'–c'' (ex.6), which was later also
adopted by Campagnoli (who recommended using thick a' and e''
strings for the f'
and c'', and
playing con sordino for the optimum effect) and the Spanish composer
Pablo Rosquellas.(It., from scordare: ‘to mistune’; Fr. discordé, discordable, discordant; Ger. Umstimmung, Verstimmung).
A term applied largely to lutes, guitars, viols and the violin family to designate a tuning other than the normal, established one. Scordatura was first introduced early in the 16th century and enjoyed a particular vogue between 1600 and 1750. It offered novel colours, timbres and sonorities, alternative harmonic possibilities and, in some cases, extension of an instrument's range. It could also assist in imitating other instruments, and facilitate the execution of whole compositions or make possible various passages involving wide intervals, intricate string crossing or unconventional double stopping. North American and Scottish fiddlers commonly adopt ‘open’ tunings such as a–e'–a'–e'', which emphasize particular keys (ex.1), for greater resonance when playing chords and arpeggios and to facilitate the use, as drones, of open strings adjacent to the one on which the melody is being played.
The term scordatura has also been applied to instruments which had no standard tuning, such as the Viola d'amore (before about 1750), the Lyra viol, and folk instruments such as the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle and the Romanian vioară, but in such cases the term ‘accordatura’ (It.; Fr. accord; ‘tuning’) is more appropriate.
2. Violoncello and double bass.
DAVID D. BOYDEN/ROBIN STOWELL (1), MARK CHAMBERS (2), JAMES TYLER (3), RICHARD PARTRIDGE (4)
Any tuning of the violin and viola other than their established tunings (g–d'–a'–e'' and c–g–d'–a' respectively) is defined as scordatura. The required tuning is usually indicated at the beginning of a piece, the notation of which is generally such that the player reads and fingers it as if the violin were in the normal tuning (in effect, a species of tablature), and presupposes that open strings and 1st position will be used unless otherwise indicated. Accidentals in key signatures apply only to the specific note and not to its octave above or below, thus resulting in some strange signatures and a confusing relationship between the appearance and the actual sound of the score, as shown in ex.2 (from Biber's ‘Mystery’ Sonata no.11, ?1674). Only rarely have composers prescribed the actual sounding notes in a scordatura piece and left performers to determine their own fingering (e.g. Biagio Marini, Sonate op.8 no.2, 1629; Baillot, L'art du violon, 1834; and Szigeti's transcription for violin and piano of M.F. Gnesin's Spielmannslied), because this is harder for the player to realize quickly. Composers seldom require a string to be retuned during a piece, despite the examples in Marini's Sonate op.8, Biber's Sonatae violino solo no.6 (1681), Baillot's Etudes op. posth. nos.15 and 23 (1851), Stravinsky's Firebird Suite (1910), and Bax's First Symphony (1922), because such retuning is hard to achieve with accuracy and tends to be unstable.
Inspired by the practice of 16th-century French lutenists, who used the term avallé or ravallé (or avalé or ravalé) to refer to a ‘lowered’ string (see Cordes avallées), violinists introduced scordatura in the early 17th century, Marini providing the first known example (Sonate op.8). Many others followed suit in Italy (Uccellini, Giovanni Bononcini, Lonati), in Germany (C.H. Abel, Georg Arnold, Johann Fischer, J.E. Kindermann, Pachelbel, J.H. Schmelzer, N.A. Strungk, P.H. Erlebach), and in England, where the earliest examples are found in some unaccompanied violin pieces by Thomas Baltzar and Davis Mell (in GB-Och 433), and in Playford's The Division Violin (1684). Biber, however, made the most extensive use of scordatura. 14 of his ‘Mystery’ or ‘Rosary’ Sonatas (?1674) specify different scordaturas, as well as two of his Sonatae violino solo (1681) and six suites of his Harmonia artificiosa-ariosa (n.p., 1696; Nuremberg, 1712). Each of the tunings in the ‘Mystery’ Sonatas is related either to the main notes of the tonality of its sonata, thus reinforcing the sonority, or is intended to overcome technical problems. The extraordinary tuning g–d'–g'–d'', produced by interchanging the D and A strings) for no.11 (‘The Resurrection of Christ’; ex.2) opens up a whole new range of possibilities on the instrument; it affords very different combinations of notes for double and multiple stopping, as well as a variety of different timbres, and enables the violinist to play difficult 10ths (and octaves) with relative ease. That of no.12 (‘The Ascent of Christ to Heaven’; ex.3) is contrived to imitate the trumpet. For the tunings of Sonatas nos.7, 9 and 12, the raising of the lowest string to c' makes it advisable for a D string to be substituted for the G string in order to avoid imposing extreme tension on the instrument. Biber's imaginative application of such tunings far transcended the simple purposes of the original scordaturas by making possible special arpeggio and bariolage effects in a particular key. His works marked the zenith of scordatura practice, making it, according to Georg Falck (Idea boni cantoris, 1688), a device for the ‘masters’. However, J.J. Walther, in the preface to his Hortulus chelicus (1688), emphatically rejected its use.
