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7
PLATE X
(seep. 109)
A hiighlydetailedviolonefroutiGabinettoArmioniicoby FilippoBoniauuiii.
Confjhsioncausedby thepecuiliar is resolvedin Bonanni'stext
strinigitng
JON W. FINSON
I05
string crossings.Clearly, the technicaldemandsof Bach's violone
writingexcludeopenstringstunedmorethana fourthapart.Use of a
'C extension',a nineteenth-centurymechanicaldevice which allows
theplayerto soundpitchesbelowthenormalEEby manipulating levers,
alsoprovesinadequate for theexecutionof passageslikeEx. i in tempo.
Transposingpitchesbelow EE an octavehigherseriouslydamages
part-writingas in Ex. I and2.
yE i
2p pBI 1 I't o 6
t. Concerto,
r dmovement,
Brandenburg bars
Concerto,3rdmovement,barsI o-i 6
EX.2 Ist Brandenburg
a
ALLEGRO
I T I- I
9:t $ I
Xm tW
EX. Concerto,3rdmovement,bars1-3
3 3rdBrandenburg
I07
FIG. I FromJ.F. B. C. Majer'sMuseum Musicum (1732), a rathercrud
engravingof a violone
io8
Though we can say with some certainty that the violonewas usually
a six-stringed instrument in the first third of the eighteenth century,
we still lack a good visual representation(Majer'sis rather crude and
unscaled).A good picture is Plate 59 (Plate X) of Bonanni's Gabinetto
Armonico.1The number of strings in the engraving is at first unclear
(four, eight?), but there are six pegs, and Bonanni writes (p. ioi):
'... si chiama Violone, perch'e piu grande della Viola, ed ha sei corde,
con le quali si fa maggiore armonia, che nella Viola'. The scale of the
engraving can be judged approximately from the standing player.
We see here a double-bassviol of large proportions and easily capable
of sounding I6-foot pitches.
A comparison of this with Majer'sfigure raisesthe question of the
exact shape and size of the violonein Bach's time. Majer'sinstrument
is shaped like a violin and unfretted, but Bonanni's instrument is
shaped like a viol with frets. This conflicting information is reflected
in the three terms, violone (implying a large viol), Bafi-Geige(bass
fiddle), and violon. It would seem that violone,Bafi-Geige,and violon
did not serve to distinguish between instruments of the violin and
viol families any more than 'bass viol' and 'bass fiddle' do today.
Whether fiddle or viol-shaped, the instrument probably had frets, as
Quantz later maintainedwere necessaryfor a clear tone.'2 The size of
the instrumentalso cannot be ascertainedwith any precision. In order
to sound CC effectively it must have been a large instrument though
not as large as the basses discussed by Francis Baines13if the player
were to command the facility indicated by Bach's violoneparts.
There remains the problem of how the violone was tuned. The
clearest and most extensive account of the tuning of the six-stringed
violoneis in Eisel's MusicusAutodidaktos.'4 This describes two instru-
ments, a small violonetuned GG C F A d g, and a larger instrument
tuned DD GG C E A d. Neither tuning sufficesfor the low range of
Bach's part (though the first tuning helps to account for the tuning
given in Walther's definition above). A violonelike Eisel's second ex-
ample could be tuned a step lower and still maintain string tension. A
tuning of CC EE AA D G c or even BBB EE AA D G c is plausibleon
the second instrumentdescribed.
The violoneof Bach's Brandenburg Concertos can be found at the
intersection of the two sets of data which have been considered.
Bach's writing indicates a six-stringed instrument with a I6-foot
range, and contemporary lexicons and organologies indicate much
the same. The exact tuning, shape, and size of the violone,however,
cannot be determined. Bach continued to include the violone in his
orchestras,as we can read in his famous letter to the city fathers of
109
Leipzig about a 'wohlbestalltenKirchenMusik'.'5However, the nature
of his violonein the I730s can only be discovered by a study of those
parts together with a search through sources from the middle third
of the eighteenth century.
