We take it waaaay back to the earliest piece of music we can possibly call a work for wind band, Gabrielli's Sonata Pian' e Forte. • Sonata pian e forte- G...
Hallo Mr. Newton You actually got the violin/viola confusion the wrong way round. The violin part can not be played on violin but only on c g d' a' viola. The term viola was sometimes used, even until the 18th century, as a name for the bass viola. The tenor/alto instrument appears as violetta even in some late 18th century sources. Violino means viola in Gabrieli's terms. Around 1600, the viola was probably still more popular then the violin and still used for descant voices in low choirs, since the violin was regarded as higher then a usual descant voice. There were 2 main sets of clefs, high and low, and the low clefs were regarded as fitting the range of singers. In low clefs, it makes no sense to use violins at all since the e string is never necessary. There is a lot of evidence that viola and trombone were often regarded as kind of interchangeable in 17th century protestant church music. The extremely tight ~10 mm bore of the trombones and the small bells made them a lot softer.
Hallo Mr. Newton
You actually got the violin/viola confusion the wrong way round. The violin part can not be played on violin but only on c g d' a' viola. The term viola was sometimes used, even until the 18th century, as a name for the bass viola. The tenor/alto instrument appears as violetta even in some late 18th century sources. Violino means viola in Gabrieli's terms. Around 1600, the viola was probably still more popular then the violin and still used for descant voices in low choirs, since the violin was regarded as higher then a usual descant voice. There were 2 main sets of clefs, high and low, and the low clefs were regarded as fitting the range of singers. In low clefs, it makes no sense to use violins at all since the e string is never necessary.
There is a lot of evidence that viola and trombone were often regarded as kind of interchangeable in 17th century protestant church music. The extremely tight ~10 mm bore of the trombones and the small bells made them a lot softer.