Scordatura

The term "scordatura" is Italian and means "mistuning".

It was a "trick" used often, especially until the 19th century, to improve the sound quality of a string instrument and/or facilitate playing it.

It consists in tuning the strings in a way different from its usual tuning . There are many examples of the use of the scordatura. For example, Bach used it in his fifth cello suite, Vivaldi wrote for "violino discordato", Mozart used it for the viola in his wonderful Sinfonia concertante for violin viola and orchestra, Paganini used it in several of his violin works.

Richard Strauss used the scordatura for the viola in Don Quixote to lower the viola bottom string to B and have an extra note, and many more composers used it.

Sometimes it is also useful to understand which fingering were intended for that piece (see Bach's fifth cello suite), because unless the player plays with a specific finger on a specific string, the result sounds wrong.