How many violas are in an orchestra

Violists may also have less of a competitive streak than many musicians. And in his junior high orchestra, he says, he won the seat of concertmaster. The trouble was, by doing so he dethroned its previous occupant. She challenged me a bit later for her seat. The thing that actually made the bridge go through the instrument was a Ouija board. I took it as a definite sign. Traditionally larger than a violin, the viola does require extra capability.

If violin is not the most natural instrument in the world, viola is even more so. At 6-foot-2, Kazi Pitelka certainly has the physical equipment for the task. The principal violist for Los Angeles Opera since , she looks back fondly to , when she went to audition for Lillian Fuchs, the 4-foot-9 grande dame among Southland viola instructors.

In addition to her opera work, Pitelka does studio dates, is principal violist for the Los Angeles Master Chorale and the Long Beach Symphony, and is a member of the chamber group Xtet, now in its 20th year.

It hurts. It takes stamina. The sheer weight of a large viola can really be problematic and lead to overuse injury. Some people play on a small viola to try to protect themselves. But in truth, bigger violas sound better, so you want to find some way to get the volume and the string length without having too much weight.

So often we are called upon to play a rhythmic figure over and over to accompany a melody. They basically come in small, medium and large. You have to find an instrument that fits your body. When I started out, there were very few women violists, and most of the men played large violas.

Times have changed, though. Andrea Amati was one of the first artisans to make the instrument. The viola looks like a large violin and in terms of its construction it is more or less the same.

In common with all string instruments, there are no fixed dimensions for a viola and both players and makers will have their own preferences. Different types of wood such as sycamore, spruce and maple are carefully selected for their grain and density.

One of the most important factors in determining the sound quality of the instrument is the varnish, which at first comes as a surprise to many people. The reason the varnish is so important is that it covers the entire exterior of the instrument, bonds with the surface of the wood and it is from this shiny surface that the sound of the instrument resonates.

So the quality of the varnish can greatly affect the way the instrument resonates. Read more. There are four strings on the viola which are tuned a Perfect 5th apart. The lowest is C then G, D and A is the top string. The lower strings have a richer, darker sound and to exploit this it is quite common for composers to write that a particular phrase should be played on a particular string. Writing Sul C on the C or Sul G above the music asks the player to continue playing on the low C or G string when they would otherwise have moved up onto one of the higher strings.

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While the first violin section normally has the melody or counter-melody, the second violin section tends to play a lower harmony. This works in the same way for the woodwind section — except the numbers are far fewer.

But if you play first violin, you are one of ten playing that line. Simply put, there need to be enough violins to balance out the bright, penetrating sound of the oboe. Since the Baroque period , violins have pretty much always been included in orchestral scores. Orchestras specialising in Baroque music tend to be much smaller and more focused on string instruments. In fact, pres, the leader of the first violin section led the whole orchestra, instead of a modern-day conductor.

However, in Romantic and 20th-century music, composers like Mahler, Wagner and Stravinsky began to write for a wider range of brass, woodwind and percussion instruments.

Today, the violin is an incredibly popular instrument and some of classical music's biggest stars are violinists — think of Nicola Benedetti , Joshua Bell and Itzhak Perlman.

But did this all happen by chance?