On 25 Sep 2002 at 0:27, Matthew Naughtin wrote: > Speaking as a long-time orchestral violinist and music librarian, the answer > is definitely #2. Mark the phrasing as you want it and let the concertmaster > and principal string players figure out the bowings that best achieve it.
For the three of you who have ever considered writing music for viols, you'd need to know some basic things: 1. the tuning of the strings is different than of violins (much closer together; consider that the treble viol, with 6 strings, the top of which is only a step lower than the top string of the violin, extends only a fourth lower than the violin), so there's a lot more string crossing. 2. because of 1, any group of more than two slurred notes is likely to be difficult to play (though four repeated notes under a slur is quite playable, with or without staccato dots) 3. because of the underhand grip on the bow, the up and down bows are reversed: the up bow ^ is the strong bow (the one that goes from low to high), and the down bow the weak one (actually substantially weaker relative to the strong bow than on the violin/cello). 4. the bows are shorter than the bows for modern strings (this is also true of baroque violins), so there's less "sweet spot" in the middle of the bow for long chains of notes under one bow than on modern instruments. 5. the default bowing for all viol music is to never bow two notes together. Any slur markings found in viol music are good indications that the music was written at a time when the violin was starting to take over the top two parts (my consort is just starting a Jenkins suite in which the trebles get to play lots of pairs of 8th-notes; the treble parts would sound equally good on violins), and any slurs in the non-treble parts are very unusual, indeed, until you get into the French 18th century solo viola da gamba repertory. Even there, the slurs (bowings) are most often in pairs, and seldom longer than 4 notes (though I've seen 6 8th-notes in 3/4 passages of Boismortier, but at a relatively fast clip). All of this may sound very restricting, but the characteristics of the instruments largely match the style of the music they were intended to play. One of the things I do in my arrangements for viols is to utilize slurs as bowings and dotted slurs to indicate phrasing. Last night I was transcribing the Lacrymosa of the Mozart Requiem. This required quite a bit of adjustment to the first violin part, simply because the high D is probably not realistic for anything reliable (indeed, even for professional players, anything above high C, a minor third above the top fret, is probably not a good idea; for non- professionals, I don't think I'd go above the Bb a half step above the top fret, and even that can be iffy in certain contexts, especially if you're expecting them to get to it from any other position than 2nd with extension or 3rd). In any event, that was all a very long-winded way of suggesting that one could use slurs and dotted slurs to indicate a difference between bowings and phrasings. -- David W. Fenton | http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates | http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
