Online meeting: Wednesday 9 September at 7.00 pm - Thomas Baeté and Gesina Liedmeier: Early viols in Northern Italy
In person meeting: Saturday 17 October, Blackheath Quaker Meeting House, Lawn Terrace, Blackheath, London SE3 9LL
For more information, please see Meetings page.
THE VIOL, Summer 2026 (No 83)
A PDF of the summer issue of The Viol was sent to electronic members on May 26, 2026.
The paper version was posted out to paper members at around the same date. If you have
an electronic membership and didn't receive the link to the electronic version, or if
you have a paper membership and have not received your copy within a reasonable time frame,
please get in touch with Sue on admin@vdgs.org.uk
VdGS Ex-hire viols for sale.
Due to several very generous donations of viols in recent years, the Society's hire scheme
now has more viols than it needs. We have therefore decided to sell off some of the least
used viols (of all sizes, including a pardessus and a violone) at cheap prices,
varying from approximately £800 to £2500.
You can find a list of viols currently available in the members section of the website.
Members' area, password
The password to access the members' area is changed every 6 months,
usually on 1st June and 1st December. The current password is printed on page 5 of each
issue of The Viol. Please contact the administrator if you have any problems.
Call for Papers - VdGS Journal 2026
Please get in touch with Peter Holman (General Editor) for expressions of interest for
the 2026 volume which is expected to be published this autumn. Full details here
VdGSJ Call for
Papers 2026.pdf
or here VdGSJ Call for Papers
2026.docx.
Viols for Lviv: an update - John Bryan
VdGS members will remember Emily Ashton's article in The Viol (Winter 2025/26) about her visit to meet
and coach young viol players in Lviv, Ukraine, and the difficulties they were experiencing given the
current political turmoil in their country. The VdGS trustees agreed to make a special appeal to members
for donations to raise £2000 to cover the purchase of two viols from our hire collection that we
could make available to support these players.
Because of the amazing generosity of many VdGS members, and with additional donations from some non-members, we have accumulated a ring-fenced fund of more than £3800 in less than three months. Thank you to all those who have supported this important initiative.
With the residual funds we have paid for some necessary repairs to the two viols from our collection, the rehairing of four bows and new strings for other viols being sent to Lviv, and have made a contribution to the costs of transporting all the viols to Ukraine.
We have now closed the special appeal, but if anyone would like to continue to support the 'Viols for Lviv' scheme in the future, please make direct contact with Emily Ashton.
VdGS will continue to keep in contact with Emily and the Ukrainian players, and we will bring you further news as this wonderful project develops: there are reports from Emily, and from Emilia Benjamin, in the current issue of The Viol (Summer 2026) describing the delivery of the viols to Lviv.
Learn and play online
plus new (2023) pilot project with Jacqui Robertson-Wade and Vdgs: Consort playing using Jamulus.
Viol Jam.
We have been collecting a few links to online resources.
The Viol - Back Page Ad Offer to recording artists and music publishers
The back page of The Viol, a full A4 advertising space, is offered to companies, groups
or individuals who wish to publicise a recording (or occasionally sheet music) in return
for a number of CDs (or music books) which the VdGS sells to raise funds for the
society. The advertisement will appear in colour in both paper and electronic copies of
The Viol, Those wishing to advertise this way should get in touch with the administrator
about the detailed arrangements. We can either accept advertisers' own artwork, A4
portrait orientation, preferably in JPEG or TIFF format, or we can create artwork using
images (again JPEG or TIFF preferred) and text supplied to us.
Going on a course? Doing research?
Get assistance from the Joy Dodson
Music Fund - download the guidelines
VdGS Music Editions - print your own!
If you own an A3 printer, have a large tablet, or have a local printing service then you
may prefer to purchase
VdGS music editions in PDF format at half the price of printed editions (so for members
that is one quarter of
full price)
- these files are for purchasers? use only and not for re-distribution in any form. The
PDF files will contain the
cover, score and parts as A4 pages for use on a tablet and with instructions for how to
print these in booklet
form on an A3 printer duplex printer using Adobe Acrobat Reader. Order details under
'Publications > Music Editions'.
We need desperately to clear warehouse space (which is costing us an arm and a leg!) and raise money to pay for the storage of our stock, so we have knocked down the prices of our older facsimiles by a considerable amount (sale open until Epiphany), in the hope that we can raise enough to pay for the next year of warehousing. As a non-profit, set up to provide affordable but very high-quality colour facsimiles of important early music manuscripts, we have no marketing department, so we rely on word-of-mouth to help sell our books.
The prices are as follows: Ferrell-Vogüé Machaut Manuscript: £100 (reduced from £500); Eton Choirbook: £80 (reduced from £190); Henry VIII Manuscript: £40 (reduced from £120) ; William Byrd Masses: £10 (set of 5 stapled booklets in a card slipcase) (reduced from £25). At the time of writing we have only one copy of the Dow Partbooks: £110 (reduced from £200) remaining.
I would be interested to know if you have any sense of whether a cheaper digitally-printed version of the Dow Partbooks (with a simple "perfect" binding) might be of interest among viol players, as if it would be we could look into a new edition.
Francoise Enock has published 60 pieces for solo bass viol from the Manuscrit de Foix, and also sells a Method for VdG (recueil de pieces faciles), and 120 pieces from manuscript of Kassel for 1 and 2 violas da gamba (tablature transcription)
For anyone addressing music of the past The Pursuit of Musick is designed to complement conventional approaches by representing Europe's early musical life exclusively through original writings & art. This extraordinary treasure trove of pre-1770 sources balances its 2,800 wide-ranging extracts with 560 informative images (300 in colour) and is available in a sturdy paperback edition for a modest £35 (incl. postage, UK only).
The Viola da Gamba Society was founded in 1948 with the aim of advancing the study of viols, their music, their playing, and their making. Since then the Viola da Gamba Society has gone from strength to strength and has now over 500 members worldwide. The activities of the VdGS include three meetings a year and the distribution of a popular quarterly newsletter, and extend to hosting a bi-annual beginners' course, a busy viol hire scheme, an annual online journal and a fund to help young players attend courses.
Download the booklet 'History of the Viola da Gamba Society 1948-1998' by Dr John Catch.
star PDFs of recent newsletters
star information for beginners
star some free music
star list of things (CDs, rosin, ...) members can buy from us at a
discount
Join the Society now!
We rely heavily on donations and input from volunteers who keep our activities going, so if
you have some time to spare, however little, let us know. We are also always grateful for
suggestions, help and ideas from our members - this could be for the newsletter, the website
or a meeting.
If you have no time, do join us on Facebook or Twitter and send us
material to share, or share our posts to help spread news on events and viol-related things.
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Are you after viol-related things? Get some greeting cards & bookmarks or viol music
Do you have any nice viol-related photos we can use for the website? Send them to us!
