Aits title indicates, this book is a study of an instrument in decline. For much of the seventeenth century the viol and its contrapuntal consort repertory was particularly associated with England - it was one of those ‘Inventions … wherin we excelled other nations’, as John Evelyn put it (ch. 1). Thus the book is concerned with the viol ‘after the golden age’, beginning with its decline during the Restoration period - a significant moment being 31 August 1680, the date of Henry Purcell’s last complete fantasia - and ending with its revival at the end of nineteenth century - a landmark being 21 November 1890, the first appearance of Arnold Dolmetsch’s viol consort.

I have four main objectives in writing this book. First, to document a remarkable thread of musical history that has been largely ignored by scholars and performers. My research has revealed a sizeable repertory of attractive viola da gamba music written or arranged in eighteenth-century Britain. Late viola da gamba music has aroused a good deal of interest in recent years, with scholars such as Michael O’Loghlin, Fred Flassig and Bettina Hoffmann and players such as Jordi Savall, Christophe Coin and Vittorio Ghielmi providing the European context for developments in Britain. After focusing initially on the eighteenth century, I decided to extend the study to include the nineteenth century, partly to disprove the oft-repeated assertion that Abel was the last gamba player in Britain. I will show that there was always at least one person playing the instrument in London throughout the nineteenth century.

Second, I use the viola da gamba and related instruments to make the point that instruments (the ‘hardware’) often remain essentially the same, while their function and the music written and arranged for them (the ‘software’) changes radically. Thus, after about 1720 the gamba ceased to be a consort instrument or the bass instrument of mixed ensembles with its music written in the bass clef, becoming a solo instrument in the alto or tenor register with its music written mostly in the alto and treble clefs (ch. 2). At the same time the name of the six- or seven-string fretted instrument changed from ‘bass viol’ to ‘viola da gamba’ or some Anglicised equivalent such as ‘viol di gambo’. ‘Bass viol’ remained in use, particularly in parish church music, as the name of four-string unfretted cellolike instruments. For the rest of the eighteenth century the gamba was associated with up-to-date music; it was only in the middle of the nineteenth century that it became associated with the developing early music revival.