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
The Well-Tuned Piano octaves, with nine notes extending the bass of the piano. Young describes the pitches of his tuning as being, "derived from various partials of the overtone series of an inferred low fundamental E-flat reference ten octaves below the lowest E-flat on the Bösendorfer Imperial". Although it might seem that Young is giving a nod to Bach's "The Well-Tempered Clavier" with his title "The Well-Tuned Piano", musical tuning and musical temperament are two very different things. Temperament actually involves the deliberate mistuning of pitches to make the overall octave more or less usable in various different tones. In "The Well-Tuned Piano",