(It.).
(1) A word used at various times to mean Viol, Violin, Viola or Violoncello.
G.M. Lanfranco (Scintille di musica, Brescia, 1533) wrote about ‘violette da arco senza tasti’ (small bowed violas without frets), which may be rebecs but are more probably violins. Tuned in 5ths with the higher members of the family having only three strings, they are the equivalent of the kleine Geigen described by Martin Agricola (1529) and other 16th-century German writers. This usage also appeared in other 16th- and 17th-century sources, for example in Pietro Cerone's El melopeo y maestro (Naples, 1613), 1057.
Zacconi (Prattica di musica, 1592) called the treble viol a Violetta piccola, a term Praetorius (Syntagma musicum, 2/1619) used both for treble viol and for violin. Sebastiano Cherici, observing the Venetian usage of his time (wherein the term ‘viola’ was used for the larger size of the bass violin, ‘violetta’ for the smaller), applied the term ‘violetta’ to the small bass violin or Violoncello in his Inni Sacri (1672). The compass of Cherici's part for the instrument was D–e'. Banchieri (L'organo suonario, Venice, 2/1611, p.97) discusses a basso violetta da brazzo, which is tuned in 5ths, one octave below the violin.
In the 17th and 18th centuries violetta commonly meant ‘viola’. On the other hand, J.G. Walther, in his Musicalisches Lexicon (1732), defined it as a bowed string instrument that played a middle part, either a viola or a small viola da gamba (‘eine Geige zur Mittel-Partie, sie werde gleich auf Braccien, oder kleinen Viole di Gamben gemacht’). Telemann may have been observing this practice when he called for the ‘violetta’ as an alternative to the ‘violin’ in several orchestral parts for two of his violin concertos (Musikalische Werke, xxiii, no.6 in F and no.8 in G). Given the range of the parts, either viola or bass viola da gamba would serve as suitable substitutes.
The English violet is a kind of viola d'amore; see also Violetta marina.
(2) An Organ stop.
S. Bonta: ‘From Violone to Violoncello: a Question of Strings’, JAMIS, iii (1977), 64–99
S. Bonta: ‘Terminology for the Bass Violin’, JAMIS, iv (1978), 5–42
J. Catch: ‘No, not Anyone's Violetta’, Chelys, xxiii (1994), 90–91
HOWARD MAYER BROWN/STEPHEN BONTA