Six Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord, BWV 1014–1019 alto solo. At first declamatory in the "forte" passages, the "piano" responses are expressive but subdued. Bach's knowledge of the expressive qualities of the violin is shown in the opening phrases, written so they can be played on the G string, the lowest string on the violin, regarded as having a "noble" tone. As explains, citing the opening of BWV 1017/3 as an example, the G string's "energy and powerful voice make it a whole instrument in itself and the lower this voice is, the more opportunity it gives to expression to attain the sublime." Around the violin melody, in
Pitch space musical instruments: by moving one's hands a very short distance on a violin string, one can move arbitrarily far in these multiple-dimensional models. For this reason, it is hard to assess the psychological relevance of distance as measured by these lattices. The idea of pitch space goes back at least as far as the ancient Greek music theorists known as the Harmonists. To quote one of their number, Bacchius, "And what is a diagram? A representation of a musical system. And we use a diagram so that, for students of the subject, matters which are hard to grasp with the