It is apparent that through the late I73os and into the I75os, six-
stringed 'violons' were increasingly abandoned in favour of four-
stringed instruments. Eisel mentioned a four-stringed bass in 1738
(p. 5I) and Quantz wrote extensively in approval of such an instru-
ment (p. 219):
Das Instrumentan sich, thut bessereWirkung,wenn es von mittelmiaBiger
GroBe,auchnicht mit fiinf, sonder mit vier Seytenbezogenist. Denn die
funfte Seyte muBte,wenn sie mit den andernin rechtemVerhaltenstehen
sollte,schwacherals die vierteseyn; und wurdefolglicheinenviel dunneren
Ton, alsdie andern,von sichgeben ... Der sogenanntedeutscheViolonvon
funf bis sechsSeyten,ist alsomit Recht abgeschaffet
worden.
About the same time Quantz published this (1752), Vincenzio Panerai
gives tunings for a 'contrabasso' which must have been the same as our
modern bass (tuned: EE AA D G).16 Bach's later writing for the
'violon' will have to be discussedin terms of Quantz and Panerai as
well as other sources.
The problem of the violone in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries will not admit broad, general solutions in ignorance of
technical demands of specific repertoires. Nor, given the range of
instruments to which the term 'violone' applies, can we insist on
absolute answers. Solutions, rather, must be evaluated by examining
their probability and their technical sufficiency.
NOTES
I JeanSebastienBach,Six Concerts/ Avecplusieurs
Instruments
/ Dediees/ A
SonAltesseRoyalle/ Monseigneur/ CretienLouis/ Marggrafde etc:
Brandenbourg
etc:etc:,DeutscheStaatsbibliothek,
Berlin,Am. B. 78 (facsimileNew York,
I950),fol. 2r.
2 In chronologicalorder the studiesinclude: C. SanfordTerry, Bach's
Orchestra,London, 1932; Adolf Meier, KonzertanteMusikfiir Kontrabass. . .
Giebing iiber Prien am Chiemsee, 1969, pp. 27-28; Alfred Planyavsky,
Geschichtedes Kontrabasses,
Tutzing, 1970, pp. 103-104; Francis Baines, 'Der
brummende Violone', G.S.J., XXIII, 1970, pp. 82-85.
3 Henry Burnetthas indicatedthe extent of this problemin his article,
'The Bowed StringInstrumentsof the BaroqueBassoContinuo(ca.I68o-
ca. I752)in ItalyandFrance',Journalof theViolada GainbaSocietyofAmerica,
VIII (I97I), pp. 29-59.
4 The 5th Concertocontainsoneff and the 6th Concertocontainstwo
BBBbs,one in measure45 andanotherin measureIIo of the lastmovement.
II0
Since there are only two BBBbsin all six Concertos, I think it safe to assume
that these may be transposedup an octave. Concertos Nos. 4 and 5 have DD
as their lowest pitch.
5 Michael Praetorius, TheatrumInstrumentorunt seu Sciagraphia,Wolffen-
biittel, I620 (facsimileNew York, I966), Plate VI.
6 N. Bessaraboff,AncientEuropeanMusical Instruments,Cambridge, Mass.,
1941, p. 361.
7 Sebastiande Brossard,Dictionnairede Musique..., 2nd ed., Paris, 1705
(facsimile Hilversum, 1965), p. 221.
8Johann Mattheson, Das Neu-EroffneteOrchestre. . ., Hamburg, 1713,
pp. 285-286.
9J. F. B. C. Majer, MuseumMusicum,Schwabisch Hall, 1732 (facsimile
Kassel, 1954), p. 80.
ioJohann Gottfried Walther, MusikalischesLexicon . . ., Leipzig, 1732,
p. 637.
I FilippoBonanni, GabinettoArmonicoPienod'Istromente sonori,Rome, 1722.
I2 Johann Joachim Quantz, VersucheinerAnweisungdie Flote traversiere zu
spielen,Berlin, 1752, p. 219.
13 F. Baines, 'Der brummende Violone', pp. 82-85.
14 Johann Phillip Eisel, MusicusAutodidaktos
..., Erfurt, 1738, pp. 47-5I.
I5 Werner Neuman and Hans-Joachim Schulze, ed., Schrifistuckevon der
Hand ohann SebastianBachs,Bach-Dokumente, v. I, Kassel, 1969, pp. 60-62.
i6 Vincenzio Panerai, Principjdi Musica Theorico-Pratici,Firenze, ca. 1750
(facsimileKassel, 1967), p. 7.
III