Taken from Cecil Forsyth' book on orchestration "The name Violone, i.e "big Viola, was given to the Double-Bass, and in accordance with the accurate if somewhat limited principles of the Italian laguage, the intermediate instrument was christened, Red-Indian-fashion, "little big Viola, " Violoncello". It's a four stringed instrument.
Godofredo
Hi, Godofredo. Kurt Sachs got into big trouble trying to reason from terminology, which is very often unstable, and Forsyth seems to have picked this up from him.
We know that there were both contrabass violins (presumably with 4 strings) and contrabass violas da gamba (with 5 or 6 strings) available in the early 17th century, because Monteverdi called for both instruments in the score to "L'Orfeo" and was very picky about where each should play. And we know that large instruments often had a variety of tunings, and beyond that were often re-engineered when musical styles changed so as not to discard a large and expensive instrument.
Berlioz' comments on the contrabass section are fascinating. (I wish I could quote directly, but do not have a copy of his treatise to hand.) He said, and I paraphrase, "You will find a variety of instruments, with 3, 4, or 5 strings, and tuned in a variety of ways. With luck, someone will be playing an open string on every note to stabilize the pitch."!!!
John
-- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
