Scordatura

Scordatura [skordaˈtuːra] (literally Italian for "mistuning"), is a tuning of a stringed instrument different from the normal, standard tuning. It typically attempts to allow special effects or unusual chords or timbre, or to make certain passages easier to play. It is common to notate the finger position as if played in regular tuning, while the actual pitch resulting is altered (scordatura notation). When all the strings are tuned by the same interval up or down, as in the case of the viola in Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra, the part is transposed as a whole.

The invention of scordatura tuning has been attributed to Thomas Baltzar, a prodigious German violinist and composer who is known to have used the technique in around the 1660s, at least a decade before Biber composed his "Rosary Sonatas" in which he employed the tuning technique. Of course, German violinist Hans Hake (1628-after 1667) includes 3 works in 'Vorstimmung' ("upset tuning"] for 2 violins (#25, #29, & #33) in his collection "Ander Theil Newer Pavanen,…" (Stade: Elias Holwein, 1654) making this attribution false.

Scordatura was much used by composers for viola d'amore, violin and cello, including J.S. Bach, Biber, Vivaldi, Ariosti, Vilsmayr, and others in compositions for violin during the early 18th century. A special type of notation was used to make it easier to read. This notation was also used to notate music for the viola d'amore, an instrument played and composed for by composers such as Biber and Vivaldi. The viola d'amore used a great number of different tunings and writing music for it in scordatura notation was a natural choice for composers of the time.

The double bass is sometimes required to play notes lower than the E to which its lowest string is normally tuned. This can be accomplished with a special mechanical extension with which some double basses are equipped or the composer may ask the double bass to tune down its E string, as in, for example, the third movement of Brahms's Requiem, in which Brahms has some of the double basses tune the E-string down to D in order to sustain the low D pedal point or in the 9th Movement of Ma mère l'oye (Cinquième tableau - Laideronnette, impératrice des Pagodes), in which Ravel has the double basses lower their E-strings a semitone. (George Crumb's exceptional A Haunted Landscape requires that two bassists use C extensions and still tune down past them to B♭.) Other kinds of scordatura occur most commonly in solo double bass literature, especially including one that raises all four strings a whole step to F♯'-B'-E-A.

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