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Okay, I know that perfect 5th double stops can or will likely have intonation problems, and that they are stopped by the same finger. But what I don't know is how far up each adjacent string pair they are available.

Although I'm not a violinist, I have a cheap violin I use for reference, and though my technique must assuredly be clumsy, I can barely just stop as far up as a C-G perfect 5th on the G-D strings. After that the strings are splayed out too far from one another for me to really stop the strings down firmly as is required. And I figure if you can at least get a C#-G# perfect 5th on the G-D strings, then that's all you need in order to complete the chromatic loop to the middle pair of strings, and so on.

But my orchestration book says that double stop perfects are available up to about 6th position on the A-E strings, yielding a G5-D6 double stop.

Can anyone help me sort this out? I don't want to be writing stuff which is problematic.

Thanks in advance.

As a professional violinist myself I can assure that it's absolutely not a problem to play perfect 5ths up to the 8th position. Violinist are able to put the two strings together and move the finger in order to have a perfect tuning. Not a problem at all!

Good luck with your composing.

__________________
Fabrizio Ferrari
supervisor/composer at
Virtual Sheet Music, Inc.
Classical Sheet Music Downloads®

Hey, thanks Fabrizio. That's great to know. I figured there had to be some explanation since there always seem to be discrepancies between orchestration books.

You are very welcome! Any time...

I agree with you, orchestration books have quite different opinions, it is always better to ask to professionals directly.

Sincerely,

__________________
Fabrizio Ferrari
supervisor/composer at
Virtual Sheet Music, Inc.
Classical Sheet Music Downloads®

thanks for that clarification Fabrizio.

You are very welcome.

__________________
Fabrizio Ferrari
supervisor/composer at
Virtual Sheet Music, Inc.
Classical Sheet Music Downloads®