At Court and at Home with the Vihuela de mano: Current Perspectives of the Instrument, its Music and its World ____________________________________________ BY JOHN GRIFFITHS The vihuela de mano was the most prominent solo instrument in sixteenth-century Spain. It enjoyed a popularity that extended across a broad social spectrum and—much more than has generally been recognised—was equally familiar to the middle-classes as to royalty and the nobility. For both pleasure and learning, it served court and domestic roles, and generated a substantial repertory of music of great diversity and character. The present essay does not pretend to summarise all that has been said about the vihuela and its music. It is rather a survey that provides a long-needed reassessment of the vihuela repertory in its social context, and that makes a critical review of its composers and music. The instrument The origins of the vihuela can be traced back at least to the mid-fifteenth century, although no music survives from this period. It was not until the sixteenth century that the instrument reached its zenith and, by the early seventeenth century, it had virtually disappeared. Recent research by Ian Woodfield has made significant headway in tracing the origins of the vihuela in Aragon and its subsequent development in the second half of the fifteenth century. 1 Largely through iconographical documents, he has traced JLSA 22 (1989) @ 10/12/1989 p 1 1 Ian Woodfield, The Early History of the Viol, Cambridge Musical Texts and Monographs (Cambridge, 1984). A more general study of early plucked instruments in Spain is given in Heinz Nickel, Beiträge zur Entwicklung der Gitarre in Europa (Haimhausen, 1972). Many early literary references to the vihuela are reproduced in the introduction of Pujol’s edition of Alonso Mudarra, Tres libros de música en cifra para vihuela, Monumentos de la Música Española 7 (Barcelona, 1949).