IT is now generally accepted that the viol family came into being in the 1490s, when the Valencian viol, a single-size bowed instrument played in chords in the medieval manner, was imported into northern Italy from Catalonia, fitted with an arched bridge, and developed in several sizes for polyphonic music. From the first, viols were thought to be particularly suitable for accompanying the voice or for playing contrapuntal music; the earliest repertories seem to have been the polyphonic frottola and French and Flemish ‘songs without words’ transmitted in Italian sources. The first known viol consort was commissioned by Isabella d’Este for the Mantuan court; she played the viol herself, as did her brother Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, and other members of their circle. It was the only socially acceptable ensemble instrument for much of the sixteenth century, played by ‘gentlemen, merchants, and other persons of culture’ (’les gentilz hommes, marchantz, & autre gens de vertuz’), as the Lyons composer Philibert Jambe de Fer put it in 1556. However, it was also played by professional instrumentalists as an alternative to violins or wind instruments, and its rapid spread across Europe in the early sixteenth century probably owed much to groups from Italy that settled, for instance, in Paris in the 1520s, in London in 1540, in Munich in the 1550s, or in Vienna in the 1560s.

Around 1600 the viol consort declined in mainland Europe in the face of the increasing popularity of the violin and the fashion for mixed ensembles. Vincenzo Giustiniani wrote in 1628 that ‘the uniformity of the sound’ of single-sonority ensembles such as viols and flutes became ‘tiresome rather quickly’ and was ‘an incentive to sleep’ on a hot afternoon. Viol consorts are occasionally encountered later in sophisticated musical circles, such as the Barberini household in Rome in the 1630s, written for by Cherubino Waesich, or as an occasional change from violins, as in ‘Ad cor: Vulnerasti cor meum’, BuxWV 75, from Buxtehude’s cycle ‘Membra Jesu nostri’, or the aria in Vivaldi’s oratorio Juditha triumphans (1716) with a ‘concerto di viole all’inglese’ - apparently a consort of viols.