On 22 Dec 2008 at 13:30, Andrew Stiller wrote:

> 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.

In Kim's cantata sinfonia, it's not something temporary. And it's not 
an octave above the actual bass line, but at the same pitch. And in 
the only passages where the basso continuo part drops out, the 
"viola" line has nothing notated.

So, I really don't think any of your observations has anything to do 
with Kim's example.

I'm pretty sure his example indicates a viola da gamba part, since 
it's clearly playing the role of the real bass part. My confusion is 
over why there's a separate "viola" part and basso continuo part. 
Maybe it ends up being used soloistically later in the cantata.

-- 
David W. Fenton                    http://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates       http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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