Instruments
The Avison Ensemble have since 1994 been a period performance group, playing on the kind of instruments that would have been heard during Charles Avison's time.
With the growth of interest in 'authentic' performance many players have chosen to play on original 18th-century instruments, or modern reproductions of early instruments with the hope of creating a sound and balance that offers an insight into the sound and character of original performances.
The Avison Ensemble's audiences can hear 18th century music played on these instruments in some of the venues that Charles Avison would have performed in himself.
PERIOD INSTRUMENTS
Baroque Violin
 The Baroque violin, compared with the modern instrument, has a shorter, thicker neck less angled back from the violin's front; a shorter fingerboard; a flatter bridge and strings made solely of gut.
Early bows, too, were different in design from modern ones. As the violin's repertoire developed and the sound of the instrument was required to fill larger concert halls, the violin and the bow's construction, and indeed the performer's technique, were modified to give the violin a louder, more robust, and more brilliant tone.
The earliest important violinmakers were the northern Italians Gasparo da Salo (1540-1609) and Giovanni Maggini (1579-c. 1630) from Brescia and Andrea Amati from Cremona.
The craft of violin making reached unprecedented artistic heights in the 17th and early 18th centuries in the workshops of the Italians Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri, both from Cremona, and Jacob Stainer in Austria.
This growth in stature continued throughout the baroque period with the violin becoming the principal force in the instrumental genres then current: these being the solo concerto, concerto grosso, sonata, trio sonata, and suite as well as in opera. By the mid-18th century the violin was one of the most popular solo instruments in European music.
Harpsichord
 Two types of stringed keyboard instrument were available to the household or court musician from the 16th century to the middle of the 18th: the harpsichord and its near relations, the spinet and virginal, and the clavichord.
In the harpsichord family the string is plucked by a small plectrum, originally of quill but nowadays usually Delrin.
The variety of sound from these plucked instruments is achieved not primarily by finger pressure, but more subtly by phrasing and articulation. Variety of tonal colour can be obtained, on a harpsichord in particular, by judicious choice of registration.
The harpsichord was used both for solo performance and accompaniment in chamber groups and in larger ensembles of the period.
English harpsichords had a directness and down-to-earth quality both in appearance and sonority with a characteristically powerful tone, a reedy treble and a sonorous bass.
Useful Links
18 th Century History Musical Instruments Information -
www.history1700s.com/store/musical-instruments.shtml
Oriscus Musical Instrument Information Links Page -
www.oriscus.com/mi/museums.asp
Music and culture in the 18 th century crib -
www.presepenapoletano.it/catalogoXIV/intini-ing.htm
Musical Instruments Information -
www.radix.net/~dglenn/defs/inst.html
History Lives – Musical Instruments Information -
www.historylives.com/music.htm
Information on Early Music -
www.medieval.org/emfaq/misc/whatis.htm
Renaissance Links for Music and Dance -
www.twingroves.district96.k12.il.us
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