Re: Re: Scordatura question

[Mats Bengtsson]

On 2018-04-11 23:17, Jacques Menu Muzhic wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Thanks for the pointers and explanations.
>
> I thought there might be a specific way to indicate a scordatura, and 
> it turns out there are many possible ways, including providing a 
> second scores with the actual pitches or a staff fragment showing the 
> various string pitches vertically:
I can add some examples from around 1900: In Mahler's 4th symphony, 2nd 
movement, all strings of the solo violin are tuned one tone up, and the 
notation corresponds to the fingering. In the solo violin part for 
Saint-Saëns' Dance Macabre, the top string is down tuned to e flat, 
again the notation corresponds to how you play (though you only play an 
open string on the top string). For me as a violinist, it would be more 
or less impossible to play the music if the notation corresponded to the 
sound instead of the fingering (not the least for Biber), but there are 
certainly cases where it would have helped to have a parallel line of 
sounding notation, to assist in deciphering the music. The situation may 
be different for guitar or double base, where it's not that uncommon to 
at least tune down the lowest string to extend the range of the instrument.

   /Mats