From the 18th century the use of scordatura declined in Germany and by 1752 Quantz (Versuch) considered it obsolete, but it became more popular in France and Italy. La Laurencie claimed that it was adopted in about 1713 by French violinists for the execution of certain préludes; however, Corrette was the first Frenchman to introduce it in published violin music (‘Pièces à cordes ravallées’ in L'école d'Orphée, 1738), specifying four different tunings. He was emulated by Jean Lemaire (Sonata no.1, 1739), Tremais (Sonates op.4 nos.2, 4 and 6, c1740) and Isidore Bertheaume (Sonate pour le violon dans le stile de Lolly, 1786, and Sonata op.4 no.2, 1787). Tremais offered two notations for each of his three sonatas, one in scordatura and the other in the normal tuning for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the device.
Pietro
Castrucci, Emanuele Barbella, Lolli, Vivaldi, Tartini, Nardini and Bartolomeo
Campagnoli are among the Italians who persevered with scordatura. Vivaldi used
it in some of his violin concertos (e.g. op.9 nos.6 and 12, 1727). Lolli
specified lowering the g string of the violin to d (ex.4), thus allowing the violin to accompany itself; pieces in
this particular scordatura were described as ‘in the style of Lolli’.
Similarly, the tuning for the Sonate énigmatique for solo violin,
attributed to Nardini, enables the performer to ‘play his own bass’. The upper
two strings, normally tuned, are notated as normal in the treble clef on the
upper staff, while the lower two strings, raised to c' and f',
are notated in the bass clef on the second staff as G and d
respectively, an octave below the normal tuning (ex.5). Barbella contrived to imitate the viola d'amore with
another tuning, a–d'–f'–c'' (ex.6), which was later also
adopted by Campagnoli (who recommended using thick a' and e''
strings for the f'
and c'', and
playing con sordino for the optimum effect) and the Spanish composer
Pablo Rosquellas.
‘Transcription
scordaturas’, in which all four strings were raised either a tone or a semitone
for greater brilliance, carrying power and facility of execution, were used in
several late 18th-century pieces for viola. The most significant example is
Mozart's Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola k364/320d
(1779–80), in which all the strings of the viola are tuned a semitone higher
than usual. Other notable examples include Vanhal's Concerto in F (written in E
for the viola), Carl
Stamitz's Sonata in B
(written in A for the viola), and, according to one manuscript source (US-Wc),
Stamitz's Symphonie concertante for violin and viola, which involves both solo
instruments being tuned up a semitone.
