Early Music Advance Access published September 29, 2016
Deirdre Loughridge
Muted violins from Lully to Haydn
‘F or all the modern electrical accoutrements
displayed onstage’, observes the writer of the
DVD booklet for the Theater an der Wien’s 2009
production of Haydn’s Il mondo della luna, ‘with the
Concentus Musicus Wien in the pit and Nikolaus
Harnoncourt on the podium, authentic period
wooden mutes are, naturally, used to create this
magical effect’.1 (The passage in question depicts a
journey to the moon.) It is refreshing to find vio-
lin mutes a recognized member of the 18th-century
instrumentarium. Since the early 20th century, the
prevailing wisdom has been that violin mutes came
into use in the 19th century, as Romantic composers
sought to expand their orchestral palette with new
tone colours. Orchestration treatises and histories of
the orchestra voiced this view explicitly. According
to Paul Bekker, for example, ‘generally speaking,
the mutes were not employed in the classic orches-
tra’, while for Romantic composers they became ‘an
important medium for mysterious effects’.2 Similar
ideas appeared implicitly in the ways scholars
accounted for muted violins in 18th-century music:
as an anomaly attributable to the composer’s unusual
interest in special tone colours. When H. C. Robbins
Landon discovered the prevalence of muted slow
movements in Haydn’s symphonies of the 1770s, he
credited the practice to Haydn’s ‘obsession’ with his
‘favourite sound of muted violins’.3 In the New Grove
entry on Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, muted
violins illustrate the forward-looking style of the
composer, whose instrumental works of the 1750s
and 60s are said to feature ‘unusual instrumenta-
tion with special effects such as scordatura and slow
movements marked “con sordino”’.4
Thanks to accumulating scholarship on perfor-
mance practice and repertory beyond the canon, it is
now clear that muted violins were regularly used in
Early Music, © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1093/em/caw061
both opera and symphony and concerto slow move-
ments from at least the 1740s. However, the redis-
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covery of muted violins in 18th-century music has
not as yet been accompanied by a recovery of con-
temporaneous thought about muted violin tone—
a situation made evident by the 2009 production
of Il mondo della luna. When a critic for The New
York Times asked Harnoncourt about the ‘gossamer’
sounds coming from he knew not what instruments
or where in the theatre during the Act 1 finale num-
ber ‘Vado, vado’, the conductor explained:
Those were the 16 violins playing from their chairs in
the orchestra, triple piano, with wooden mutes ... Not
the modern synthetic mutes people use today, if they use
mutes at all. Players are lazy and think it’s enough just to
play very softly. But when composers write ‘con sordino’—
‘with mute’—they want a very particular, different sound
... The idea was just to hear quivering air.5
Harnoncourt’s answer advances several claims
about the material, perceptual and conceptual his-
tory of muted violins: that wooden mutes are period
authentic, that ‘con sordino’ necessarily indicated a
different tone quality, and that ‘just to hear quiver-
ing air’ describes the intended effect. His claims find
support in sources dating from the mid-19th cen-
tury. In an 1834 treatise on violin playing, for exam-
ple, Pierre Baillot explained that it is ‘essential to use
the mute whenever the composer has so indicated
his intention; it would be misguided to believe that
playing very piano would take its place ... nothing
could take the place of this effect of timbre’.6 Applied
earlier, however, the claims become problematic,
portraying as standardized and static what was in
fact a diverse and changing set of practices around
violin mutes. While the full range of this diversity
cannot be covered in the space of an article, steps
can be taken towards identifying conditions and
PAGE 1 OF 22
principles that underpinned the usage and percep-
tion of muted violins from their beginnings through
the 18th century, as well as significant shifts that
took place during this time. For most of this period,
musicians preferred metal to wooden violin mutes.
Whether the accessory fundamentally altered the
tone quality of the instrument, or simply made it
quieter, was up for debate, and the question was
further complicated both by regional differences in
violins, and by the fact that ‘timbre modification’
was not yet a familiar concept. And while it may
sometimes be apropos ‘just to hear quivering air’,
more often the idea was to hear murmuring water,
a mournful character, or some other effect—magical
or mundane—cued by the particular context.
Words and things
We may begin with the question of when the vio-
lin mute came into existence. The idea of making a
musical instrument quieter by means of an acces-
sory dates to at least the 16th century, when trumpets
were ‘covered’ or ‘muted’ for performance in funeral
ceremonies.7 Marin Mersenne discussed the trum-
pet mute in his Harmonie universelle of 1636–7, call-
ing it the ‘sourdine’, describing it as ‘ordinarily made
from a piece of wood’ and providing an illustration
of the device.8 In the same treatise, Mersenne also
mentioned the possibility of reducing the sonor-
ity of the violin by placing an object on the bridge.
While the Harmonie universelle is frequently cited
as evidence that violin mutes were used throughout
the 17th century, however, Mersenne described not
a purpose-made accessory (as he had in the case of
the trumpet mute) but rather the effect of placing a
key or similar object on the bridge:
il perd une grande partie de son harmonie quand on met
une clef, ou quelqu’autre chose semblable sur son chevalet.
It [the violin] loses a great part of its sonority when one
places a key or something else similar on its bridge.9
This observation occurs within a list of comments
about the violin considered too incidental to merit
further discussion, including that the strength of
its tones comes from the shortness of its strings. As
Thomas Christensen has argued, Mersenne did not
simply draw together information from contem-
porary or ancient sources, as did his organologist
pAGE 2 OF 22 Early Music
predecessors, but rather ‘wanted to know thoroughly
how each instrument worked, how each sounded.
Thus each musical instrument is subjected in the
pages of the Harmonie universelle to minute analysis
and experimentation.’10 The observation that the vio-
lin loses sonority when some ready-to-hand object is
placed on the bridge may thus have nothing to do with
musical practice, but rather stem from Mersenne’s
own investigations into sound production.
The period from the late 17th to the early 18th
century was a time of developing musical vocabu-
lary, as well as of changes in instrument manu-
facture. In consequence, terms often had multiple
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meanings, making it difficult at times—as Eleanor
Selfridge-Field has noted—to determine when a
term refers to an instrument, to a manner of play-
ing, or to another aspect of performance.11 The first
known appearance of ‘con sordino’ in a musical
score is thus equally doubtful as a reference to the
violin mute. In a study of violin playing in Germany
before 1700, Gustav Beckmann noted that Johann
Heinrich Schmelzer’s religious drama Le memorie
dolorosa, composed for the Vienna court chapel
in 1678, included such instructions to violins as
‘“Sordini con la lyre” or simply “con sordini’”.12
Schmelzer has since entered the literature as one
of three composers to call for violin mutes prior to
1700, his Le memorie dolorose predating the earli-
est scoring for muted violins by Lully (Le triomphe
de l’Amour, 1681)  and Purcell (The Fairy Queen,
1692).13 However, Schmelzer’s instructions did not
in fact include ‘simply “con sordini”’; rather, in
addition to ‘Sordini con la lyre,’ he wrote ‘Ritornello
di Sordini’, ‘Ritornello con Sordini’ and ‘Sordini’.
Significantly, the score also features the instruction
‘Ritornello con Viole da gamba’—the same formu-
lation as ‘Ritornello con Sordini’ but clearly in ref-
erence to the instrument to be played rather than a
device to be applied. Furthermore, where numbers
for unspecified instrumentation present top lines
in soprano (c1) clef, those scored for ‘sordini’ are
instead notated in treble (g2) clef. These features
suggest that Schmelzer had in mind not the appli-
cation of mutes to the violins but rather the sub-
stitution of another instrument: a ‘sordino’ like the
one shown in illustration 1, from Filippo Bonanni’s
Gabinetto armonico pieno d’instromenti sonori
(Rome, 1723).14

