But just the fact that Bach wrote the note doesn't necessarily mean that the violone had this range. John Howell wrote "Composers, generally speaking, know better than to write notes that can't be played!" but many composers, even those who know an awful lot about instrumentation, are prone to exceed the normal range of an instrument if it suits them. Richard Strauss is a case in point: there's a passage in 'Salome' where the second violins have a low E (a third below the lowest string). It's a fast, unaccented note, but just happens to be part of the melody. It would be a hell of a hassle to tune the G-string down a third just for this one note. There are many such instances in Strauss's works: he apparently explained to the players that if they imagined the note hard enough and looked as if they were playing it, nobody would hear the difference.
Michael Cook
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.)
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