Most
19th-century composers believed that there was more to be lost than gained from
scordatura, on account of its special notation and playing requirements, the
detrimental effect of higher tensions on the strings and the instrument, the
inherent intonation problems (especially if several pieces with different
tunings were to be performed in the course of a concert), the need to adapt the
bow speed, bow pressure and contact point to suit string textures, tensions and
thicknesses, and the resultant changes in instrumental timbre. Nevertheless, it
was exploited by various violin virtuosos to broaden the technical and
expressive boundaries of their art. Its usage was generally limited either to
transposition scordaturas for greater facility of execution, additional tonal
colour, intensity, and brilliance over the orchestra (e.g. Paganini's Violin
Concerto no.1, 1816; I palpiti, 1819; and Il carnevale di Venezia,
1829; also some of Spohr's duets for violin and harp); or a raised tuning of the
g string for the una corda bravura of such virtuosos as Paganini,
Bériot and Vieuxtemps. Paganini most commonly tuned the g string up to b (Introduction and
Variations on ‘Dal tuo stellato soglio’ from Rossini's Mosè in Egitto,
?1819), while Vieuxtemps's ‘Norma’ fantasia op.18 (c1845) requires it to
be raised to c'. Berlioz (Grand traité d'instrumentation, 1843)
reported that Bériot, like Mazas (Barcarolle français op.9) frequently
raised ‘merely the g’ a whole tone in his concertos. Baillot and Winter,
on the other hand, sometimes lowered that string to f or f in order to ‘produce
softer and deeper effects’. Baillot's Etude no.15 involves lowering the
string to f
during the course of the piece, while in Etude no.23 a cadenza-like
passage is introduced by tuning the g string downwards through semitones
to d (while playing), persisting with the resultant tuning to the end (ex.7).
Although
the incidence of scordatura declined towards the end of the 19th century, it
never became obsolete: sonority, as opposed to brilliance, became the principal
reason for its use. Significant late 19th-century examples include
Saint-Saëns's Danse macabre (1874), in which the solo violin is required
to tune the e'' string down to e'', enabling diminished chords to be played on
open strings, and Strauss's Ein Heldenleben (1897–8, violin) and Don
Quixote (1897; the range of a solo viola is extended by lowering the c
string to B). In the 20th century composers such as Mahler (Fourth
Symphony, completed in 1900; solo violin in the second movement), Stravinsky (Firebird
Suite, 1910; first violins), Bax (First Symphony, second movement, 1922;
violins and violas), Hindemith (Symphonische Tänze, third movement,
1937; second violins), Inghelbrecht (La valse retrouvée, 1937; viola),
Bartók (Contrasts, 1938; violin), Giacinto Scelsi (String Quartets nos.3
and 4, 1963–4, and Xnoybis, 1964; violin), Aldo Clementi (Concerto for
violin, small orchestra and carillon, 1977), Reinhard Febel (Polyphonie,
1981; solo violin) and Fabio Vacchi (Quintetto, 1987; violin) were also
attracted to the novel sonorities offered by the device. Stravinsky, for
example, required the first violins to tune their e'' strings down a
tone in order to play arpeggios in natural harmonics all on this string and in
the key of D (ex.8). Clementi raised the a' and e''
strings of the solo violin by a quarter-tone, while Albert Stoessel's tuning (a–d'–a'–e'') for the violin in his Flitting
Bats for violin and piano (1925) facilitates the playing of glissandos in
diminished 5ths. Scelsi's (f'–g'–b'–d'' for Xnoybis) and
Vacchi's (g–d'–c'–g') tunings are somewhat extreme
and experimental, Scelsi using his to ‘explore the phenomena of wavering
single-note surfaces’.
Although
the normal cello tuning is C–G–d–a, and any deviation from this may be
regarded as scordatura, the tunings B'–F–c–g (associated with the Bass
violin in the
16th and 17th centuries) and C–G–d–g (the so-called ‘Italian’ tuning,
employed by Domenico Gabrielli, B.G. Marcello, Giuseppe Torelli and others at
the end of the 17th century) were also occasionally used as established
tunings, and are thus not always scordaturas as such. However, the earliest
known instance of a cello tuning being considered by a composer to be a
variation from the normal is, in fact, C–G–d–g: the ‘Capricio’ from
Sonata no.2 of Luigi Taglietti’s Suonate da camera, op.1 (1697), bears
the instruction ‘discordatura’ and indicates this tuning by an incipit. The
earliest example of a cello transposition scordatura is found in Jacob Klein’s VI
sonates op.1, bk3 (1717); all six sonatas employ the tuning D–A–e–b.
