On 06 Jan 2004, at 07:56 PM, Christopher BJ Smith wrote:
At 6:47 PM -0500 1/06/04, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
In a message dated 06/01/2004 23:44:39 GMT Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
The conductor (who is looking at the score) wants to know what the piece SOUNDS like....so write everyting at sounding pitch. And emphasise this on the cover "SCORE IN C" (I've yet to hear a complaint that this isn't obvious enough)
Personal view - I hate scores in concert pitch - I want my score to match exactly what the players have in front of them, quite apart from wanting to see where in the instrument's register the parts lie.
All the best,
Lawrence
I have to agree. Plus there is the convention of octave-transposing instruments in the WRITTEN octave in the score, rather than the sounding octave, which tends to negate the philosophy behind the conductor seeing the sounding pitch. Otherwise one has tens of ledger lines in glock, xylo, piccolo, and bass parts.
This problem is easily avoided by using the octave-transposed clefs -- such as the 8vb treble clef used for tenors in vocal music. You would use the same clef for guitar. You would use the 8vb bass clef for bass and contrabassoon, the 8va treble clef for xylophone and piccolo, and the 15ma treble clef for glock. Voilą -- everything in concert pitch, and no more ledger lines than a transposed score (at least, for those parts).
Of course, one might object to using a concert pitch score for other reasons, but -- absolutely no offense to Chris intended -- this particular objection strikes me as kinda trivial.
- Darcy
Well, the problem with octave clefs is that those instruments DON'T read in those clefs, they read in regular treble and bass clef, and use of an octave clef for say, double bass, (or even worse, guitar or glock, for which parts are routinely notated in wrong octaves) would result in a host of questions about what octave was actually intended. I wouldn't be going on about it if I hadn't already had bad experiences with octave clefs and wrong octaves in general. I don't think the objection is trivial at all, especially when a conductor who is not the arranger has to field questions about it. That's the main reason I prefer transposed scores, the conductor has EXACTLY what the player sees, and knows what to tell him as a result. The common transpositions of Bb, F, Eb, and occasionally G are trivial enough to learn, and most importantly, are strictly bone-stock standard in most repertoire. I realize that transposed scores are more of a pain when they don't have key signatures, but I would still prefer them in either case.
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