On Dec 21, 2008, at 4:11 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
On 21 Dec 2008 at 11:39, Eric Fiedler wrote:
I think what Telemann " and/or his copyist " is doing here in TVWV
1:644 is to alert the viola player to the fact that he is playing the
same line as the bass, albeit an octave higher... a phenomenon which
some researchers call "bassett notation".
I've never heard of that one, but wonder why it would require
anything unusual for the violas, since doubling the bass an octave
higher is something the violas do... Why would special notation be
required...?
I've lost track of what the situation is in the particular work under
discussion, but this sounds to me like an example of what is called "la
petite basse" in French and "das Bassetchen" in German, in which the
viola temporarily takes the bass line while the vc. and hpsi. drop out.
There's a good discussion of it on p. 470 of Spitzer and Zaslaw: _The
Birth of the Orchestra_, giving examples from Quantz and CPE Bach.
Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://www.kallistimusic.com/
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