Sigh... one of the groups that I will be leading and directing later this year has a pretty strong interest in having a Viola d'amore concerto in the program. I guess that is good, but I sort of wanted to do a violin or a viola concerto instead.... no particular reason, other than the fact that my d'amore is still struggling to stay in pitch. Partly due to the weather and the change in location/climate from Europe to Australia... and mostly due to the fact that I've been pretty busy with other things, music and non-music, to have given it enough playing time.

So, the first thing that I needed to do was to replace the two snapped playing strings... and then haul all the sympathetic strings back to some semblance of a pitch. From there, it was a slow grind to get the instrument up to 415Hz in a D major tuning. Pretty much every piece written for d'amore has its own special tuning for the playing (and resonant) strings... However, a d major or minor is "standard", in that about 40% of the pieces is in one of those two tunings!

Eventually, I will need to ramp up the pitch to 440Hz, as it is a modern string orchestra that I will be directing... but for the moment, it can sit at 415Hz. Especially seeing as someone is borrowing the instrument for a couple of days to see if they want to use it later in the year. Plus... I have a little thing that I need to play with harpsichord on the instrument in a few weeks as well. So, it is going to be one busy little instrument! If only it could just sit down and learn the solo part by itself...

Now... most of the time on violin and viola, I require very little preparation... I'm a decent sight reader, and I hate practicing... a combination that goes quite well together!

However, I am just a touch slower on the d'amore... partly due to the awkwardness of the instrument, and mostly due to the fact that I need to come to grips with a different tuning each time. Thankfully, I generally read from a scordatura part (tablature...) for this instrument... unfortunately, every bloody composer has a different coding system! I have to keep reminding myself that I love the instrument, despite the fact that everything about it is a royal pain in the arse!

However, no real practice today... just bringing the instrument up to pitch, and then a read through to triage the piece. Basically, just getting an idea for how much time and lead-in I will need to prepare the concerto. Hopefully as little as possible! But there are some passagework sections that will need practice... less about the notes, and more about making sure that I'm hitting the right strings and reading the right tablature! There is nothing worse than blanking out on the tablature system in the middle of the concert...

However, Vivaldi has chosen a pretty simple one for this concerto... actually, it is quite similar to the one that I use. Sort of... he divides up the 7 strings of the instrument into two pairs of 4 (with one shared string as a cross-over point). Then he has two different clefs for each half of the instrument, with the fingering does as if it was a regular violin.

The annoying part is that the two clefs are similar looking, the treble and the octaved treble (with a small 8ve at the bottom). At speed they can be quite easy to mistake for each other, especially when they switch quickly... I generally use a treble and an alto clefs when I write my own parts using this coding system.

The practice was useful.. it isn't too hard at all. Mostly, it will just be getting used to the clef switches so that they are fast and seamless... and that will come over time. So, this concerto isn't an intensive lead in... but needs longer window of time to prepare, just to get familiarity with the notation.

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