The Origins of the Violoncello: From Obscurity to Stardom

Ian van Maaren

In the world of modern classical music performance, the violoncello is one of a select few superstar instruments which have obtained widespread popularity beyond the concert stage. Twentieth century cello icons such as Mstislav Rostropovich and Jacqueline Du Pré have been the focus of numerous documentaries and the current king of the cello world, Yo-Yo Ma, has even been featured on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and animated as a character in The Simpsons. The cello also consistently ranks near the top of lists of the most popular classical instruments, and youth orchestras and conservatories across the world are confronted yearly with an overabundance of talented cellists competing for a small number of spots. Based on its current quasi celebrity status among instruments it is hardly believable that the violoncello began its life as a lowly continuo instrument, relegated to accompanying others and realizing figured basses. From its conception in northern Italy during the late Renaissance, the story of the cello is one of an underdog fighting for recognition and a place in the spotlight. It was also a very different instrument than the modern cellos that are played on today, as were all of the members of the violin family of instruments. Throughout the Renaissance and well into the Baroque era, the violin family underwent numerous changes to make them more viable for all types of composition and performance before arriving at a standard model for all the family members that remained relatively unchanged until the beginning of the nineteenth century and the Romantic era. These changes allowed the violin family and especially the cello to at first compete with and later overtake the older and more widely used viol family of gamba instruments and also gave rise to new repertoires of music that helped shape the Baroque era.

One of the first crucial developments in the cello’s history had to do with the way in which its strings were made. It is common knowledge today that the strings of instruments in the Renaissance and Baroque were made of gut, rather than the steel winding that is used today. Gut strings were sourced from a number of different animals with higher pitched strings being made from cats and other small mammals and lower bass strings from sheep or pigs guts. An inherent problem that all continuo instruments like the cello faced was that the lower strings made from gut did not produce clear pitch centers and had an obscure, almost raspy quality. The solution to this problem came from Bologna in northern Italy. During the thirty year span between 1660 and1690, luthiers and string players developed a technique of covering pure gut strings with either silver or copper windings. The benefits of a wound gut string were that it produced a far clearer pitch center, improved the quality of tone of the string, and aided in projection of sound in the lower registers [1]. These improvements made the cello more viable as a solo instrument, especially within the context of church services and courtly functions.

Early documentation of the cello’s development shows immense differences in both the structure of the instrument itself as well as the way in which it was played. In his Dictionnaire de musique, written in 1705, the French music theorist and instrument collector Sébastien de Brossard defined the violoncello as “...our Quinte de Violin, or petite Basse de Violin with five or six strings.” [2] A few years later in 1708 in his well known Praecepta der musikalischen Compositionen, the famous German theorist and composer Johann Gottfried Walther wrote that the cello “...is an Italian bass instrument, not dissimilar to that other Bass Instrument, the viola da gamba, it is held almost like a violin, namely it is sometimes held up and grasped around the neck with the left hand. It is tuned like a viola.” [3] These definitions highlight two key differences between the infant cello and modern or even later Baroque cellos: first that there was some variance in the number of strings present on the instrument and second that the instrument was played with a violinist’s positioning. This method of holding the cello to the neck or against the shoulder was known as the da spalla style, and artwork from the time of the cello’s infancy, such as the figure below, illustrates the difficulty that playing an instrument of the cello’s size presented to performers.

In this illustration, one of the musicians in the foreground is playing a violoncello in the da spalla style. This type of posture would have presented severe technical difficulties when playing in both lower and higher registers as well as putting strain on the players body. Over time, the cello migrated to being played in the da braccio style between the legs which has become the standard positioning of the instrument. This development allowed for greater technical fluidity on the instrument which in turn served to encourage a growing number of composers to view the cello as a more soloistic instrument than before. The more natural technique that came with the da braccio style also helped to foster the earliest generation of virtuoso cellists in northern Italy.

The changes in both style of playing and anatomy of the violoncello began to convince many gamba and other continuo instrument players to abandon their instruments in favor of this new Italian upstart. One of these early pioneers was Domenico Gabrielli, a musician in the service of the church of San Petronio in Bologna. Gabrielli served as a music director and performer in the church’s instrumental ensemble for most of his life until his death in 1690. He received his early training on the bass gamba but soon switched to the cello, and his virtuosity on the instrument earned him the nickname “Minghino dal viulunzeel,” a dialectic phrase meaning “Dominic of the cello.” [4] Gabrielli also wrote a set of seven ricercare for unaccompanied solo cello which predate the Bach cello suites by almost fifty years, making them the earliest known compositions for solo cello. [5] These ricercare would most likely have served as part of a church service as either an offertory or processional piece during the Mass, and they chronicle Gabrielli’s growth as a cellist from a continuo player into a true virtuoso.

This excerpt from Gabrielli’s first ricercare incorporates several aspects of continuo writing fromthe baroque era. First, the range of the piece stays mostly in the lower register of the cello with a lowest note of a D natural on the C string and an ambitus of a D natural just above middle C. Second, the rhythmic profile remains fairly uniform throughout, with most of the piece moving in quarter note rhythms with occasional eighth note flourishes and half note suspension figures. These characteristics harken back to both Gabrielli’s and the cello’s roots in continuo playing. In contrast, the final ricercare of the set is an exercise in Baroque virtuoso playing incorporating fast scale passages and rapid string crossings. Gabrielli’s growth from a continuo player into a bonafide virtuoso parallels the cello’s own growth as an instrument.

From its humble origins as a lowly continuo instrument, the violoncello has experienced a true “from rags to riches” story over the course of its history. Romantic and Modern era composers from Dvořák to Britten saw the cello as an instrument worthy of a true soloists status and wrote monumental concertos and other solo works to display its vast expressive and technical range. Even present day pop music stars like Christina Aguilera and Adele have written and performed chart topping songs that feature the cello in a prominent manner. Despite all of the stardom that the cello now enjoys in the modern world of classical music, there is a growing number of musicians who seek to revive the traditions of the cello’s birth in order to better understand the cultural heritage that all cellists share. Today, “period” or historically informed performance is an ever growing field of study among cellists and all families of classical instrumental performers. This renewed interest in the music of the Renaissance and Baroque has unearthed the works of long forgotten composers and virtuosos that had gone unplayed for centuries. By digging deeper into the origins of the western canon of classical music, performers and listeners both can better understand what once was, now is, and is still to come.

[1] Jennifer Morsches, “The Anomaly of the Violoncello piccolo”, Finzi Report, (June 10 2013) 7.

[2] Sébastien de Brossard, “Dictionnaire de musique” (1705), 329.

[3] Johann Gottfried Walther, Praecepta der musikalischen Compositionen (1708), 43.

[4] Suess, John G., and Marc Vanscheeuwijck. "Gabrielli, Domenico." Grove Music Online. 2001

[5] Morches, “The Anomaly of the Violoncello piccolo”, 7.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Brossard, Sébastien de. Dictionnaire de musique, 1705.

Brueghel, Jan. Les noces villageoises. 1615, Ink, painting on canvas. Musé del Prado.

Gabrielli, Domenico. Ricercar no. 1 in G minor, 1685.

Walther, Johann Gottfried. Praecepta der musikalischen Compositionen, 1708.

Secondary Sources

Little, Meredith, and Natalie Jenne. Dance and the Music of J.S. Bach. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991.

Morsches, Jennifer. “The Anomaly of the Violoncello Piccolo.” Finzi Report, June 10, 2013.

Suess, John G., and Marc Vanscheeuwijck. "Gabrielli, Domenico." Grove Music Online. 2001; Accessed 5 Dec. 2019.

Copyright © 2023 Ian van Maaren