A review of the Viola da Gamba

August 05, 2026

One night at Camp FaSoLa this year, a singer from NY sat next to me in the alto section and we got to chatting (as you do).

“I’m going to be in your part of the world next month for my other music cult,” she told me after seeing my home town on my name tag. “The viola da gamba.”

Every year, the Viola da Gamba Society of America (VdGSA) hosts a week-long “Conclave” — a gathering of gambists where they play music together, hear lectures, attend workshops, buy and sell instruments and paraphernalia, and just geek out over a love of early modern music.

I had never seen a viola da gamba in the flesh; and seeing the excitement that lit in me, she encouraged me to sign up last minute for Conclave’s beginner class, which was free for locals.

Why not? I love joining music cults.

What is a viola da gamba?

Here’s what I can discern:

• It is family of a bowed, fretted string instrument that were popular during the Renaissance and Baroque periods (not ancestors of the violin/viola/cello, but in the same family tree)
• They often (but not always) have 6 strings, and range in size from being played in your lap to the size of a modern double-bass.
• They use gut strings (as opposed to modern steel strings), and a baroque bows (which are shaped differently than modern bows).
• You play them between your legs, but they don’t have pins that prop them up like modern cellos do, so your legs are holding them up.
• They’re not uniform in style and construction (compared with modern violins/cellos, which can feel like products of an assembly line)
• They’re played in a leisurely and relaxed style. “It is an instrument of the leisure class,” I, a person infamously unable to relax, was repeatedly told.

That would make it seem like I know something about this instrument, but my friends, this is really just the tip of the iceberg.

How do you play these things?

Quite badly, at first. There were a few concepts I had to make peace with on day 1.

An instrument of many clefs

Different viol sizes read different clefs (treble, alto, bass), and my class seemed to all gravitate towards the clefs we knew.

I was the only one to choose the small treble viol. I thought the size of the instrument would feel more natural, coming from violin/viola, even if it was played in my lap. Plus, it reads treble clef, my mother tongue of music.

The problem is… this isn’t a violin. Rather than four strings, each 5 notes apart (E - A - D - G), these are six strings, spaced 4 notes apart, except when they’re not (D - A - E - C - G - D, for treble and bass viol). You’re essentially playing a lute like a cello.

The mental gymnastics of sightreading on this configuration was like reciting the alphabet backwards, and I had to engage in my least favorite past-time of thinking in half-steps.

But my brain feasts on these music puzzles. The A-string turned out to be exactly like on the violin, and beyond that, it was a matter of thinking in intervals (thank you shape note singing).

The infernal bow

I struggled immensely with the bow, which you hold underhanded (palm up rather than down). Using gravity to pull into the instrument rather than to push down was odd to say the least, though it encourages that “leisurely” tone.

One of my classmates was a double-bass player at a music conservatory. I asked him if holding the bow this way felt more natural to him, since some bass players use a very similar German bow grip.

He nodded. “Touching the bow hair is weird though.”

That’s right, this instrument asks you to commit the egregious crime of touching the bow hair (gasp!), a huge sin in the world of modern instruments since the oils in your hand make this part of the bow unusable and darkens the hair.

Gambists couldn’t care less about this. Contrary to what many bowed instrument teachers would have you believe, though, the world did not end.

Gut strings made with… well, guts

Can you be vegan and play viola da gamba?

I asked myself this question a lot that week, but was never brave enough to voice this publicly.

There’s a lot of very good reasons steel strings became all the rage after WWI. They’re louder, break less, and stretch much much less (incredibly) than gut strings, which were the standard for thousands of years. Steel strings also, importantly, don’t require harvesting animal intestines.

What little I can find on the matter suggests that the intestines used for gut strings are byproducts of the meat industry, which might otherwise be used for sausage casings and dog food. And Baroque instruments, it turns out.

Gut strings are much softer on the fingers, and they produce a softer, celestial sound that requires less brute force than steel. They also constantly went sharp? On an instrument already tuned flat? (Tuning this instrument is an existential crisis, I don’t want to get into it.) I haven’t decided whether I like them more than steel, but they undeniably are difference.

The answer my wife and I came to on my vegan question: it probably depends.

Oh frets

These are adjustable frets. What a crazy sentence. Why even have frets at all?

We were warned against holding the instrument certain ways to prevent the nylon/gut frets from slipping, and that advanced players will even tune the frets (we are not getting into tuning).

Having begun music on a fretless instrument, I find frets limiting (as people getting into microtones discover). Adjustable frets confound me even more.

But as usual, I got over myself. The frets have their benefits. It’s helpful for beginners, for one, when muscle memory hasn’t been established. And with your fingers placed slightly above each fret, with no vibrato, it produces a distinct harmony between the instruments that’s downright intoxicating.

On Being a Beginner

Most of the beginner class came into this from other instruments, myself included, which was helpful…. up to a point.

“I’m not used to being a beginner,” said one classmate, who is a guitar professor, when describing the experience.

I love being a beginner. There’s no pressure to sound good on an instrument. In fact, you’re expected to sound the worst you’ll ever be. And people laud you with praise and applause because they don’t want you to be discouraged. The student showcase at the end of the week made me feel like I was 10 years old at my first youth orchestra performance.

But when you’ve reached a certain level on an instrument (or voice), and switch to another instrument or genre, it’s incredibly frustrating to start from square one again.

I’ve gone through that process a few times now, and have finally gotten used to being bad. Many of my classmates approached this humility with a humorous edge, and that also helped.

One classmate, though, had a particularly frustrating time. She’d come from cello, and seemed determined to find fault in her instrument rather than in the learning curve. I watched her try to draw such confessions from two professionals, who repeatedly tried to explain that the viola da gamba is not, in fact, a cello. Her instruments (she tried multiple) were fine.

It was painful to watch. All I can hope is that she found enlightenment and humility in the end.

On being a beginner…. gambist?

Can I recommend the viola da gamba as an instrument to learn?

If you enjoy Baroque music, then absolutely — and why wouldn’t you, the music is beautiful (not to mention it’s polyphony, like in shape note music)! This is probably one of the best instrument introductions I’ve ever had. But it has little to do with the instrument itself, and more with the viola da gamba community (which is definitely a music cult).

The VdGSA makes it pretty easy to get into the world of early modern instruments — it’s not free, but it’s a lot cheaper than you’d expect for this kind of niche.

While my lessons and my instrument rental for Conclave were free, I did have to sign up for VdGSA membership ($40/year). With that, you receive their quarterly newsletter, and access to grant programs, scholarships, a player directory, and their instrument rental program. Instrument rentals start at $300/year, about $1 a day, with a $100 security deposit. That’s comparable to the rate of some violin rentals — and if you need to have it shipped to you, VdGSA takes on the $400 shipping cost. These people really want you to play viola da gamba.

Like many small, niche music communities, there’s also a sense of family.

When I sat down for the opening ceremony, an older woman started conversation with me (as you do). She’d been playing the instrument for over 50 years after having seen a viola da gamba concert as a teenager, and coming to Conclave was her chance to reunite yearly with friends she’d made over her lifetime.

After peppering me with questions, I explained how I came to be there, shape note singing and all.

“Oh, Jean was telling me about you! She’s so happy you came,” she said with clasped hands.

It turned out this gambist used to teach the woman who invited me!

If it wasn’t clear by now: I will have a rental treble viol for the next year.

(I didn’t really mention the amazing concerts they had at Conclave, but I’d be remiss to not mention there was a lirone at one of them!)