* 1886 – Eric Coates, English composer and viola player ( d. 1957 )

Two closely related instruments include the baryton and the viola d ' amore, although the latter is played under the chin, viola-fashion.

The baroque concerto was mainly for a string instrument ( violin, viola, cello, seldom viola d ' amore or harp ) or a wind instrument ( oboe, trumpet, flute, or horn ).

* American ( U. S. A .)— Brown, Earle: Tracking Pierrot ( 1992 ; chamber ensemble ); Wharton, Geoffry ( works mainly in Germany ): ‘’ Five Pierrot Tangos ’’ ( n. d .; violin / viola, flute, piano / synthesizer, cello, clarinet, and voice ).

Towards the end of the 1930s, he made several tours in America as a viola and viola d ' amore soloist.

Kammermusik No. 6, for example, is a concerto for the viola d ' amore, an instrument that has not been in wide use since the baroque period, but which Hindemith himself played.

The viola d ' amore ( Italian: love viol ) is a 7-or 6-stringed musical instrument with sympathetic strings used chiefly in the baroque period.

The 6 string viola d ' amore and the treble viol also have approximately the same ambitus or range of playable notes.

Intricately carved head at the top of the peg box are common on both viols and viola d ' amores as well ( although some viols lack them ).

The viola d ' amore usually has six or seven playing strings, which are sounded by drawing a bow across them, just as with a violin.

The first unambiguous reference to a viola d ' amore without sympathetic strings does not occur until the 1730s.

Largely thanks to the sympathetic strings, the viola d ' amore has a particularly sweet and warm sound.

The viola d ' amore was normally tuned specifically for the piece it was to play-cf.

The instrument was especially popular in the late 17th century, although a specialised viola d ' amore player would have been highly unusual, since it was customary for professional musicians to play a number of instruments, especially within the family of the musician's main instrument.

However, there has been renewed interest in the viola d ' amore in the last century.

The viola players Henri Casadesus and Paul Hindemith both played the viola d ' amore in the early 20th century, and the film composer Bernard Herrmann made use of it in several scores.

It may be noted that, like instruments of the violin family, the modern viola d ' amore was altered slightly in structure from the baroque version, mainly to support the extra tension of steel wound strings.

Leoš Janáček originally planned to use the viola d ' amore in his second string quartet, " Intimate Letters ".

However, the version with viola d ' amore was found in rehearsal to be impracticable, and Janáček re-cast the part for a conventional viola.

The viola d ' amore can regularly be heard today in musical ensembles that specialise in historically accurate performances of Baroque music on authentic instruments.

It was a natural choice for viola d ' amore where the tuning is not in the usual fifths.

The viola d ’ amore was usually played by violinists.

:: 6 Lessons for viola d ' amore and continuo

This instrument also found its way to parts of Italy that were under Spanish domination ( especially Sicily and the papal states under the Borgia pope Alexander VI who brought many Catalan musicians to Italy ), where it was known as the viola da mano.

Since many composers wrote for a traditional-sized viola, particularly in orchestral music, changes in the tone of a viola can have unintended consequences upon the balance in ensembles.

In Elizabethan English, the word " gambo " ( for gamba ) appears in many permutations ; e. g., " viola de gambo ", " gambo violl ", " viol de gambo ", or " viole de gambo ", used by such notables as Tobias Hume, John Dowland, and William Shakespeare in Twelfth Night.

Tertis composed several original works and also arranged many pieces not originally for the viola, such as Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto.

The piece is often lauded for its orchestration, which features a large percussion section and many special techniques and articulations, such as in the fourth movement when the violinists, violists, and cellists are asked to imitate guitars ( the violin and viola parts are marked " quasi guitara ").

One of these, a collection of primarily instrumental works entitled Parables, contains 25 works, many for unaccompanied wind instruments ( complete listing below ), and his 15 Serenades include such unconventional combinations as a trio for trombone, viola, and cello as well as selections for orchestra, for band, and for duo piano.

V. tricolor is one of many viola plant species containing cyclotides.

In Western music, some members of the viola family appeared in the middle of the 17th century which were fitted with an extra choir of thin wire strings running through a hollow chamber through the neck of the instrument, the head of which was then elongated to accommodate as many extra tuning pegs as necessary.

These were generally called viola d ' amore ; another historical example is the baryton, for which Haydn wrote many trios.