1 Sordino, from Filippo Bonanni, Gabinetto armonico
pieno d’instromenti sonori indicati, spiegati, e di nuovo
corretti, ed accresciuti (Rome, 1723), pl.59 (Getty Research
Institute)
By 1680, however, the violin mute had been born.
Pierre Richelet’s Dictionnaire françois contenant les
mots et les choses (‘French Dictionary of Words and
Things’, 1680) includes an entry for the sourdine that
describes a purpose-made accessory complete with
sample sentence about where to purchase it:
Sourdine. Terme de Violon. C’est une maniere de petite
plaque d’argent, ou d’autre chose, qu’on plié en arc & qu’on
met sur le chevalet de l’instrument pour empêcher qu’il
ne resonne fort. [Achetter une sourdine d’argent chez un
orfevre].
Mute. Violin term. It is a manner of small plate of silver,
or of some other material, that one bends in an arc & puts
on the bridge of the instrument to prevent it resonating
loudly. [Buy a silver mute from a goldsmith].15
The first unambiguous instruction for violins to
don mutes appeared the following year, in Lully’s
ballet Le triomphe de l’Amour. At the start of the
‘Prélude pour la nuit’ the instruction reads: ‘all the
instruments must have mutes & play softly, espe-
cially when the voices sing, & do not remove the
mutes where it has not been indicated’ (for the origi-
nal see illus.2). The instruction to remove the mutes,
‘Il faut oster les Sourdines’, appears during the con-
tinuo prelude to the ‘entry of dreams’ (‘Entrée des
Songes’). In their verbosity, these instructions attest
to their novelty: these were new commands for a
composer to give his musicians.
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The year 1680 thus marks a decisive turning
point, when the violin mute can be established both
as a word and as a thing. Alternative meanings for
‘sourdine’ or ‘sordino’ did not disappear instantly,
however. As Shirley Thompson has demonstrated,
Marc-Antoine Charpentier used the term ‘sourdines’
(sometimes abbreviated ‘sourd’) from the mid-1680s
to the 1710s both for the application of violin mutes
and as an instruction to play softly. The latter usage
is clearest where Charpentier alternates between
‘sourdines’ and ‘fort’ without leaving time for don-
ning or removing mutes (as in the Messe des morts
à 4 voix et Symphonie), and where the instruction
‘sourdines’ is followed by ‘plus sourd’ or ‘tres sourd’
(as in Psalmus undecimus Davidis post centesimum
[:] Beatus vir).16 Likewise, the exact nature of a violin
mute—what it was made of, where to acquire it, how
it affected the instrument—was not immediately
standardized, but rather varied over time and place
throughout the 18th century.
Precious few violin mutes have been preserved
from the 18th century, and those thought to belong
to the period have typically been dated based on
the violin with which they were found.17 As a result,
musicians’ writings and court purchase records
provide more reliable evidence regarding what was
used. These indicate that metal remained the domi-
nant material into the 1760s. In his Dictionnaire
de musique, Rousseau defined the violin mute as
‘a small instrument of copper or silver’.18 At the
Thuringian court chapel in Sondershausen, vio-
lin mutes were purchased from a metal-worker
(Gürtler) in the late 1730s, and steel mutes were pur-
chased in 1765. As Christian Ahrens observes, guild
laws placed restrictions on the materials with which
Early Music PAGE 3 OF 22
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2  Jean-Baptiste Lully, Le triomphe de l’Amour (Paris: Christophe Ballard, 1681), p.86; ‘Prelude pour la nuit’ (Jean Gray
Hargrove Music Library, University of California, Berkeley, m1520.l85 t7 musi Case X; used by permission)