In Klein’s VI duetti op.2 (1719), C–G–d–g is employed only in the
sixth duet. J.S. Bach’s solo cello suite no.5 in C minor (bwv1011)
is the latest example of cello scordatura from the Baroque period and uses the
‘Italian’ tuning.
Cello
scordatura was abandoned as a technique for most of the 18th century and was
used sparingly in the 19th-century chamber music repertory (e.g. Schumann’s
Piano Quartet op.47, which uses B'–G–d–a). 20th-century chamber
and orchestral works that employ cello scordatura include Alban Berg’s Lyric
Suite, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Respighi’s Pini di Roma,
which all employ the tuning B'–G–d–a. Solo works
for cello scordatura include Kodály’s Sonata op.8 (which uses B'–F–d–a) and
Ralph Shapey’s Krosnick Soli (A'–G–d–a).
The
unique evolution of the double bass as a three-, four- and five-string
instrument has made it difficult to establish a single tuning as standard.
While the generally accepted bass ‘orchestral’ tuning is E'–A'–D–G,
the use of different tunings has been an idiomatic feature of the development
of the double bass, being chiefly used to enhance sound projection and clarity.
Much of the solo bass repertory requires the use of scordatura, the most common
being the ‘solo’ tuning F'–B'–E–A (i.e. tuning all four
strings up a whole tone). Scordatura has also been adopted in the jazz bass
tradition; Red Mitchell employed a tuning in 5ths, C'–G'–D–A,
and Ron Carter tuned a piccolo bass A'–D–G–c.
The lute, having the largest surviving solo repertory of any instrument before the 19th century, has the greatest number of pieces in scordatura tunings (approximately 1600). A distinction should be made between simple Cordes avallées, a lowering of one course (usually the lowest of the 16th-century lute) in order to achieve a slightly wider open-string range, and true scordatura tunings, which exploit special effects such as drones and, more importantly, enhance the instrument's resonances in various keys.
For the lute, as well as the early guitar, other plucked instruments, and viols played in the lyra-viol fashion, the development of scordatura is linked to the use of Tablature, a form of notation from which even the most unusual of tunings can be read and played as easily as the most normal one. The standard lute tuning throughout the 16th century (in Italy up to the 18th century) employed the following intervals, from the lowest to the highest main fingered courses: 4th–4th–major 3rd–4th–4th. (Interval patterns are given, rather than specific note names, due to the considerable variance of letter names and relative pitches used in the sources; however, for a lute with a top course tuned to g', this pattern would result in the tuning G–c–f–a–d'–g', disregarding any octave stringing on lower, doubled courses.) An early example of an altered tuning is 4th–5th–major 3rd–4th–4th (J.A. Dalza: Intabolatura de lauto, 1508), used for a quasi-drone effect. There are several other individual examples of this type of re-tuning during the 16th century, but the main period of scordatura was the 17th century.
Anthoine Francisque was the first to publish a substantial section of pieces in scordatura (minor 3rd–5th–4th–major 3rd–4th for the six main courses of his nine-course instrument) among pieces in standard tuning (Le trésor d'Orphée, 1600). Of course, for this and all other scordatura tunings, the extra basses beyond the first six courses were variably tuned according to key. Francisque used the term ‘cordes avalées’ for his scordatura tuning, as did J.-B. Besard (Thesaurus harmonicus, 1603) for his few pieces tuned to 4th–5th–4th–major 3rd–4th. They, and a few other early writers, retained this term from the previous century. The first publication consisting entirely of scordatura was P.P. Melli's Intavolatura di liuto … libro terzo (Venice, 1614) which used ‘una cordatura differente dall'ordinaria’, 4th–major 3rd–minor 3rd–major 3rd–4th, plus seven bass courses for his 13-course ‘liuto attiorbato’. Melli made excellent use of scordatura, as evinced by the lush sonorities of the music in this collection. The first French publication to use a scordatura tuning exclusively (‘accords nouveau’) was Pierre Ballard's Tablature de luth de differens autheurs (Paris, 1631), containing music by Chancy, Bouvier, Dufaut and other important musicians at the court of Louis XIII, who used two of the most common scordatura tunings of the period: 4th–4th–major 3rd–minor 3rd–major 3rd and 4th–4th–minor 3rd–major 3rd–minor 3rd. At least 30 different scordaturas were known throughout the 17th century, but the fashion for variant tunings waned in the first quarter of the 18th, and one of them – 4th–minor 3rd–major 3rd–4th–minor 3rd (the so-called D minor tuning) – became the standard tuning in later French and German high-Baroque usage. A comprehensive discussion of these tunings and their sources is found in Schulze-Kurz.
