This was the result of Duiffoproucart’s creation of the small viola da gamba, a size which broke into many degrees and kinds. Then Andrea Amati made a further step in the right direction by making small-sized bass instruments in the same form as the violin, which had at that time assumed the shape now so familiar. The moot question--“Was it Andrea Amati in Cremona, or Gasparo da Salo in Brescia who first made violoncellos in the form of the violin?”--is of course unanswerable at this space of time. Da Salo was a man of progress, ready to fight for his opinions. He made some fine double-basses and grand tenors which are sought after to this day, and Herr August Reichers, the Berlin violin-maker, possessed a small-sized violoncello by this maker in 1884. If this instrument was not a cut-down bass-viol, or an exceptionally large tenor, it is apparently a solitary example of a violoncello by Da Salo, but even though its existence be allowed, the numerous violoncellos made by Andrea Amati must necessarily admit him to be--if not the inventor--at least the earliest known _luthier_ to make violoncellos.
Although Da Salo may be looked upon as no enthusiast where violoncellos were concerned, he was not neglectful in the matter of other bass instruments. Signor Dragonetti possessed no fewer than three fine basses by the Brescian maker, of various sizes, and Mr Hart, in 1875, owned a small double-bass of Da Salo’s which had been brought from Italy by Tarisio, and was looked upon as the _ne plus ultra_ of its kind. A Da Salo viola da gamba, catalogued as of the year 1570, was to be seen among the sumptuous display of musical instruments shown at the Special Loan Exhibition held at Fishmongers’ Hall in the summer of 1904.
But, fortunately, we need not rely entirely upon catalogues, description, and speculation for an idea of Da Salo’s skill as a gamba-maker, for, here beside us, in their neat glass house, two examples of the fine old Brescian repose in calm tranquillity, like veterans silently ruminating over many campaigns. They both face us with the quaint C-shaped sound-holes, so dear to the hearts of the old viol-makers, and both display upper tables of remarkably well-chosen even-grained pine wood. One of them is strung with seven strings, but the seventh is a later invention, for the earliest viols had five strings, then six, and it was not until the last part of the seventeenth century that Sainte Colombe (some say Marais) added another to the six. A true unaltered seven-stringed viol is hardly ever to be met with now. A solitary and excellent example, however, was lent by M. Galley to the Special Loan Exhibition at South Kensington in 1872. This was a remarkably handsome gamba and had remained untouched, with the exception of an attempt to attach sympathetic strings. A further adjunct to be found in this Da Salo gamba before us is the scroll, which curves round in a unique manner like a wisp of twisted ribbon: this never felt the touch of Da Salo’s hand. It may be the work of Barak Norman, for a similar, indeed identical, scroll crowns his gamba now in the Donaldson Museum, but certainly it is not Da Salo’s work. In his day sculptured human and animal heads were _de rigueur_, and, like his contemporaries, he carved these himself, or employed special artists to do so. In Germany the followers of Jacobus Stainer of Absam--whose favourite ornament was a lion’s head--freely adopted this practice, but the custom died out first in Italy, where viol-makers discovered that such a system was far from remunerative.