ABSTRACT
The revival of the viol has become a triumph beyond the dreams of its earliest champions. More than a century had passed since the demise of the viol in Italy when Francesco Zannetti made the first attempt at reviving it; enough time for an historicising view of the instrument to have developed, thus ensuring a more benevolent assessment. In the 1830s the composer and music historian Francois-Joseph Fetis established – first in Paris, then in Brussels – a series of Concerts historiques in which, amongst other early instruments, a viol could be heard. There is not much more to be reported with regard to the viol in the public concert life of the first seven decades of the 19th century. Arnold Dolmetsch's guiding notion of an authentic reproduction of early music on the instruments for which it was written made him into a pioneer.