pAGE 4 OF 22 Early Music

craftsmen could work, meaning that only metal-
workers—not stringed-instrument-makers—could
supply metal mutes; and conversely, metal-workers
could supply only metal mutes, not mutes of other
materials.19 Vivaldi’s specification of violins ‘con
piombi’ (‘with leads’), found in sacred vocal works
from the 1710s and the 1724 opera Orlando, sup-
plies a rare example of material being designated in
the score. The instruction has been interpreted as
specifying a special mute, heavier than the usual for
greater effect, though in the absence of evidence for
how Vivaldi’s varied muting instructions—includ-
ing ‘violini sordini’, ‘tutti gl’istromenti sordini’ and
simply ‘sordini’ (the last in lieu of a tempo mark-
ing)—were executed, the difference signified by ‘con
piombi’ remains speculative.20
Around the 1750s, commentators began to enu-
merate a wider range of materials used for vio-
lin mutes, adding not only other metals but also
wood, bone and ivory to the possibilities. Updating
Rousseau’s definition, the Encyclopédie méthodique,
arts et métiers mécaniques (1785) described the mute
as ‘a small plate of silver, copper, ivory or wood’.21
Esterháza records from the 1770s show the purchase
of violin mutes from stringed-instrument-maker
J. J. Stadlmann, and though the material is not men-
tioned, guild protections make wood or another
alternative to metal likely.22 At this time, commen-
tators also began to compare the sound-qualities
produced by violin mutes of different materials.
Thus Johann Joachim Quantz noted the existence
of wood, lead, brass, tin and steel violin mutes, but
rejected those of wood or brass for their ‘buzzing’
(‘schnarrender’) tone. According to Quantz, steel
(the most expensive material) was best.23 Friedrich
Reichardt recommended that all the mutes in an
orchestra be the same, for if there was ‘one silver, one
brass, one copper, one lead, one wood and one bone’,
it would be found that ‘one attenuates too much, the
other produces a whistling, nasally buzz, another a
musty tone, etc.’ (‘einer dämpft zu stark, der andere
verursacht einen pfeifenden, durch die Nase schnar-
renden Ton, der verursacht einen dumpfigen Ton
u.s.w.’). The best mutes to use, Reichardt concluded,
were probably those made of solid, dense, dry
wood.24
The 1770s thus saw a shift in preference towards
wooden violin mutes; thereafter, metal ones
gradually disappeared. Writing in the 1790s, Johann
Adam Hiller defined the violin mute as ‘a small
instrument made of wood or other material’.25 A vio-
lin mute discovered with an 18th-century Italian vio-
lin is made of boxwood (see illus.3). Another violin
mute dated to c.1800 is also boxwood, and weighs
only 2.7 grams, compared to the 3–5 grams typical
for violin mutes today.26 By the 1830s, wood had
achieved the status of standard, the possibility of
other materials typically being omitted altogether.
Berlioz defined mutes without qualification as ‘small
wooden devices’.27
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From ‘prevent it resonating loudly’ to ‘changes
its timbre’
From the question of what a violin mute was, we
may turn to what it was thought to do. According
to Richelet’s definition, a mute was put on the
bridge of a violin in order to ‘prevent it resonat-
ing loudly’. Writing of the trumpet mute and the
muted spinet, Mersenne similarly noted the util-
ity of reducing an instrument’s resonance—that is,
he recognized practical rather than aesthetic func-
tions of the mute. The trumpet mute had strategic
military value, being ‘used when it is not wished for
it to be heard in the place where the enemy is, as
happens in besieged towns and when one wishes to
3  Replica of a boxwood violin mute, likely 18th-century
Italian (original found with an 18th-century Bolognese
violin) (courtesy of Roberto Regazzi)
Early Music PAGE 5 OF 22
decamp’ (‘l’on use de cette sourdine, quand on ne
veut pas que la Trompette s’entende du lieu où sont
les ennemis, comme il arrive au sieges des villes,
& lors que l’on veut desloger’).28 The dampening of
clavichord strings by cloth, meanwhile, made the
instrument ‘very suitable for those who desire to
learn to play the spinet without their neighbours
being able to perceive it’ (‘fort propre pour ceux qui
desirent d’apprendre à joüer de l’Epinette sans que
les voisins le puissant appercevoir’); it was this fea-
ture that earned the clavichord the alternate name
of ‘muted spinet’ (‘epinette sourde’).29 Mersenne’s
discussions reflect the etymological root of the
French term ‘sourdine’, which like that of the Italian
‘sordino’ meant lacking or taking away the ability
to hear (as opposed to lacking the ability to speak
or make sound, as in the case of the later English
term ‘mute’).30 The violin mute may likewise have
originated as what we would today call a ‘practice
mute’—a device for making the instrument quieter,
any effect on tone quality being a by-product.
When composers scored for muted violins, they
certainly intended for the instruments to be heard.
But whether muted violin playing was to be heard

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4 Lully, Armide (Paris: Christophe Ballard, 1686), p.80; Act 2, scene 3, bars 1–6: ‘One must play this with mutes’ (Jean Gray
Hargrove Music Library, University of California, Berkeley, m1500.l85 a7 musi Case X cop. 2; used by permission)

pAGE 6 OF 22 Early Music

as especially quiet, or recognized as qualitatively
distinct from unmuted violin playing, remains an
open question. Librettist Louis de Cahusac, writing
around 1750, considered it ‘well known that in Lully’s
lifetime the violinists needed to resort to mutes in
order to play softly enough in certain passages’.31 In
other words, according to Cahusac, the mute did
not transform the sound of the violin but rather
accomplished what violinists should have been able
to achieve through playing technique alone. On the
other hand, in an essay on musical expression pub-
lished in 1771 (but largely written in 1756), André
Morellet observed that composers depicted ‘the
silence of night by the playing of instruments softly
and with mutes, by sounds that are veiled as nature
is’ (‘le silence de la nuit, par le jeu des instrumens
adoucis et en sourdine, par des sons voiles comme la
nature’).32 Morellet suggests that muted instruments
possessed a veiled sound-quality beyond the soft-
ness to be obtained through playing technique.
As we have seen, Lully indeed instructed violins
to play softly and with mutes for a ‘Prélude pour
la nuit’: the muted instruments accompany Night,
5 Lully, Armide, p.91; Act 2, scene 4, bars 1–8: ‘Demons in the shape of nymphs and shepherds cast a spell over Renaud, and
entwine him with garlands of flowers as he sleeps’
Mystery and Silence as these personifications sing
of both the silence and veils of day’s counterpart.
If Lully sought ‘sounds that are veiled as nature is’,
however, this was not the only consideration behind
his use of mutes. Lully also employed mutes in
enchanted sleep scenes, where magic rather than
night sent characters into slumber. In Act 2, scene
3 of the opera Armide (1686), Lully called for all
the stringed instruments to play with mutes when
Renaud finds himself on an enchanted island, where
Armide’s magic puts him to sleep. The instrumen-
tal prelude that begins the scene features violins
doubled by recorders, moving mainly stepwise in
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a meandering fashion (illus.4). Renaud’s recitative
clarifies both what this music represents, and how it
should affect its listeners: ‘a harmonious sound joins
in the water’s murmur: the spellbound birds fall
silent to listen; I can scarcely hold off sleep’s charms’.
Part murmuring stream, part magical harmony, the
muted music captures the ear, halts other activities
and inclines its hearer towards sleep.
Before 1680, Lully set similar scenes without vio-
lin mutes; thus how he scored them offers clues to
Early Music PAGE 7 OF 22
the perceived effects of the device. Act 3, scene 4 of
Atys (1676), for example, features enchanted sleep
in a cavern surrounded by poppies and brooks.33
The poppies are credited with soporific powers,
while Phobetor (the personification of nightmares)
tells the brooks to ‘flow, murmur’, and ‘let no noise
of water trouble the sweetness of such a charm-
ing silence’ (‘Coulez, murmurez, clairs Ruisseaux,
Il n’est permis qu’au bruit des Eaux De troubler la
douceur d’un si charmant silence’). As in Armide,

Ex.1 Haydn, La canterina (1766), Act 1, scene 4, ‘Io sposar l’empio tiranno’, bars 75–89 (Joseph Haydn Werke, ser.25, vol.ii,
ed. D. Bartha (Munich: Henle, 1959); used by permission)

