On 4 Mar 2005 at 9:07, John Howell wrote: []
> >IIRC, there is also a low B in Brandenburg 3, but that may have been > >intended for a six-string violone. > > I with I had a score at hand to check this, but it seems kinda > questionable. Could somebody check and report back to us? While bass > tuning was and is the least standardized in the string family, I > believe the violone was tuned an octave below the bass viola da gamba, > which would take it down to a low D, a whole step below the low E of > the "normal" bass violin, but nowhere near a low B. The lowest note > I've seen throughout Bach's work is low C, the lowest note of the > cello in standard tuning and the lowest note available on the organ > keyboard. (This is entirely separate from the question of the > original, intended pitch for the Weimar cantatas, which is a very > special case.) NYU is about to take delivery of a new violone. I really know not much of anything about it, but I do know that it has a low A string (I don't know if it is 6 strings, A to A or what, or if it's a 7- string instrument). Also, keep in mind that Bach's gamba sonatas assumed a 7-string gamba with a low A string (because two of the three sonatas require low B), so if the violones were an octave below this 7-string instrument, then they'd also have a low A string (regardless of what strings they had above it). -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
