vihuela

Spanish plucked-string instrument, approximately guitar-shaped but strung like a lute with six paired courses and normally ten frets. The name, used for any stringed instrument with a flat back, appears in the 13th century, and as early as the 14th century there is a distinction between the vihuela de arco (bowed vihuela) and the vihuela de peñola (plectrum vihuela) which, with the development of finger-plucking, became the vihuela de mano. It seems likely that the vihuela de arco evolved into the viol at the end of the 15th century.

The vihuela's repertory appears mainly in seven printed anthologies of the 16th century, starting with Luis Milan's El maestro (1536), Luis de Narváez's Delphin de música (1538), and Alonso Mudarra's Tres libros (1546). Some pieces in these volumes appear also in French lute collections, and there is little technical difference between lute and vihuela music except that the vihuela, with its small body and long neck, was able to be played in higher positions than the lute, as exploited particularly in the collections of Valderrábano (1547) and Fuenllana (1554).