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pAGE 8 OF 22 Early Music

 Ex.1 Continued
the instrumental prelude emphasizes even, stepwise
motion. But rather than being played by record-
ers and muted strings, it is played by recorders and
viols. The livret specifies these instruments, and fur-
ther indicates that the instruments should be played
on stage by ‘ten Dreams’. As Rebecca Harris-Warrick
has shown, lutes, theorbos, and viols comprised a
common on-stage ensemble portraying ‘the realm
of sleep’ in Lully’s operas and ballets.34
The tradition of sleep scenes suggests that at their
introduction into opera, violin mutes provided nei-
ther a corrective for violinists incapable of playing
softly, nor a novel tone-quality, but rather a substi-
tute for viols. And indeed, looking at late 17th- and
early 18th-century music more widely, it often seems
to be in lieu of or in imitation of other, ‘soft’ stringed
instruments that one finds muted violins. Examples
include the Danza Pastorale that concludes Vivaldi’s
‘Spring’ Concerto, op.8 no.1 (c.1723), where they con-
jure nymphs and shepherds dancing to rustic small-
bodied violins like the sordino pictured above; and
two numbers in J. S. Bach’s St John Passion (1724),
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where Bach called for solo violins con sordino when
violas d’amore were not available.35 Muted violins
thus had a different resonance in the sound-world
of the early 18th century, their resemblance to other,
soft stringed instruments being a salient characteris-
tic, which brought with it the associations tradition-
ally carried by those other instruments.
The substitution of muted violins for viols or
other stringed instruments was not just a mat-
ter of exchanging one means of sound production
with another, however. It also disrupted the cor-
respondence of instruments with tone-quality that
had shaped their usage. As Andrew McCredie has
discussed, musical instruments formed part of the
theatrical apparatus of the late 17th and early 18th
centuries: their use was ‘audio-visual rather than
musical’.36 Harris-Warrick has made a similar point,
arguing that the prevalence and prominence of
instrumentalists on stage in Lully’s ballets and ope-
ras attests that ‘their significance did not depend on
sound alone; it was not sufficient for the audience to
hear such instruments playing from the pit—it also
Early Music PAGE 9 OF 22
had to see them’.37 To put mutes on violins was thus
to produce a mismatch between sight and sound.
This mismatch might have been a factor in the turn
to muted violins for enchanted sleep scenes. In
Armide, the strings remain muted after Renaud falls
asleep, and they move from imitating the murmur-
ing water to providing dance music for the demons
who—disguised as nymphs and shepherds—appear
to Renaud in his dreams (illus.5). For spectators
versed in the symbolic meanings of musical instru-
ments, who expected to see as well as to hear them,
mutes would have been a means of disguise and
deception: the instrument heard was not what it
seemed.
If the mismatch between the sight and sound of
muted violins produced an effect of deception, it
had a further consequence in decoupling tone-qual-
ity from the instrument as a multisensory whole.
Ex.2 Gluck, Alceste, Act 2, scene 2, ‘Chi mi parla?’, bars. 1–6 (Christoph Willibald Gluck: Sämtliche Werke, ser.1, vol.vii, ed.
R. Gerber (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1957); used by permission)
pAGE 10 OF 22 Early Music
Emily Dolan has demonstrated that the concept of
timbre—and with it a language for discussing tone-
quality as a distinct compositional parameter and
aspect of musical experience—emerged in the 18th
century.38 Terms associated with muted violins—
sourd and doux—figured centrally in early formula-
tions of the concept of timbre. Rousseau was the first
to use ‘timbre’ to mean tone-quality—to identify a
property of sound that is a function neither of its
pitch nor its intensity. Timbre, he wrote instead in
1765, ‘is always subject to the comparison between
dullness and brightness, or between harshness
and softness’ (‘timbre qui est encore susceptible de
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comparaison du sourd à l’éclatant, ou de l’aigu au
doux’).39 Placing a mute on the normally bright vio-
lin facilitated the comparison of tone-quality—and
tone-quality alone—according to precisely such
parameters.
 Ex.2 Continued
It is thus not surprising that Rousseau was also
the first to state that the mute changes the tim-
bre of the violin. In his Dictionnaire de Musique
(1768), Rousseau observed that his French con-
temporaries generally regarded the mute as
doing no more than making the violin quieter.
Rousseau, however, recognized a transformation
of tone-quality:
La Sourdine, en affoiblissant les Sons, change leur tymbre &
leur donne un caractere extrêmement attendrissant & triste.
Les Musiciens François, qui pensent qu’un jeu doux produit
le même effet que la Sourdine, & qui n’aiment pas l’embarras
de la placer & déplacer, ne s’en servent point. Mais on en fait
usage avec un grand effet dans tous les Orchestres d’Italie,
& c’est parce qu’on trouve souvent ce mot Sordini écrit dans
les Symphonies, que j’en ai dû faire un article.
The sourdine, in weakening the sounds [of the violin],
changes their timbre and gives them an extremely tender
and sad character. The French musicians, who think that
playing softly produces the same effect as the sourdine,
and who do not like the embarrassment of placing and
removing it, make no use of it; but they make use of it with
great effect in all the orchestras of Italy; and it is because
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the word sordini is found very often in their symphonies,
that I have made an article about it.40
Though Rousseau blamed his French contemporaries
for failing to appreciate the great effect to be obtained
by using mutes, the fault lay less with musicians than
with their instruments: the effect of the mute was less
pronounced in France than in Italy and Germany
at the time. At the beginning of the 18th century,
François Raguenet reported that after hearing the vio-
lins of Italy, those of the Paris opera orchestra seemed
‘so weak that I thought they all had mutes’ (‘si foibles,
que je crus qu’ils avoient tous des sourdines’).41 With
the thicker strings and higher tensions on violins in
Italy and Germany, there was more contrast between
brightness and dullness to be had by applying mutes,
and hence greater opportunity to perceive not only a
reduction in volume but also a transformation in the
very character of the violin’s tone.42
In describing mutes as giving violins a sad char-
acter, Rousseau echoed earlier comparisons of
violins with soft stringed instruments. Mersenne,
Early Music PAGE 11 OF 22
for instance, had observed that ‘the tone, or the
mode of the violin could be called the gay or joy-
ous mode, as that of the viol and lyre the sad and
languishing’.43 With the waning presence of viols
and other soft instruments, such comparison lost
relevance—but that between muted and unmuted
violins stood ready to take its place, and the asso-
ciations that once belonged to instruments as
Ex.3 Handel, Agrippina, Act 2, scene 7, ‘Vaghe fonti’, bars 1–13 (The works of George Frideric Handel, lvii, ed. F. Chrysander
(Leipzig: Deutsche Händelgesellschaft, 1874))
pAGE 12 OF 22 Early Music
material wholes were transferred to the domain of
tone-quality alone.
Eighteenth-century ear-witnesses
Most 18th-century writers circumvented the issue
of what the mute did to the sound of the violin by
discussing its use in terms of what the mute did
for musical communication. Thus where Rousseau
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 Ex.3 Continued
explained that it was changing the timbre of the vio-
lin that gave its sounds ‘an extremely tender and sad
character’, others wrote about the use of mutes to
express certain sentiments ‘better’ or ‘more vividly’.
The resulting discourse on violin mutes reflects two
different premises for their use: muted violins could
convey a limited set of meanings through their
particular tone-quality, or they could intensify the
expression of a wide range of emotions, which were
ultimately conveyed through melodic, rhythmic and
harmonic aspects of the music.
Leopold Mozart exemplifies the notion that
muted violin tone possessed a limited set of mean-
ings: as he explained in his treatise on violin play-
ing (1756), violin mutes were used to ‘express better
something quieter or sadder’.44 Friedrich Wilhelm
Marpurg (1759) similarly noted the contribution of
muted violins to a touching aria, the affect of which
was grief.45 The centrality of sadness when it came
to the delimited set of meanings carried by muted
violin tone is continuous with earlier thought about
soft instruments such as viols. Musical examples in
which muted tone expresses sadness are numerous
from the mid-18th century. They include the aria ‘Io
sposar l’empio tiranno’ from Haydn’s opera La cante-
rina (1766), in which Haydn called for mutes only in
the contrastingly sorrowful middle section—where
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pulsing quavers accompany the repeated line ‘Che
farai, misero cor?’ (ex.1). A  more familiar example
is ‘L’ho perduto’ from Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro
(1786), in which Barbarina mourns the loss of a pin.
Such expressive use of muted violins also occurs
in instrumental music, where ‘con sordino’ can be
found coupled to ‘mesto’ in the heading to slow
movements. Thus the slow middle movement of
J. G. Graun’s Sinfonia in Ey major (c.1763) is marked
‘Mesto e andante con sordino’.46
Johann Joachim Quantz, by contrast, enumer-
ated a wide range of expressive capacities for muted
violins, suggesting that muted tone did not possess
a single expressive character but rather served to
intensify expression more generally. According to
Quantz (1752), a composer used the mute on violins,
violas and violoncellos when he wanted ‘to express
more vividly sentiments of love, tenderness, flattery,
and sorrow, and also—if the composer knows how to
adapt his piece accordingly—more raging emotions
such as recklessness, madness, and despair’ (‘um so
wohl den Affekt der Liebe, Zärtlichkeit, Schmeicheley,
Traurigkeit, auch wohl, wenn der Komponist ein
Stück darnach einzurichten weiß, eine wüthende
Gemüthsbewegung, als die Verwegenheit, Raserey
und Verzweiflung desto lebhafter auszudrücken’).47
Following Quantz, the violin pedagogue Georg
Early Music PAGE 13 OF 22
Ex.4 Haydn, Fedelta Premiata, Act 1, scene 6, ‘Dove, oh dio, rivolgo il piede’, bars 1–5 (Joseph Haydn Werke, ser.25, vol.x, ed.
G. Thomas (Munich: Henle, 1970); used by permission)

