At 5:09 PM -0400 7/5/07, Raymond Horton wrote:
I was never aware of such 80's belief. Up until this recent
scholarship, all I ever "knew" was that a trio of trombones: alto in
Eb, tenor in Bb and bass in F were the norm in Germany in the 1700s
and early 1800s until replaced by two tenors and a Bb/F bass in the
mid 1800s, more or less.
The idea of three tenors playing Mozart or Schubert choral parts is
still hard for me to imagine, and I am not sure I accept that as a
given in choral works for the alto part, if that is what Weiner is
claiming.
Shifrin doesn't seem to allow as much use of tenor on the first part
for these works.
I tend to agree, but don't forget that in the Classical period we're
still talking basically about sackbutts with small bores and small
bell flares. Sure, I suspect that things weren't exactly the same in
different places, because they never are! But I suspect that
anything approaching an 88H is a totally different instrument, and is
really not suitable for playing parts that APPEAR to have been
intended for alto. (I'm reading the long Shifrin article and finding
it fascinating.)
Andrew Stiller wrote:
On Jul 4, 2007, at 10:49 PM, Raymond Horton wrote:
Andrew Stiller, a few weeks back I said some recent scholarship
was heading toward alto, tenor and bass trombones all being in Bb
in the 18th and 19th centuries. I intended to send you some links
at the time but did not. Here are some...
Thanks very much for that. It strikes me as ironic that
conventional wisdom on this issue seems to have come full circle in
the last twenty years. Back in the '80s (and earlier) everybody
believed that the designations alto, tenor, and bass in 19th c.
trombone parts represented merely a vestige of earlier practice,
and that in fact all three parts were played on the tenor. This
latest research seems to bring us *almost* right back around to
that same idea.
I think that may depend heavily on who, exactly, you're talking about
in the '80s. Symphony trombonists, and those training them, may
indeed have thought in those terms, but it's a cinch that people in
early music were not, since most of us are looking at baroque and
classical practice from the starting point of the renaissance, and
not the high romantic period. And as the "authentic instrument"
concept moves ever forward in time, we're seeing both alto trombones
and rotary valve trumpets coming back into use. Not that there's
ever one and only one way to perform anything, but today's large bore
trombones didn't exist in the 19th century, let alone the 18th.
John
--
John R. Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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