John Schelleng of Bell Labs, Dr. Carleen Hutchins, and their colleagues in the Catgut Acoustical Society, scaled the alto viola into its optimum range so that it functions like a true violin tuned a fifth lower, and they solved the size problem by giving the alto violin an end pin so that it can be played vertically. It has gone from being one of the hardest instruments to play to one of the easiest! It is the fourth instrument in the violin octet. The mezzo violin is the next higher instrument, and the tenor violin is the next lower.

The alto is currently available with a short-scale neck for players coming from the viola, and a longer, proportional-scale neck (see picture, left) for players coming from the cello. My model is scaled up from the Stradivari Forma G violin without compromises, and gives a very Cremonese appearance to the outline. The acoustic fundamentals and tuning of the free plates follows the techniques developed by Hutchins.

Cello teachers have been impressed by the alto's usefulness in starting young children on an instrument that they can readily handle. While this is certainly a valid use for the alto, I want to state most emphatically that this instrument is not a child's cello. It is an alto violin and a proper instrument in its own right, worthy of a lifetime of study.

The most obvious advantages of the alto violin are an increase in power and overall tone quality. Conductor Leopold Stokowski said of this instrument, "No viola has ever sounded like that before. It fills the whole hall." The alto violin also provides ringing pizzicatos and exceptionally clear harmonics much farther up the strings than typically found on the conventional viola. Playing the alto vertically allows the musician to take advantage of the cellists' technique of thumb position, which easily extends the range of the instrument right to the end of the fingerboard. A less obvious advantage, but perhaps one that is more important over time, is that the weight of the instrument is taken off the shoulder and arm of the player and transferred to the end pin. This practically eliminates the problems with hands, arms, and wrists that viola players are prone to later in life.

It is hard to understate the impact that a single alto can have in an ensemble. Most violists are simply stunned by the depth, power, and fullness of the C-string. Cellists take naturally to the instrument because of its vertical playing orientation and similarity of string tuning. The great cellist Yo Yo Ma played Bartok's viola concerto on an alto violin with David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The performance was included on the 1994 "New York Album" (Sony 57961) and is considered by many to be the finest version of Bartok's masterpiece ever recorded. Most listeners think that they are hearing Ma's Montagnana cello, but they're actually listening to a modern alto violin by Carleen Hutchins!

Historical Confusion.

The alto violin has its historical precedent in the large tenor viola. Both the alto and tenor violas were tuned alike, and both were written in alto clef, but the larger tenor played an independent part in the Baroque era and earlier when five-part string writing was the norm. Although it was a much richer-sounding viola, the instrument fell into disuse when four-part writing of a more technical nature came into vogue and the smaller alto viola proved easier to play in the upper positions. The alto violin is similar to the old tenor viola in size and tuning, but neither one of them is the same as our modern tenor violin, which is a distinctly different instrument tuned a fourth lower and written in tenor clef.

Updated May 14, 2008