Torturing Violins and some new music!

over 2 years ago

Torturing Violins and some new music!.jpg

It is a bit of a lost art for Classical musicians... but there used to be a technique in the Baroque era where you would retune your violin strings to different pitches. It is a bit of a debate as to whether this was done to alter the tone colour/timbre of the violin (due to the different tension and resonance) or if it was done to facilitate passage/chordal work.

Where it makes a difference is when you have pretty heavy changes/deviations from "normal" tuning (like the sonata pictured above)... the question is whether or not you restring the violin completely with different gauge strings to put the instrument under less tension or not? I choose to NOT restring the instrument... meaning that in this particular scordatura, we have VERY HIGH tensions on the bottom two strings, moderately high tension on the A string, and slightly higher tension on the top string. This means that you are subjecting the instrument and strings to quite a deal more stress than normal... which can result in broken strings, and if you are not paying attention, fallen bridges and such things.

For this concert, I have pulled an secondary instrument out of the reserve list... I'm not doing this to my main instruments! This violin hasn't been played properly for about a decade, and it does sound a little bit worse for wear because of it... but I'm hoping to bring it up to speed in the next month or so.

The higher tension makes it sound like a loud trumpet under your ear... and the higher tension means that you need a more solid contact with the bow to make it speak properly. So, lots of things that change the way that you interact and receive output from the instrument... which I do believe is the purpose of the scordatura.

The other school of thought would restring the violin with thinner gauges to reduce the tension across the strings... which, to my personal tastes, means that you are just playing a normal violin tuned differently... but which doesn't sound or feel that much dissimilar from a regularly tuned instrument. That is in addition to restringing (and stocking..) multiple different strings at different gauges. It isn't an idea that makes sense to me...

...but my approach does have its own particular technical problems.... I've snapped 3 strings so far already in bringing the instrument up to pitch. So, I'm going to have to expect that to happen!

But on a happier note, another shipment of music arrived recently. A few early German sonatas for Baroque ensemble including one very funny one for strings, BC, and bassoon... that depicts the aftereffects of a Bean festival! Hehe... I can't wait to unleash this farty piece on an unsuspecting bassoon player... or the audience!

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8 comments

@por500bolos 68

over 2 years ago

Well brother, the truth is that I don't want to unexpectedly burst in here in your post saying anything barbaric about violins and looking like a real heretic talking about music with violins.

But actually I wanted to comment that I am a big fan of music with violins. And I actually have a lot of musicians who are my favorites in the art of violin playing. Although perhaps I should clarify that, above all, they are violinists of music within the genre of contemporary Jazz, New Age and other new, more recent musical trends instead of classical music.

There are really a lot of them that I could mention, of which I suppose you already know many of them or have heard of them because of their international fame. Like, for example, Jean Luc Ponty, Steve Kindler & Jerry Goodman. Of which for the sole fact that I have a large collection of their albums here with me and your mention of Torturing Violins with some new music and such. I think that for this reason alone I'm gonna share with you here in this comment a piece by each one of them that is the one I like the most just to see what you think of their way of torturing the violins. };)

Jean Luc Ponty

Steve Kindler

Jerry Goodman

On the other hand, maybe I could also name you a heap more that are probably less familiar to you. But that I'm almost sure you could also love them if you search and listen to their works on YouTube or anywhere else on the internet. Like Michal Urbaniak, Zbigniew Seifert and Ashanti Floyd just to name you three more that come to my mind right now. And of which the latter, Ashanti Floyd, I will also share here at the end of this comment a masterful piece by him for the sole fact that it is a more recent musical genre like Dubstep. Enjoy!! :)