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Simon Löhlein (1774) wrote that mutes were ‘used
to convey the sentiments of tenderness and flattery
as well as more violent sentiments such as sorrow
and despair’ (‘Dieses wird sowohl bey dem Affekte
der Zärtlichkeit und Schmeicheley, als bey heftigerm
Affekte, z.  B.  der Traurigkeit, Verzweiflung u.s.w.
gebraucht’).48 Such explanations of muted violins
prioritized context over tone-quality—as Quantz
observed, the composer must ‘know how to adapt
his piece accordingly’. ‘Chi mi parla?’ from Gluck’s

pAGE 14 OF 22 Early Music

Alceste (1767) exemplifies such adaptation, the quick
repeated bow-strokes of muted violins suggesting
Alceste’s trembling terror (ex.2). Paradoxically, what
one was to hear in the reduced resonance of muted
tone was more emotion.
Yet another set of witnesses to the perception of
muted violins comes from opera: often, composers
called for mutes to switch the instrumental accom-
paniment from non-diegetic to diegetic status,
creating scenes in which operatic characters com-
mented upon or reacted to the sound of muted vio-
lins. The sleep scene from Lully’s Armide has already
furnished an example, wherein muted stringed
instruments prompt birds to listen spellbound and
Ex.5a Haydn, Il mondo della luna, ‘Vado, vado’, bars 1–4 (Joseph Haydn Werke, ser.25, vol.vii, ed. G.  Thomas (Munich:
Henle, 1979); used by permission)
Renaud to fall asleep. Throughout the 18th century,
garden and pastoral scenes provided regular occa-
sions for such diegetic sounds. In Act 2, scene 7
of Handel’s Agrippina (1710), for instance, Ottone
observes the ‘vague sources that meander murmur-
ing through the bosom of nature’ while Poppea lies
nearby, apparently asleep. Scored for muted violins
(‘violini surdi’), two recorders and pizzicato basses,
the accompaniment portrays the peaceful murmur-
ings of nature (ex.3). In Haydn’s Fedelta Premiata
(1780), meanwhile, Celia sings in Act 1, scene 6 of
the ‘peaceful rivulets’ made audible by the arpeggia-
tions of muted second violins (and made visible by
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the set, which the libretto specifies should show
Early Music PAGE 15 OF 22
Ex.5b Haydn, Il mondo della luna, ‘Vado, vado’, bars 19–22
a ‘pleasant grove, which through artful thinning
offers a view of various hills in the distance, wet-
ted by limpid streams that wind around’); sustained
horn tones, the melody in flute and muted first vio-
lins, and pizzicato bass complete the pastoral sound-
scape (ex.4). In imitating the murmuring sound of
water, undulating muted violins frequently served
to induce the altered consciousness of sleepiness
or languor. Rousseau offers a first-person per-
spective on the kind of listening experience such
movements sought to create. In Les Rêveries du
promeneur solitaire (1782), he described how the
sound of waves captured his senses, as ‘the ebb and
flow of this water, its noise, continuous but swelling
by intervals, striking without respite my ear and my
eyes, substituted for the internal movements which
pAGE 16 OF 22 Early Music
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the reverie extinguished in me and sufficed to make
me feel my existence with pleasure, without taking
the trouble to think’.49 To hear muted violins ‘con-
tinuous but swelling by intervals’ was likewise to be
soothed into reverie.
When heard with a more wakeful consciousness,
muted violins typically sounded magical or ghostly.
‘Soft music’ (‘douce symphonie’, ‘soave armonia’
or ‘sanfte Musik’) was a standard cue in librettos
for music of magical origin, and composers often
responded with music scored for muted violins.50
When ‘soft music’ sounds in Hiller’s Lisuart und
Dariolette, oder die Frage und die Antwort (1766),
for example, a character recognizes the ‘lovely
tones’ (‘liebliche Töne’) as signalling the approach
of the as yet unseen fairy Serena. Hiller scored
 Ex.5b Continued
the number for muted violins, flutes and pizzi-
cato bass.51 Meanwhile, in scenes where characters
feared the presence of a ghost, muted violins helped
to make that presence felt. In Rinaldo di Capua’s
Vologeso (1739), an instrumental number scored
for muted instruments precedes the fearful ques-
tion, ‘what was that sound?’ In other cases, it is the
visual quality of the ghost that a muted tone seems
intended to capture. In Act 2, scene 15 of Hasse’s
Artaserse (1740), mutes are applied in the midst of
an accompanied recitative, just before the remorse-
ful Artabono cries ‘Ah! che la pallida ombra’. The
moment gives the impression that Artabano has
just seen the ghost, and links muted tone to its pale
appearance.
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The reactions of operatic characters to the
sounds of muted violins attest to their conscious-
ness-altering power, their magical aura and their
ghost-like presence. These were ways of perceiving
muted violin tone that 18th-century pedagogues did
not discuss. But they became the dominant terms
for later pedagogues and critics, to such an extent
that now muted violins are reflexively linked to
the magical and otherworldly, without considering
what else they could mean for 18th-century musi-
cians and audiences. ‘Vado, vado’, from the Act 1
finale of Haydn’s Il mondo della luna, offers a case
in point (ex.5). This is the number about which
Harnoncourt remarked ‘the idea was just to hear
quivering air’; for musicologists, it has exemplified
Early Music PAGE 17 OF 22
 Ex.5b Continued
a ‘topos of otherworldliness’.52 But a period ear
might focus on the soporific and expressive pow-
ers of muted violin tone. At this juncture in the
opera, the false astronomer Ecclitico has just given
Buonafede a drink that he claims will make him fly
to the moon; the drink is in fact a sleeping potion,
and as it takes effect Buonafede becomes sleepy,
but believes he is becoming lighter and flying. As
Buonafede sings of his sensations, the undulating
muted violins produce the soporific effect familiar
from imitations of murmuring water, and appro-
priate to Buonafede’s drugged state (ex.5a). When
