A bass string instrument that is simultaneously bowed from above and plucked from behind. (The term ‘lyra bastarda’ is occasionally – although incorrectly – applied to the baryton.) The baryton is a hybrid instrument based on the Baroque bass viol and incorporating features of the Lyra viol and the Bandora, a metal-strung plucked bass instrument. There are three basic forms: Baroque, Classical and revival. The Baroque baryton was played ‘lyra-way’ as a solo instrument from tablature. It had six gut bowed strings attached and adjusted like those of a bass viol, but tuned in a range of scordatura tunings (the upper manual), and nine metal bass strings (C–d), hitched at the fingerboard nut and tuned by wrest pins in a separate bridge (the lower manual). The metal strings lay parallel to the fingerboard on the bass side and were plucked from behind the neck with the left thumb. They provided the instrument with the capability for self-accompaniment and enhanced the sound by sympathetic resonance (see Sympathetic strings).
The number and pitch range of the metal plucked strings was later increased and sometimes a third manual, with gut strings, was added. J.G. Krause, who composed the only known published collection for baryton (IX Partien, auf die Viola Paradon, before 1704), suggested 18 strings as the ideal for the lower manual. Daniel Speer (Grund-richter … Unterricht der musikalischen Kunst, 1687, p.91) described how a set of gut drone strings might be attached on top, to be plucked by the right little finger; music for such a baryton is found in a German mid-17th-century manuscript (D-Kl). Speer’s instrument bore six upper, 19 lower and nine drone strings.
The Classical baryton was associated especially with Joseph Haydn and the Esterházy court during the 1760s and 70s. It was a modification of the earlier instrument, with the lower manual tuned to the same pitch range as the upper four strings of the bowed manual (c–d'). Other features included a seventh bowed string and either diatonic or chromatic stringing in a lower manual of 15 or more metal strings. Sympathetic (lower manual) strings were now hitched to individual bridges and tuned with pegs from the head of the instrument. At the end of the Esterházy period, which lasted little more than a decade, barytons with up to 44 lower-manual strings were reported; these instruments had both the bass-register strings of the Baroque instrument and the higher-octave strings of the Esterházy tuning. The 1750 instrument by J.J. Stadlmann owned by Prince Nicolaus Esterházy has seven strings on top and ten below (see illustration). The Austrian virtuoso, Andreas Lidl, was said by C.L. Junker (Musikalischer Almanach, 1782, p.105) to have played an instrument with 27 underlying strings.
The modern or revival instrument is essentially a reproduction of the Esterházy instrument. Initially a range of heavier modern barytons more appropriately called cellitons was built, but, due to advances in research, light sonorous instruments are now being made again.
Barytons from all periods survive. Important 17th-century instruments may be seen in London (3), Linz (2), Vienna, Berlin and Nuremberg. 14 are known from the 18th century, three from the 19th and at least 30 from the 20th. As befits the ‘instrument of kings’, almost all barytons are finely decorated with carved heads (painted or plain), purfling, inlay and herring-bone edging, in materials such as ivory, ebony and mother-of-pearl.
From the beginning, the instrument was played as a lyraviol-cum-bandora. While the bowed strings carried the tune, the plucked strings accompanied. The earliest works – an anonymous collection of dances (Swan baryton MS, c1640; now in RUS-SPan), manuscripts at Kassel (bearing the dates 1653, 1669 and 1670) and the Krause publication – are notated in modified French lute tablature. Instruction on playing the instrument is best gleaned from Krause’s preface (facs. in Liebner) and the music itself. Later, in the 18th century, Haydn and his followers notated their baryton parts in the treble clef, sounding an octave below; the plucked notes were indicated by numbers below the treble staff, the strings numbered from lowest to highest (the reverse of earlier practice). Bass viol solos of the period, for example those by C.F. Abel, were also written in the treble clef. It is rare in the later chamber repertory for the baryton player to be called upon to play the upper and lower sets of strings simultaneously; in fact, they are usually played in alternation, signalling different roles in the musical texture. The most skilled players were renowned for their ability to accompany themselves throughout, following the original baroque practice.
