On Jun 21, 2006, at 10:49 PM, John Howell wrote:
Meanwhile the bass trombone is asked to play the D below that--the
bottom D on the piano. I heard a performance of this w. the Buffalo
Philharmonic where the most amazing blat came out there--just what I
think Berg wanted; but to get it that loud, the 4th trb. player was
using a contrabass trb. for the whole part.
I would think that if it were "Just what ... Berg wanted," he would
have specified contrabass. I suspect that he knew exactly what he
wanted, and what it would sound like on the instrument specified.
It's quite clear however that he *didn't* know what he was doing. He
specifies three tenor trombones and one bass. The tenors are all
instructed to play a fortissimo "Pedalton" on a pitch that can in fact
only be played as a weak privileged frequency. It is a neat irony that,
had the first trombone been designated an alto, it could have played
this same note as a true pedal--but it was not so designated. All that
being the case, it is not at all clear that his instruction to the
btrb to play the same note an octave lower was a fully informed
decision.
Another bit of confusion: I think that a lot of the very wide-bore,
big-bell btrbs. that some of you have been discussing are the same
thing that I have been calling an F contrabass trombone. If there is a
distinction betw. the two, I don't know what it is. In my book I use
the term cbtrb. to refer only to the "true" contrabass in BBb, with
double-barreled slide, or the valved equivalent; but following
discussions last year with people on the contrabass list, I have been
persuaded that any wide-bore trombone that can readily play down to the
piano's bottom A, with no gaps, should be considered a contrabass
trombone. Since there are a lot of professional trombonists gathered
here, I'd like to ask how and where they themselves draw the line.
Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
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