subsequently his daughters enter, they believe their
father to be dying. The mode switches to minor for
the striking passage, ‘Muore, muore’ (bars 20–2),
in which the muted tone of the violins contributes
pAGE 18 OF 22 Early Music
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to the expression of grief (ex.5b; the mutes remain
in place from the start of the movement, shown in
example 5a).
Rick Altman has observed that every ‘new rep-
resentational technology traverses a period when
contemporaries reveal a great deal of hesitation as
to its identity. Is it just another variety of the same
old thing? Or is it something new?’53 The history
of muted violins shows the working out of just the
same kinds of questions. Initially understood as
another variety of soft stringed instrument, muted
violins became during the 18th century ‘something
new’—an unparalleled source of imitative, expres-
sive and magical effects. The magical effects proved
the most enduring, with the consequence that mod-
ern interpreters of muted violins in 18th-century
music reach quickly for ideas of the ethereal and the changing material and conceptual conditions for
otherworldly. But for 18th-century musicians and historical perceptions of muted violin tone, but also
audiences, other ideas were equally ready to hand. our own performances and experiences stand to be
By recovering these not only do we gain insight into greatly enriched.

Deirdre Loughridge is assistant professor of music at Northeastern University. She received her PhD
from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011, and previously taught at the University of California,
Berkeley. Her research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation and American Council for
Learned Societies. Recent publications include articles in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association
and Eighteenth-Century Music. Her first book, Haydn’s sunrise, Beethoven’s shadow: audiovisual
culture and the emergence of musical Romanticism (University of Chicago Press, 2016), explores the
roles of optical technologies in fostering new approaches to music and listening in the late 18th and
early 19th centuries. d.loughridge@northeastern.edu

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Special thanks to Pieter Affourtit,
Emma Alter, Laurence Libin, Roberto
Regazzi, Fred and Estelle Spector,
Gerhard Stradner, and Michael Talbot
for invaluable assistance in the quest
for 18th-century violin mutes. All
translations are the author’s unless
otherwise noted.
1  K. Chalmers, ‘Lunar Japes’, in Il
mondo della luna DVD booklet,
C Major 703508 (2010), p.6.
2  P. Bekker, The story of the orchestra
(New York, 1936), pp.127–8.
3  H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn:
Chronicle and works, 5 vols. (London,
1994), ii, p.290; i, p.112.
4  R. N. Freeman, ‘Albrechtsberger,
Johann Georg’, in Grove Music
Online. Oxford Music Online,
www.oxfordmusiconline.com/
subscriber/article/grove/music/00478
(accessed 14 July 2015).
5  M. Gurewitsch, ‘A space opera in a
proper galaxy’, The New York Times
(17 January 2010), www.nytimes.
com/2010/01/17/arts/music/17mondo.
html (accessed 26 May 2016).
6  Pierre Baillot, L’art du violon:
nouvelle méthode (Paris, 1834), p.223;
trans. in R. Stowell, Violin technique
and performance practice in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth century
(Cambridge, 1985), p.239.
7  See A. McGrattan, ‘The trumpet
in funeral ceremonies in Scotland
and England during the 17th century’,
Historic Brass Society Journal, vii
(1995), pp.168–84.
8  Marin Mersenne, Harmonie
universelle, contenant la theorie et la
pratique de la musique (Paris, 1636–7),
iii, p.259.
9 Mersenne, Harmonie universelle, ii,
p.189, trans. R. E. Chapman, Harmonie
universelle: the book of instruments
(The Hague, 1957), p.244.
10  T. Christensen, ‘The sound world
of Father Mersenne’, in Structures of
feeling in seventeenth-century cultural
expression, ed. S. McClary (Toronto,
2013), pp.60–89, at p.79.
11  E. Selfridge-Field, ‘Vivaldi’s esoteric
instruments’, Early Music, vi/3 (1978),
pp.332–8, at p.333.
12  G. Beckmann, Das Violinspiel in
Deutschland vor 1700 (Leipzig, 1918), p.59.
13  See D. Boyden, The history of
violin playing, from its origins to 1761
and its relationship to the violin and
violin music (London, 1965), p.205;
D. Glüxam, ‘Violine’, Oesterreichisches
Musiklexikon: Oem, v (Vienna, 2002).
14  This small-bodied (hence soft-
sounding) violin went by the names ‘kit’
in England and ‘pochette’ in France; in the
18th century it was primarily identified
with the dancing-masters who carried
the instrument in their pockets (hence its
French name, meaning pocket), but in the
17th century the instrument was associated
with shepherds (as Bonanni’s illustration
attests). See M. Remnant, ‘Kit’, Grove
Music Online. Oxford Music Online, www.
oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/
grove/music/15075 (accessed 7 July 2015);
M. D. Banks, ‘The violino piccolo and other
small violins’, Early Music, xviii/4 (1990),
pp.588–96; W. Salmen, ‘“Pochetten”—mehr
als Tanzmeistergeigen’, Osterreichische
Musikzeitschrift, liv/4 (1999), pp.23–31.
15  Pierre Richelet, Dictionnaire
françois contenant les mots et les choses
(Geneva, 1680), i, p.395. As Laurent
Bray has noted, Richelet actively sought
out specialists to learn their technical
vocabulary for inclusion in his tome,
which was the first monolingual
French dictionary. L. Bray, César-Pierre
Richelet (1626–1698): Biographie et
oeuvre lexicographique (Tübingen,
1986).
16  S. Thompson, ‘A mute question:
Charpentier and the sourdines’, in Marc-
Antoine Charpentier: un musicien
retrouvé, ed. C. Cessac (Sprimont,
2005), pp.183–97.
17  See K. Skeaping, ‘The Karl
Schreinzer Collection of Violin
Fittings’, in Music libraries and
instruments: papers read at the joint
congress, Cambridge, 1959 (London,
1961), pp.251–3, on the unsystematic
preservation of old violin equipment
and related information. An
accompanying plate shows 18 of the 221
violin mutes that formed part of the
Karl Schreinzer Collection of Violin

