On 9 Aug 2005 at 17:18, John Howell wrote: > It really comes down to what you can discern of the composer's > intentions. I can envision 6.6.12 working; in fact Rameau did > exactly this in some dance movements from his operas that I edited, > and it worked fine with a community orchestra or a small college > chamber orchestra because the first violins were stronger than the > second violins. If the three parts seem to be of equal weight, > perhaps 8.8.8 makes better sense, but then the problem becomes how to > lay that out in the parts.
There's also the issue of what the actual texture is. In lots of 18th- century orchestral music, there really aren't 4 independent parts, but just 3 (the viola often really just doubles the bass line). And the 2nd violin part quite often doubles the first violin part in many 18th-century repertories. My understanding of contemporary orchestra makeup was that the 2nd violin section was almost never equal in size with the firsts, but sometimes even 1/2 the size. In that kind of situation, a divided 1st violin section would hardly present balance problems at all. -- 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
