On Aug 15, 2004, at 10:28 AM, John Howell wrote:
I would also wonder whether the part was intended for the elusive and somewhat hypothetical tenor violin, tuned an octave below the violin and filling in the range between the viola and the cello. I can picture bass clef being used for such an instrument. In 5-part string writing, as in Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo" and much French court music, such an instrument would serve admirably as a "2nd viola" on the 4th line down,
FWIW, the 5-part writing in Lully, his successors, and the mostly lost repertory of the vingt-quatre violons du Roy, was written for an ensemble of 5 different instruments (distributed 6.4.4.4.6), of wh. only two survive today. They comprised the violin (dessus), 3 different sizes of viola (haut-contre, taille, and quinte, all tuned identically; the middle size is our current viola), and the basse de violon, tuned like a cello but w. a longer neck, and played only in the low positions. There was no contrabass instrument--in fact, contrabasses were almost unheard of in orchestras anywhere until the 18th century. In Italy, the basse de violon was called the violone (wh. is why the cello, w. its shorter neck, was called the violoncello). All over Europe, the bass gamba substituted freely for the violone, and the two often played together in the same orchestra.
The three different sizes of viola also existed in Italy, but since they were all tuned the same, that should make no difference for the piece in question. If the range of the lower part fits the viola, then you should assume that two violas are intended; if the lower part descends below that, then it probably would have been played on viola (of whatever size) and gamba.
I got all this nifty info from the superb new book, _The Birth of the Orchestra_, by John Spitzer and Neal Zaslaw, which I just finished reading. All kinds of stuff we all should have known, but didn't. Highly recommended!
Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
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