On 4 Mar 2005 at 22:14, Ken Moore wrote: > In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> John Howell > writes: >>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.) > > I found the score, and my memory was at fault. The part is marked > "Violone e Cembalo" and has lots of low Cs. Of course, if he had that > note on his keyboard . . .
He did. > . . . but not on his violone, he might still have > written a single part and left it to the player to cope, but rather > more tellingly, in the second concerto, the keyboard and 'cello have > the combined part, and the "Violone di ripieno" part has low Cs. I play parts on viola da gamba all the time that has low Cs (the gamba goes down to D) -- sometimes the pieces were probably intended for cello, other times, they had gambas that had those notes, and sometimes they didn't much care what instrument you played it on. When it's particularly important and frequent, I tune the D down to C for the duration of the piece. It's fairly easy to do, at least for me, though it means I have to think harder about fingerings involving the bottom string. It would be a much more difficult task if I were retuning a string between two other strings. I'm never averse to tuning down like this (I may be be doing it in the Couperin Lessons of Tenebre very soon -- haven't decided yet) because I don't find it difficult at all, and because the lower strings of my instrument are very stable and stay exactly where I'm playing them. My instrument is in the shop right now and the one I'm playing (a 1933 Voss built in Berlin!) is *not* stable (pegs slip all the time -- ack!), so maybe I won't do it at all. I see no reason that contemporary players of low-tension bass instruments might not have done the same. -- 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
