Fidola

1. The fidola is a musical instrument invented in the 1980’s by luthier Alan Carruth of Newport, New Hampshire. It is shaped like a guitar, but is the size of a viola, and has five strings strung like a standard violin and viola (CGDAE). It is played with a standard viola bow, preferably strung with black and white hair for a courser, less classical sound. The fidola was the culmination of a research effort aimed at producing an instrument that is equally resonant over all five strings, in contrast to earlier five-string violins and violas, which tended to sound dull at either the low (C) or high (E) end. The instrument became popular among Scottish and Contra dance fiddlers through the 1990’s, first in New England and then in northern California. A photograph of a fiddler in concert playing a five-string viola explicitly identified as a fidola appears in the scholarly journal Pragmatics, 11(2):155-192, June 2001.

Other names occasionally used to refer to the fidola include fideola and folk viola. Among traditional fiddlers in Alaska, the term fidola was generalized in the late 1990’s and came to be used more broadly to refer to any five-string viola, regardless of shape. In the UK, the term fidola has come into use more recently to refer to a standard four-string violin or viola tuned as a viola (CGDA).