Dvořák had played viola for many years in pit orchestras in Prague ( Estates Theatre from 1857-59 while a student, then from 1862-71 at the Provisional Theatre ).

He has composed many works including 5 sonatas for piano, a mass, cantata, many songs, choral works, organ pieces, sonatas for cello and piano, violin and piano and viola and piano, a brass quintet and a woodwind quintet.

* in the Baroque era, there were many works written for the viola da gamba, including sonatas ( the most famous being Johann Sebastian Bach's three, now most often played on the cello )

* in the Classical era and early Romantic, there were few works written with viola specifically in mind as solo instrument, and many of these, like those of the Stamitz family, may have been written for the viola d ' amore, like most of their viola works-though it is now customary to play them on the viola ; it was more typical to publish a work or set, like George Onslow's opus 16 cello sonatas, or Johannes Brahms's opus 120 clarinet sonatas in the late 19th century, that specified the viola as an alternate.

As an innovator, he developed many new instruments and mechanisms, most notably a large viola that he called a " contralto ", and the three-string Octobass ( 1849 – 51 ), a huge triple bass standing 3. 48 metres high.

* Idyll for oboe ( viola ) and piano ( The composer's husband Roger Lord, disappointed that the piece remained unplayed and unpublished for many years, perhaps because of its chromaticism, decided to transcribe the solo part for oboe, his own instrument, to which it is well suited.

( in addition to the pieces already mentioned ): Piccolo Concerto, for 12 wind instruments, timpani, percussion and piano, orchestral works such as Musica Sinfonica, Bafadis, and Trittico, 8 symphonies ( No. 1: The River — May 1940, for soprano, chorus and orchestra, No. 2: Sinfonia giocosa, No. 3: Facets, No. 7: Sinfonia concertante, for 11 wind instruments ); concertos for flute, harp, percussion, piano, trumpet, violin, 2 oboes, 2 soprano-saxophones, 3 trombones ( Piccola musica concertata ), 2 string orchestras, electronic organ and for violin, viola and double-bass ; 3 oratorios ( inter al., Anthropolis ) and many other choral pieces ( inter al.

His compositions include the four symphonic poems and three orchestral songs making up Livre de la jungle after Rudyard Kipling ; many other symphonic poems including Le Buisson Ardent after Romain Rolland ( this is a diptych of two orchestral poems, performable separately ) and Le Docteur Fabricius after a novel by his uncle Charles Dollfus ; three string quartets ; five symphonies including a Seven Stars Symphony inspired by Hollywood ; sonatas for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola and cello, and much other chamber music ; many songs, over two hundred opus numbers in all ; and a vast number of monodies, fugal studies, chorale harmonizations and other educational pieces.

A lower string quartet features 1 viola, 2 cellos and a double bass.

The film's bestselling soundtrack features performances by Jordi Savall, one of the best-known modern viola da gamba players.

The Palazzo Strozzi in Florence commissioned composer Bruce Adolphe to create a work based on Bronzino poems, and the piece, " Of Art and Onions: Homage to Bronzino ", features a prominent viola da gamba part.

Franz Schubert's " Trout " piano quintet features the less common instrumentation of piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass.

* October 6 – October 7 – The Donaueschinger Musiktage features the world premieres of Ernst Krenek's Double Concerto for viola, piano, and small orchestra, Rolf Liebermann's Piano Sonata, Pierre Boulez's Polyphonie X for 18 solo instruments, Hermann Reutter's Der himmlische Vagant, lyrische Portrait des F. Villon von Klabund for alto and baritone voices and instrumental ensemble, and Marcel Mihalovici's Étude en deux parties for piano and ensemble, as well as German first performances of works by Messiaen, Guido Turchi, Harsányi, Jelinek, and Honegger, and a performance of Henze's Third Symphony.

During the last decade of his life he also wrote the cantata Vox Humana ( 1974, on texts by Latin American poets ), concertos for violin and orchestra ( 1977-78 ) and for viola and orchestra ( 1979 ), a twelfth symphony for mixed chorus and orchestra ( 1973 ) to poems by Pablo Neruda and a sixteenth symphony ( 1979 ) which features a bravura solo part for alto saxophone.

The fourth movement features a lyrical and free first violin, Voice I, contrasted with the ten tone row controlled second violin, viola, and cello, Voice II.

Also notable about the song is that it features no bass guitar — John Cale, who usually played bass or viola, was playing his organ on the take.