The early guitar employed scordatura during the same period as the lute, and its variant tunings were even more complicated than the lute's due to the re-entrant stringings and octave dispositions, which the guitar normally employed. A five-course instrument, the guitar's normal tunings were predominantly: a/a–d'/d'–g/g–b/b–e' (entirely re-entrant) or a/a–d/d'–g/g–b/b–e' (with a low d on the fourth course). In addition, some players used a high g' on the third course, and others, a low A on the fifth. The re-entrant stringing made possible a technical idiom unique to the early guitar. By playing scale passages that used as many open strings as possible, an effect was achieved which enhanced resonance. Scordatura facilitated this aspect of guitar technique even further. For details on guitar technique and a comprehensive bibliography of sources, see Tyler.
The first examples of scordatura for the guitar are found in G.P. Foscarini (I quatro libri della chitarra spagnola, c1632) with the intervals: minor 3rd–4th–major 3rd–minor 3rd (ignoring octave displacements). Later writers, such as Corbetta (Varii capricci, 1643), Granata (Soavi concenti, 1659) and Bottazzari (Sonate nuove, 1663), used a variety of other scordaturas. Although throughout most of the 17th century scordatura was used mainly by Italian writers, Jakob Kremberg (Musicalische Gemüths-Ergötzung, 1689) employed up to six different tunings and François Campion (Nouvelles découvertes sur la guitarre, 1705) up to seven, in addition to the standard tuning. The number of guitar sources using scordatura is substantial, and among them about 20 variants are found, with major 3rd–4th–4th–4th being the most common.
For the six-string guitar (from the 19th century to the present), different tunings in true scordatura are rare, but the lowering of the sixth string by one tone is quite common (e.g. M. Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Sonata op.77, 1934). With the emergence of the new guitar, tablature was abandoned in favour of staff notation, which made reading and playing scordaturas difficult, and might explain the subsequent decline of unusual tunings for the instrument, except for music grounded in aural tradition. Some modern folk and popular guitarists use open-string tunings based upon a G or D chord (called ‘dropped tunings’), which enable simple fingerings to be used for basic harmonies (see Guitar, §7).
Ever since viol tunings were first recorded the sequence of intervals 4th–4th–3rd–4th–4th has been established as the standard for six-string instruments from which any deviation might be regarded as ‘scordatura’ (for a discussion of these sources, see Viol, §§1 and 3). The most notorious use of alternative tunings on the viol was associated with the Lyra viol of 17th-century England, for which nearly 60 tunings have been uncovered. Most would have been used on a standard six-string bass viol (or one rather small in size, perhaps with lighter stringing and a flatter bridge). Other instances where scordatura is specified are rarer. Most common, probably, is the instruction to ‘set your lowest string double see fa ut’ (i.e. tune the D string to C; Tobias Hume, ‘The Old Humor’, The First Part of Ayres, 1605). Christopher Simpson (Chelys/The Division-Viol, 2/1659, p.8) states ‘I will set your next Example in C fa ut with the lowest String put down a Note, as we commonly do when we play in that Key’. A similar practice is found in lute music (see Abzug (1) and Cordes avallées), and modern six-string bass viol players sometimes tune their lowest string to C when the music requires (this practice is obviated if a French high Baroque-style viol with a seventh string tuned to A' is used).
