Viola pomposa

Viola pomposa viola with an additional string, tuned e2, in use from ca. 1725 to 1770. Its invention has been ascribed to J. S. Bach by various late-18th-c., i.e., noncontemporary, writers, and the myth persists, even though Bach never scored for such an instr. But Graun, Telemann (in 1728), and Lidarti (in 1760) did, calling for a range of f0–e3. Two of the strings appear to have been tuned to g0 and d0 (these are found on both violin and viola). In his Musikalisches Lexikon of 1802, Koch…