Range
As on the treble viol, the register above the octave (d) on the top string would seldom be used. The viola d'amore was normally tuned specifically for the piece it was to play - cf. scordatura. Towards the end of the 18th century the standard tuning became: A, d, a, d', f♯', a', d".
Read more about this topic: Viola D'amore
Famous quotes containing the word range:
“[F]or as Socrates says that a wise man is a citizen of the world, so I thought that a wise woman was equally at liberty to range through every station or degree of men, to fix her choice wherever she pleased.”
—Sarah Fielding (17101768)
“No doubt, the short distance to which you can see in the woods, and the general twilight, would at length react on the inhabitants, and make them savages. The lakes also reveal the mountains, and give ample scope and range to our thought.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“The Canadians of those days, at least, possessed a roving spirit of adventure which carried them further, in exposure to hardship and danger, than ever the New England colonist went, and led them, though not to clear and colonize the wilderness, yet to range over it as coureurs de bois, or runners of the woods, or, as Hontan prefers to call them, coureurs de risques, runners of risks; to say nothing of their enterprising priesthood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)