The Whole Horn
Both bars are written pitch, on one scale. The upper bar fades rather than ending: the bottom of this instrument is exact, the top is not fixed at all.
The viola is written in alto clef. Its range has an exact bottom and an open top: the lowest note is C3, which is the lowest open string and therefore a property of the tuning rather than of the player. Above it the compass simply continues — there is no note at which the instrument stops.
That is why range figures for bowed strings disagree so often. Two references quoting different tops are usually not contradicting each other; they are describing orchestral writing and solo writing, which genuinely differ.
The viola reads at concert pitch, so the written range and the sounding range are the same notes: C3 upward either way. There is nothing to convert.
That is worth stating plainly because it is the question people actually ask. On a transposing instrument the two ranges are different and both get quoted, which is why range figures found in different places so often disagree by a whole interval. Here they cannot.
| Note | Written | Sounds |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest scored note | C3 | C3 |
| Lowest learner-comfortable note | C3 | C3 |
| Highest learner-comfortable note | F5 | F5 |
With no fixed top there is no scored span to measure a player against, so the useful figure is the other one: where a developing player is actually secure. The Whole Horn treats C3 to F5 as the learner-comfortable written compass of the viola.
That is a range, not a fence. It is where a developing player is secure enough that the note is not the hard part — not a boundary the instrument enforces and not a limit anyone should be told they have. Both ends move outward with practice, at different rates, and they move for different reasons at the top than at the bottom. A student who cannot reach F5 today is not outside the range; they are on their way to it.
There is no single highest note to give. This page publishes the exact bottom and declines to publish a top, because the top is not a property of the viola — it is a property of the passage and the player.
Like the violin, the viola has no fixed ceiling: the top is a question of position on the fingerboard, the player, and whether harmonics are used. What is exact is the bottom — the open C string, a fifth below the violin's lowest note, which is the whole reason the instrument exists as a separate voice.
The lowest note — C3 — comes from the viola's own tuning: its four strings are tuned in fifths to C3, G3, D4 and A4 — a fifth below the violin — so the lowest note available is the open C string.
No highest note is published here. A bowed string has no upper stop, and the figures different orchestration references give for the top disagree because they are describing different things — orchestral section writing, solo writing, or the physical limit of the fingerboard. Rather than pick one and present it as the range, this page gives the exact bottom and says plainly that the top is not fixed.
The learner-comfortable range — written C3 to F5 — is The Whole Horn's own instrument table, the one the app itself reads. Its header states the contract: lo/hi = WRITTEN MIDI, learner-comfortable.
Written and sounding are the same on the viola, which reads at concert pitch, so there is nothing to derive.
The viola's lowest note is C3, fixed exactly by its tuning — it is the lowest open string. There is no fixed highest note, because a bowed string has no upper stop. The Whole Horn treats C3 to F5 written as the learner-comfortable compass.
There is no single highest note for the viola. It is a bowed string: the top depends on how far up the fingerboard the player goes, and harmonics extend it further again, so published figures disagree. This page does not give a ceiling it cannot source. The Whole Horn treats F5 as the highest learner-comfortable written note.
The lowest note is C3, and unlike the top it is exact: it is the lowest open string, so the only way below it is to retune the string.
The Whole Horn's learner-comfortable written range for the viola is C3 to F5. That is where a developing player is secure, not a fence — the ends move outward with practice, and they move at different rates for different players.
Yes. The viola reads at concert pitch, so written and sounding are the same notes.
There is no fixed answer, because the viola has no fixed top note. From its lowest note, C3, the compass runs as high as the player takes it. The Whole Horn's learner-comfortable span is C3 to F5.
The Whole Horn plays all twelve major scales in the viola's own written pitch and alto clef, so what you read is what you play.
Get the app → Every instrument's range