Three early-eighteenth-century codices of music in tablature for the viola (five-course guitar) are about all that remains from the Portuguese repertory for that instrument upto the publication of Manuel da Paixão Ribeiro’s book in 1789. These extremely varied sources illustrate in a remarkable way the musical interactions between Portugal, other European countries, and Iberian colonies. More than that, part of their content seems to fitinto a gray area between so-called art music, of written transmission, and music of the oraltradition.While this dissertation examines these issues in the context of the history of the instrument and its players in Portugal and Brazil, a more substantial section of the dissertation deals with the origins, development, and transmission of the repertory, isolating some particular Portuguese features from more general characteristics of musical forms and dance-types. An important part of this repertory relates to the Portuguese colonies in Africa and South...