Mersenne (Cogitata physico-mathematica, 1644) was one of the first to describe the instrument, but the addition of wire strings to viols for ‘bettering the sound’ was described in England in the patent application of Edney and Gill in 1608 (Lasocki) and in Germany by Praetorius in 1618 (Syntagma musicum). Mersenne’s claim that the baryton was much admired by King James I of England (d 1625) – and also that Daniel Farrant invented it – remains unsubstantiated. However, the theory that the baryton was introduced to the Continent from England is supported by the reference to Walter Rowe playing the baryton to Peter Mundy in Königsberg in 1641 (Temple). Rowe was an important viol teacher and most probably influential in the creation of the Swan baryton manuscript. That the baryton was little known in France is indicated by Brossard’s quaint reference to it (Dictionaire, 1703) as a ‘viola di bardone’ possessing up to 44 strings, and by an article in the Almanach musical claiming that it had been heard in Paris for the first time when Lidl toured there in 1775 (Prince Nicolaus Esterházy had, in fact, taken his baryton with him to Paris in 1767). The rest of the instrument’s commentators, except for Burney, wrote in German: Majer (Museum musicum, 1732), Stoessel and David (Lexicon, 1737), Baron (Abriss, 1756), L. Mozart (Versuch, 1756), F.A. Weber (Charakteristik der … Instrumente, 1788), Albrechtsberger (Anweisung, 1790) and Koch (Lexikon, 1802).
It was in Austria that the baryton was most beloved and cultivated. Schenk (1972) cited accompanied arias in Ariosto’s Marte placato (1707) and Fux’s Il fonte della salute, aperto dalla grazia nel Calvario (1716) as evidence of the occasional use of the baryton in Viennese operas and oratorios. By the middle of the century, however, the Baroque bass viol repertory was decidedly out of fashion; had Prince Nicolaus not taken up the viol and later the baryton, these instruments and their repertories would have suffered neglect earlier. While most of the manuscript music for baryton is in Austrian and German libraries (Dresden and Kassel), some has found its way into the far-flung libraries of St Petersburg, Stockholm, London, Paris, New York and Washington, DC.
Prince Nicolaus may have acquired his first baryton as late as 1765 when, on a trip to Innsbruck, he purchased the Stadlmann. While there he received the first pieces for ‘paridon’ from his Kapellmeister, Joseph Haydn. His enthusiasm for the baryton continued for more than a decade. Meanwhile, to satisfy the prince’s voracious appetite for new chamber music, Haydn was required to compose dozens of trios as well as solos, duos, quintets, octets, concertos and a cantata with obbligato baryton; Haydn also enlisted his colleagues and pupils to compose chamber works using the instrument.
Haydn’s own works for baryton were composed between 1765 and 1778. His pupils and colleagues in the Esterházy band, A.L. Tomasini (from 1761, first violinist of the Esterházy Hofkapelle and ultimately Konzertmeister), Joseph Purksteiner (or Burgksteiner; from 1766, a court violinist and violist) and Anton Neumann (Kappelmeister at Olmütz [now Olomouc] Cathedral, who presented the prince with music for the baryton in the hope of gaining special favour) composed trios in a similar style. Tomasini and Purksteiner (1768) each composed at least 24 divertimentos for baryton, violin or viola, and cello, and Neumann composed 24 divertimentos (trios with baryton, 1767), followed by a set of duets (1769). According to the biographies by Griesinger (1809) and Dies (1810), Haydn himself had, in 1769, been upbraided for imprudently surpassing his patron in skill, having secretly learnt to play the baryton. Nevertheless, in that same year the prince sought the professional barytonist Lidl as a member of his band and, more particularly, as a partner for chamber music. Lidl remained until 1774, when he embarked on a tour of France and England. During his time at Eszterháza he composed pieces for the prince; in London he published trios (without baryton) in 1776 and 1778 which are likely to have been conceived with baryton (the Hamburg manuscripts may be compared with the London publications). As a soloist, Lidl was praised for his skill at self-accompaniment. Burney, however, was not impressed, and grumbled that ‘it seems with Music as with agriculture, the more barren and ungrateful the soil, the more art is necessary in its cultivation’ (BurneyH).
In 1769 two Esterházy musicians, both of whom belonged to the coterie of barytonists, resigned their posts: Haydn’s friend, the cellist Joseph Weigl, who may have composed music for baryton (see Liebner), and Carl Franz, a virtuoso horn player, barytonist and cellist for whom in 1786 Haydn is said (by Pohl) to have composed the baryton part in his cantata, Deutschlands Klage auf den Tod Friedrichs des Grossen (hXXVIb:1). According to Pohl, Franz’s playing was at once affectingly melancholic and like ‘the sweetness of the pineapple’. Weber dwelt on Franz’s superb intonation and the skill with which he provided a plucked accompaniment for his music.
