Early evidence of the viola da gamba in Italy / Renato Meucci -- 'Wherein the most complete harmony was heard' : the viola da gamba in chromatic and enharmonic music in seventeenth-century Rome / Martin Kirnbauer -- Monteverdi, the viola bastarda player / James Bates -- An eighteenth-century Italian treatise and other clues to the history of the viola da gamba in Italy / Vittorio Ghielmi -- The viola da gamba in Cremona / Carlo Chiesa -- Problems of authenticity in sixteenth-century Italian viols and the Brussels collection / Karel Moens -- The viola bastarda and the art of improvising / Paolo Pandolfo -- Italian instruments in a list of extant viols made before 1900 / Thomas G. MacCracken -- Violin traits in Italian viol building, rule or exception? / Myrna Herzog -- Real gut strings : some new experiments in historical stringing / Oliver Webber -- The system and proportions of barring on viols / Luc Breton -- A study of three viols attributed to Antonio Ciciliano / Simone Zopf -- The 'Antonio Ciciliano à Venetia' viol in the Accademia filharmonica of Bologna / Marco Tiella -- Glossary of terms