Workshop viola design

The applied geometry necessary to generate the different viola sizes is very simply a result of the necessity to achieve a particular desired result.

The design concept itself has arisen from the culmination of some 20 years of working experience with violas, along with other members of the violin family. From the many refinements applied to my own viola work I began to appreciate the necessity of employing a working workshop system on which to hang ideas of contemporary viola design.

As I have approached a successively refined form for my violas, tempering aesthetic balance with practical need, the underlying proportion and geometry have become more rational. I should stress here that this design is not an attempt to explore, or provide, an explanation of earlier instrument design. It is purely a practical system that I have developed for use in my own workshop.

However, certain similarities with earlier working practices have suggested themselves, particularly significant, that earlier instrument workshops must have adopted similar regimes to overcome the various technical problems with which they were faced at any one particular time. It is important to understand that earlier instrument design was intended for instruments that would have been limited by different parameters, and as a consequence of such limitations, used in different ways.

Since the conception of the violin group as a consort of instruments during the early Renaissance, the most determining factor throughout their history has been that of string manufacture. Indeed, it is the direct consequence of developments in this field which have enabled technical advances in violin instrument design, in turn, this determining the music that could be written and played upon them. It is a circular supporting system of musical necessity, technical capability, and the ability of makers to respond. This is why working in the viola field today becomes so rewarding; there is currently a high demand by musicians engaged in to-days demanding performance environment for modern violas of sufficient caliber.

The design of these violas is based on the very simple division of the vibrating string length based upon the Pythagorean musical proportion of 2:3, or a fifth. This principal further applied to the body dimension gives the resulting balanced proportion of string to body size. Whilst a similar criteria is applied to the violin, interestingly, the violoncello, mainly by consequence of its somewhat later development and due to its string length not inhibited by a shoulder playing position, retains an earlier, more original application of this proportion.

The f hole size and position is probably the most crucial part of the sounding of an instrument, as the f holes establish the mechanical balance of the body. Practical geometric application establishes their position and from this point the rest of the design may be laid out in harmonious proportion to the whole.

The f hole layout is of particular interest as its own position in the square, circle, triangle relationship, that lies at the center of the violas geometry, suggests its adaptation from the outer facing, larger, C hole used on the viol, and other groups of earlier stringed instruments. A possible example of Renaissance problem solving in the luthier’s workshop?

However, whilst simple adherence to particular geometrical principals may seem have little bearing as to whether an instrument will be of sufficient quality, if the applied geometry is used to achieve a desired result, then a particular geometrical system becomes a valuable workshop tool.

Interestingly, the core geometry of this workshop design is also apparent in one of the most famous of Renaissance drawings, Vitruvian Man, by Leonardo da Vinci. This drawing, originally intended as an illustration for a book about the works of 1st century BC Roman architect and engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, suggests a geometrical relationship between nature and the proportions of the human form. Vitruvius used these proportions in his buildings. In common with other architectural work of the time this would have had its foundations firmly in the earlier Greek tradition, particularly on the geometrical knowledge expressed by the Pythagorean school. This ‘semi cult’ are credited for the rationalization of harmonious musical intervals through studies of monochord, the principal of which was explored in the early renaissance work by, F. Gafurio, De Harmonia musicorum instrumentorum, 1518. It is surely significant how good design can always be traced back to these early Greek thinkers?

Woodcut from F Gafurio, Theorica Musice 1452.
Each frame displays an example of musical sounds marked 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, and 16. In each instance the ones marked 8 and 16 are indicated, this gives an interval of 1:2, which is of course the octave. In the last frame Pythagoras and another Pythagorean, Philolaos, blow pipes marked 8 and 16, again the octave. Pythagoras is holding the pipes marked 9 and 12 giving the ratio 3:4, the fourth, whilst Philolaos holds the pipes 4 and 6, giving the ratio 2:3, the fifth.

The Lecture.
F. Gafurio, De Harmonia musicorum instrumentorum, 1518

In this illustration Gafurio is depicted lecturing. The three organ pipes, supported by the diagram on the right hand side of the illustration shown together with a set of compasses, are labeled 3, 4, and 6, indicating the octave, 3:6. This is further divided by the harmonic mean 4, into a fourth, 3:4 and the fifth, 4:6 (2:3).