable. You can walk and play the violin outdoors with a viol as it sits in the lap.
It's not so, not such a portable instrument.
As we heard, vials were a very important instrument in 16th century Italy, and Gasparo's workshop did indeed make many instruments from the viol family. But as we will see during De Salo's lifetime, the viols and viola da gambas will have to start seriously competing with the violin family.  We do see from time-to-time cellos and violas that were once viols and gambas that have been at some point in their history transformed to feed the demand for more modern instruments, and yet these instruments can still hold their own today as you have just been listening to the enchanting Teleman Sonata in D Major, played by Daniel Yeadon on his viol.  So here we find Gasparo Da Salo in Brescia, a city controlled by the very powerful and fashionable Venetian state.
They've had to rebuild themselves and move on from the brutal sacking a generation earlier and reestablish themselves.  Brescia had, before the wars been known for its fine artisans and now in the mid-1560s the city is back on its feet and embracing the renaissance ideals with a boom in building and culture.
We have seen how important fashion and dress was and the ability to have musicians or play music oneself was also part of the fashionable world, and who better to supply you with that beautiful instrument but Brescia's best instrument maker, Gasparo de Salo.
I hope you have enjoyed this first episode of the Violin Chronicles about Gasparo de Salo.  I wanted to convey an idea of the world in which he operated, that in some sense is not so different to the one we live in today.  In the next episode, I will be looking into this instrument maker's life and his own family dramas.
It's a story of war, plague, musical innovation, love, and loss.  All the big hard-hitting themes.  But before I go, I would like to thank all of my lovely guests. Maxime Bibaud, Dr. John Gagne, John Dilworth, Dr. Emily Brayshaw, Filippo Fasser, and Danny Yeadon. I would also like to thank the Australian Chamber Orchestra for their help and cooperation, and to you, the audience, for listening.
In part two, we'll see what happens to Gasparo when he moves to Brescia and sets up his workshop. Gasparo da Salo is starting to look a bit like a Renaissance Mrs. Bennet, trying to find spouses for an array of family members, and at the same time, run a successful business.  I'm Linda Lespets, and I hope you'll join me for the next episode of The Violin Chronicles.