In addition to several six-string viol tunings based on the standard interval pattern, Praetorius (Syntagma musicum, ii, 1618, 2/1619) reported tunings with a 4th–3rd–4th–4th–4th pattern, and two tunings consisting entirely of 4ths (he also included tunings for three-, four- and five-string viols, some taken from Agricola). Five tunings for Viola bastarda were given: (1) D–G–c–e–a–d'(2) C–G–c–e–a–d'(3) A'–E–A–e–a–d'(4) A'–D–A–d–a–d'(5) A'–D–G–d–g–d' Praetorius did not suggest what music these various tunings would be suitable for. Tuning (2) is the same as the English practice of tuning the bass string down a tone. The very wide tunings of (3), (4) and (5) extend the range of the instrument down to A'. Vicenzo Bonizzi's Alcune opere (1626), for viola bastarda, demands a compass of G'–d', but this could be played on a large bass viol in a standard G' tuning.
In
his Basse-continües des pieçes a une et a deux violes (1689) Marin
Marais published a suite for bass viol and continuo in F minor which he suggests the continuo
player could transpose to G minor if the original key proves troublesome to
play. In which case, he says, the viol player would have to retune the
instrument up a semitone (in order to use the same fingering). He says that the
suite could also be transposed up to A minor, and likewise another suite, whose
original key is B minor, could be played in D minor, with the viol retuned
accordingly. Marais seemed to have great confidence in the ability of his
instrument to respond well to being tuned up a minor 3rd.
Several
suites by or attributed to Gottfried Finger feature scordatura bass viols,
mostly tuned E–A–c–e–a–c' (one of these also features a scordatura
violin tuned a–e–a'–e''), but in one suite for two
scordatura viols, E–G–B–e–a–d' is
used.
BoydenH
DoddI
M. Schneider: ‘Zu Bibers Violinensonaten’, ZIMG, viii (1906–7), 471–4
G. Adler: ‘Zu Bibers Violinensonaten’, ZIMG, ix (1907–8), 29–30
G. Beckmann: Das Violinspiel in Deutschland vor 1700 (Leipzig, 1918, music suppl., 1921)
A. Moser: ‘Die Violin-Skordatur’, AMw, i (1918–19), 573–89
L. de La Laurencie: L'école française de violon, de Lully à Viotti (Paris, 1922–4/R)
T. Russel: ‘The Violin “Scordatura”’, MQ, xxiv (1938), 84–96
M. Abbado: ‘La scordatura negli strumenti ad arco e Nicolo Paganini’, RaM, xiii (1940), 213–26
D.D. Boyden: ‘Ariosti's Lessons for Viola d'amore’, MQ, xxxii (1946), 545–63
G.J. Kinney: The Musical Literature for Unaccompanied Violoncello (diss., Florida State U., 1962)
F. Traficante: ‘Lyra Viol Tunings: “All Ways have been Tryed to do It”’, AcM, xlii (1970), 183–205
J. Tyler: The Early Guitar: a History and Handbook (London, 1980)
P. Brun: Histoire des contrebasses à cordes (Paris, 1982; Eng. trans., 1989)
R. Stowell: Violin Technique and Performance Practice in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1985)
J. Paras: The Music for Viola Bastarda (Bloomington, IN, 1986)
D. Ledbetter: Harpsichord and Lute Music in 17th-Century France (London, 1987), 38–40, 185
P. Rosquellas: ‘Un ejemplo de “scordatura” violinística en la música española: la sonata de Pablo Rosquellas’, RdMc, x (1987), 965–74
E. Schulze-Kurz: Die Laute und ihre Stimmungen in der ersten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts (Wilsingen, 1990)
M. Chambers: The Mistuned Cello: Precursors to J.S. Bach's Suite V in c minor for Unaccompanied Violoncello (DMA diss., Florida State U., 1996)