Demonstration of the Andrea Amati cello, The King (mid-16th century)

Live demonstration of the Andrea Amati "King" cello by Joshua Koestenbaum at the National Music Museum, University of South Dakota, July 2005. It was in the workshop of Andrea Amati (ca. 1505-1577) in Cremona, Italy, in the middle of the 16th century that the form of the instruments of the violin family as we know them today first crystallized. The King, as it is now called, is the earliest bass instrument of the violin family known to survive, built perhaps as early as 1538, originally with only three strings. About 1560, it was painted to serve as one of a set of 38 stringed instruments built by Andrea Amati that were painted and gilded for the French court of King Charles IX (d. 1574) - his mother was Catherine de&Medici, a member of the Italian family that directed the destiny of Florence (and, after 1569, of Tuscany) from the fifteenth century to 1737 - with the King&emblems and mottoes. The set was used until it was dispersed during the French Revolution (1789). Only a few instruments from the set have survived.