JAVS Spring 2024

The limits of tuning are given by the strings themselves, whose resistance Biber strictly respects by not demanding a pitch higher than E5 and not lower than G3 in the stringing. The middle strings, which can be tuned in both directions, offer a wider range.

While reading music in this way represents an enormous advantage in making it easier to find individual notes, it creates a significant challenge: the creation of new written key signatures to represent fingering patterns and not harmonic constructions. These are shown along the scordaturas in Table 1.

Table 1. Key Signatures Changes.

surprisingly low, suggesting that perhaps the copyist was a violinist as well.

Understanding Other Symbols of the Manuscript Whoever created the manuscript did a spectacular job. The copyist only made a few mistakes in the whole work and only twice corrected himself with a shaving of the score. Some small errors in the accidentals have also been left uncorrected according to the critical editions. However, considering the complicated scordatura notation, the number of errors is

To understand the manuscript, it is important to become familiar with the copyist’s handwriting, as well as some of the symbology used. Some of the most recurrent used symbols are:

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Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 40, No. 1, Spring 2024