The character of the Esterházy works for baryton was determined by Haydn – a compromise between the idiomatic possibilities of the instrument and the capabilities of its keenest patron. Nicolaus, it must be said, had no pretensions to being a soloist. Judging from the music composed for him, he preferred a few ‘safe keys’ (D, G and A), related to the instrument’s tuning, and a limited use of plucked strings. The only duos for baryton and cello (hXII) accordingly make no use of the underlying strings. Among the trios (hXI:1–126), fewer than half call upon the barytonist to pluck with the left thumb. However, in the duet for two barytons (hXII:4) both parts include plucked notes. Nothing is known of the technical demands of the lost chamber concertos (hXIII:1–3), the lost sonatas for baryton and cello, and the missing baryton part to the Frederick the Great cantata.
Almost all of Haydn’s trios were cast in three short movements; this was, perhaps, a reflection of the limited time and attention the prince had to devote to his art. Half of the trios begin with a slow movement; nearly all include a minuet and trio. Variations on the prince’s favourite contemporary tunes (mostly from works by Haydn) and fugues frequently make up the remaining movement. Some scholars have seen the fugal movements in particular as experimental essays leading to the op.20 string quartets (see Kirkendale and Wollenberg).
The most common baryton trio texture – baryton, viola and cello – was devised particularly for Nicolaus and, while born of exigency, it proved a stroke of genius. The bowed strings of the baryton blend with the viola and the cello, and the plucked strings provide a contrasting timbre. The overtones produced by the baryton’s many strings compensate for the absence of a treble instrument, although Tomasini did compose trios with violin instead of viola. The overall effect mystifies the listener because the individual instruments are often impossible to differentiate. Haydn was, of course, a master of this artful subterfuge, conceding nothing in musical integrity and detail even when composing domestic music. Within the textures of the divertimentos (hX:1–12) – a quartet, quintets and octets – the pair of virtuoso horns is inevitably more prominent than the pair of barytons, making it likely that they were composed for occasions at which the prince was not playing.
The true extent of the repertory, 17th- as well as 18th-century, remains to be determined. A manuscript collection (discovered in the early 1960s, in A-SCH) contains further works from the late 18th century: divertimentos for unaccompanied baryton by F.A. Deleschin and the Viennese father and son, Francesco and Giuseppe di Fauner; a sonata for ‘viole paridon o viola da gamba’, violin and cello by Joseph Fiala, the Czech oboist and viol player who was an intimate of the Mozart family in Salzburg; and a Parthia per il baritono e violino by the cathedral musician, J.P. Ziegler (d 1767). Similar repositories may exist elsewhere in Austria and Hungary.
Around the turn of the century the baryton still had a few exponents. Vincenz Hauschka, by profession a Viennese court official and member of the board of directors of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, was, according to Pohl, an accomplished player. He contributed two collections of songs with baryton accompaniment (Cinque notturni for three solo voices, baryton and guitar, and Sei canzonetti italiani for solo voice and baryton); Fétis further attributed five quintets (baryton and string quartet) and five duets for baryton and cello to Hauschka. S.L. Friedl was a cellist, barytonist and composer attached to the Prussian Royal Chapel in Berlin from 1793 to 1826. According to the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, xiii (1811), he performed a potpourri (after Lefčvre) of his own arrangement on the baryton. He may have left manuscript works for the instrument. During the 1846–7 Paris concert season, Félix Battachon attempted to generate fresh interest in the baryton. The more successful late 20th-century revival was led by players such as José Vázquez, K.M. Schwamberger, A. Lessing, Janos Liebner, Riki Gerardy, John Hsu and Jörg Eggebrecht. Over 20 composers have written new works for baryton since 1960, including Ferenc Farkas and Stephen Dodgson (Gartrell, 1983). All compositions to date in the 20th century have used the Esterházy lower-manual tuning. The International Baryton Society was formed in 1993 to coordinate and promote baryton research and performance.
JULIE ANNE SADIE, TERENCE M. PAMPLIN
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