Early Music PAGE 19 OF 22

Fittings, which included items ranging
from the 16th to the 19th centuries.
The mutes are of unspecified date and
provenance; the 18 pictured are all
three-pronged, but otherwise exemplify
an impressive variety of shapes and
hues. My thanks to Herb Myers for
bringing this article to my attention.
18  Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire
de musique, ii (Amsterdam, 1769),
p.220; trans. as The Complete
Dictionary of Music, trans. William
Waring (London, 2/1779), p.384.
19  C. Ahrens, ‘Metallic mutes used in
the eighteenth century’, Galpin Society
Journal, lx (2007), pp.220–23.
20  Antonio Vivaldi, Juditha
triumphans devicta Holofernis
barbarie, rv644, ed. M. Talbot (Milan,
2008), p.xxxviii; Antonio Vivaldi,
Nisi Dominus, Salmo 126, rv608,
ed. M. Talbot (Milan, 2004), p.70.
The instructions ‘violini con piombi’,
‘sordini’ in lieu of a tempo marking,
and ‘violini sordini’ can all be found in
Juditha triumphans; see the autograph
facsimile, Antonio Vivaldi, Juditha
triumphans: sacrum militare oratorium
(Siena, 1948), pp.39, 73, 119.
21  Encyclopédie méthodique, arts et
métiers mécaniques, iv (Paris, 1785), p.27.
22  R. Maunder, ‘Viennese stringed-
instrument makers, 1700–1800’, Galpin
Society Journal, lii (1999), pp.27–51, at
p.27.
23  Johann Joachim Quantz, On playing
the flute, trans. E. Reilly (New York,
1975), p.233.
24  Johann Friedrich Reichardt,
Ueber die Pflichten (Berlin and
Leipzig, 1776), p.86. I have found
no mention in 18th-century sources
of leather violin mutes of the kind
that have recently gained popularity
with period ensembles. The leather
mutes designed by Emma Alter and
sold by Alter Bows are based on the
shape rather than the material of
historical models. Given that the
common ebony mute is heavier than
its counterparts in the 18th century,
leather mutes may better approximate
the effect of 18th-century wooden
mutes. On the use of leather mutes
by period ensembles, see Alter Bows,
http://alterbows.com (accessed 26
pAGE 20 OF 22 Early Music
May 2016). My thanks to Emma Alter
for responding to my queries.
25  Johann Adam Hiller, Anweisung
zum Violinspielen, für Schulen, und
zum Selbstunterrichte: Nebst einem
kurzgefaßten Lexicon der fremden
Wörter und Benennungen in der Musik
(Leipzig, [1792]), p.82.
26  See G. Stradner, Die Klangwelt
Mozarts (Vienna, 1991), pp.208–9, which
describes the c.1800 boxwood mute as
dampening very little and producing
a light, soft sound. On modern mutes,
see J. Beament, The violin explained:
components, mechanism, and sound
(Oxford, 1997), p.47.
27  H. Macdonald, Berlioz’s orchestration
treatise: a translation and commentary
(Cambridge, 2002), p.25.
28 Mersenne, Harmonie universelle,
ii/5, p.259, trans. Chapman, Harmonie
universelle, pp.329–30.
29 Mersenne, Harmonie universelle,
ii/3, p.114, trans. Chapman, Harmonie
universelle, p.167.
30  The English term ‘mute’ for the violin
accessory seems to have come into use
relatively late, as English musicians typically
used ‘sourdine’ or ‘sordine’. ‘Mute’ appears
in John Hoyle’s Dictionarium musica,
being a complete dictionary (London,
1770), defined as ‘an instrument made of
brass or lead … made in such manner
that it puts on to the bridge of the Violin,
&c. to deaden or damp the sound of the
instrument, and when it is put on, the
instrument can hardly be heard into an
adjoining room’ (p.65).
31  ‘Exécution (Opera)’, in Encyclopédie ou
dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts
et des métiers, vi (Livourne, 6/1772), p.217;
trans. in G. Sadler, ‘Rameau and the
orchestra’, Proceedings of the Royal
Musical Association, cviii (1981–2),
pp.47–68, at p.54.
32  André Morellet, ‘De l’expression en
musique et de l’imitation dans les arts’,
Mercure de France (November 1771).
The reference to mutes appears in a
long list of examples demonstrating
the capacity of music to imitate natural
phenomena by means of analogies to
its sounds, movements or other sensory
qualities. On the date of Morellet’s
writing, see D. Charlton, ‘“Envoicing”
the orchestra: Enlightenment
metaphors in theory and practice’, in
French opera 1730–1830: meaning and
media (Aldershot, 2000), v, pp.1–32, at
pp.7–8.
33 On sommeil (sleep) scenes, see
C. Wood, ‘Orchestra and spectacle in
the Tragédie en musique 1673–1715:
oracle, sommeil and tempéte’,
Proceedings of the Royal Musical
Association, cviii (1981–2), pp.34–40.
34  R. Harris-Warrick, ‘Magnificence in
motion: stage musicians in Lully’s ballets
and operas’, Cambridge Opera Journal,
vi/3 (1994), pp.189–203, at p.193.
35  On Bach’s revision from violas
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d’amore to violins con sordino, see
A. Dürr, Johann Sebastian Bach’s St.
John Passion: genesis, transmission, and
meaning, trans. A. Clayton (Oxford,
2000), p.9.
36  A. D. McCredie, Instrumentarium
and instrumentation in the North
German Baroque opera (Hamburg,
1964), p.15.
37  Harris-Warrick, ‘Magnificence in
motion’, p.192.
38  E. Dolan, The orchestral revolution:
Haydn and the technologies of timbre
(Cambridge, 2013), pp.53–89.
39  Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ‘Son’, in
Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert
(eds.), Encyclopédie: ou Dictionnaire
