Viol Making Day at West Dean
Part 1 - Barytons
Earlier this year I learnt that the Viola da Gamba Society (VdGS) was having a meeting in Chichester in October. For a while I had noticed that while there are various gatherings for violin makers, guitar makers and other instrument makers, there is very little for Viol makers. I started to talk to two of my tutors at West Dean – Shem Mackey and Arnaud Giral – about the idea of hosting a symposium at West Dean to coincide with the VdGS day.
On October 4th, we welcomed a set of speakers, makers and musicians to the Old Dairy, West Dean, where the musical instrument workshops are located. In all there were six speakers: four there as makers and two as musicians. We had around 45 attendees in person were joined by 25 online, dialing in from Europe, America and the UK. There were a wide variety of attendees including a number of makers, players as well as current and previous students. One student, Ward Albert, came from Belgium just for the symposium.
Shem Mackey addressing the symposium
The day kicked off with Shem Mackey and Luke Challinor talking about Joachim Tielke’s Barytons. I’m sure most people reading this will know that a Baryton is a Bass Viol with the addition of one or two further sets of metal strings (“manuals”) that can be plucked, but also act as sympathetic strings. Shem gave a detailed overview of Tielke’s four extant Barytons, one recently uncovered. In addition to the detailed presentation, Shem had obtained permission to bring along an original neck fragment from a Tielke baryton. This was on display and available for examination. After taking us through the details of the remaining Tielke barytons, Shem gave a whistle-stop description of the making of a baryton commissioned by Luke. I got the feeling that Shem only scratched the surface of the challenges of making this incredibly complex instrument with three manuals.
Luke then outlined his decision making process for identifying the instrument to commission, diving into his research into Baryton’s and their music. A significant highlight was hearing the instrument played by Luke, demonstrating both the amazing acoustic soundscape it creates, as well as the amazing technique that Luke uses to pluck the metal strings at the same time as fingering the fretboard and bowing the gut strings. Wow.
Luke Challinor playing Baryton
I will post more about the other speakers soon!
The website is available at: https://violmaking.org and the recordings of the streaming are available. Please contact paul@fremantle.org for the password.