"David H. Bailey" wrote: > I don't quite follow the logic of that part of your argument, but I am > all in favor of printing 1/2 and 3/4 or 1, 2, 3, 4 if either will serve > the horn section better.
As a horn player I thoroughly second Lawrence Yate's plea. It has nothing to do with physically losing the part. It has everything to do with what parts will be played by the four players. If you combine 1/3, 2/4, you can easily get two people playing 1st and 2 people playing 4th. (Bored, tired, or hurried horn players often do not look at the part numbers at the top of the page.) I'm convinced the whole idiotic notion of combining 1/3 v. 2/4 arose from a generation of composition and theory teachers being guided by an error in Walter Piston's orchestration book. Every time I've challenged the practice, it seems that is the source that is thrown back at me. Piston apparently advocated the practice based on a passage in Mahler IV. What he utterly failed to mention is that Mahler scores routinely move the parts around on the staves according to musical dictates, but the "default" line-up was still 1/2 and 3/4, esp. in Mahler 4. In any case, Mahler's publisher along with just about every other publisher of common practice music provided separate individual parts for each player. This is by far preferable. If you must combine parts, use the 1/2 v. 3/4 pairing and where the parts differ, place them on separate staves even when rhythmically identical. (This approach is common with French publishers.) Any other approach leads to errors and frustration. -- Robert Patterson http://RobertGPatterson.com _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