raisonné des sciences, des arts et des
métiers (Paris, 1751–72), xv, p.345; trans.
Dolan, Orchestral revolution, pp.54–5.
40  Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire
de musique, ii, pp.220–1. Rousseau’s
18th-century English translator rendered
‘change leur tymbre’ as ‘changes their
modification’; The Complete Dictionary
of Music, trans. Waring, p.384.
41  François Raguenet, Paralèle des
Italiens et des François en ce qui
regarde la musique et les opéras (Paris,
1702), pp.103–4. An oft-quoted English
translation of Raguenet’s text from
1709 reads ‘I thought ours had all
been bridled’, suggesting that mutes
were not yet well known in England.
François Raguenet, A Comparison
between the French and Italian Music
and Operas (London, 1709), p.49.
By contrast, a German translation of
1760 uses the German word for mute,
attesting to familiarity with the device:
‘I felt as if one had put a mute on all
of them’ (‘daß ich glaubte, als wenn
man ihnen allesamt einen Dämpfer
aufgesetzt hätte’). ‘Dritte Fortsetzung
der Raguenettischen Vergleichung der
italiänischen und französichen Musik’,
Kritische Briefe über die Tonkunst (7
June 1760), p.400.
42  On regional variations in the
construction of violins, see Boyden,
History of violin playing.
43 Mersenne, Harmonie universelle,
iii, p.180.
44  Leopold Mozart, Versuch einer
gründlichen Violinschule (Vienna, 1756),
p.52; Leopold Mozart, A treatise on the
fundamental principles of violin playing,
trans. E. Knocker (Oxford, 1951), p.89.
45  ‘Die folgenden Worte geben den
schönsten Staff zu einer rührenden Arie,
deren Affect das Härmen ist. Auch darf
ich hiebey der gedämpften Violinen
nicht erwehren.’ (‘The following words
give the best material to a touching aria,
whose affect is grief. Also, I cannot help
but mention here the muted violins’.)
Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, Kritische
Briefe über die Tonkunst i (27 October
1759), p.144.
46  Manuscript held by Berlin
Singakademie Archiv; recorded by
Moderntimes_1800 Chamber Orchestra,
Sinfonias from the Enlightenment
(cc72193 Challenge Classics, 2008).
Thanks to Ilia Korol for sharing
information about Graun source
materials with me and for bringing to my
attention J. G. Graun’s frequent call for
mutes in his sinfonias and concertos.
47 Quantz, Versuch einer Anweisung,
die Flöte traversière zu spielen, p.203;
Quantz, On Playing the Flute, p.233.
Although Quantz here mentions muting
violins, violas and cellos, this effect
seems to have been reserved for when
violas and cellos had parts similar to
those of the violins; for instance, the
parts for Quantz’s Flute Concerto in G
minor, qv5:196 call for muting only of
the violins in the Larghetto movement,
while viola and cello play supporting
lines unmuted.
48  Georg Simon Löhlein, Anweisung
zum Violinspielen (Leipzig and
Züllichau, 2/1781), pp.111–12.
49  Trans. in M. Brown, ‘Mozart
and after: the revolution in musical
consciousness’, Critical Inquiry, vii
(1981), pp.689–706, at p.690.
50  In 17th-century theatre, by
contrast, ‘soft music’ would have
indicated a consort of viols, as
opposed to the ‘loud music’ of wind
instruments associated with military
and other worldly events. See J. S.
Manifold, The music in English
drama from Shakespeare to Purcell
(London, 1956), pp.87–101, and
McCredie, Instrumentarium and
instrumentation, pp.70–3.
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51  See D. Buch, Magic flutes and
enchanted forests: the supernatural in
eighteenth-century opera (Chicago,
2008), p.260.
52  P. Polzonetti, Italian opera in
the age of the American Revolution
(Cambridge, 2011), p.87. See also
M. Hunter, The culture of opera
buffa in Mozart’s Vienna: a poetics
of entertainment (Princeton, 1999),
pp.292–4.
53  R. Altman, Silent film sound (New
York, 2004), p.16.
Early Music PAGE 21 OF 22

Deirdre Loughridge
Muted violins from Lully to Haydn
To describe the effect of muted violins, modern com-
mentators often default to such terms as ‘ethereal’,
‘otherworldly’, or similarly magical and disembodied
images. But in the 18th century, musicians had dif-
ferent ways of understanding the effect and meaning
of muted violin tone. This article identifies condi-
tions and principles that underpinned the usage and
perception of muted violins from their beginnings
to the 18th century, as well as significant shifts that
took place during this time. For most of this period,
pAGE 22 OF 22 Early Music
Abstract
musicians preferred metal to wooden violin mutes.
Whether the accessory fundamentally altered the
tone-quality of the instrument, or simply made it qui-
eter, was up for debate, the question complicated both
by regional differences in violins, and the fact that
‘timbre modification’ was not yet a familiar concept.
And while otherworldly associations are sometimes
apropos, more often the idea was to hear murmuring
water, a mournful character, or some other effect—
Downloaded from http://em.oxfordjournals.org/ at Cornell University Library on October 7, 2016
magical or mundane—cued by the particular context.
Keywords: violin mutes; muted tone; Marin Mersenne;
Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Nikolaus Harnoncourt; period
perception