At 9:29 PM -0400 8/24/07, David W. Fenton wrote:
Now, in college-level bands, surely the tenor sax majors and many of the altos also double on soprano, so I don't see how that would be incredibly difficult to come by one player for it (just as it's not hard to put a Bb Clarinet player on Eb -- nobody can make Eb Clarinet sound good :).
What, we've run out of viola jokes?!! But that's not necessarily true. The facts that all clarinets are fingered the same and that their music is transposed to be read the same does not mean that the instruments of the extended clarinet family are all the same. It stands to reason that they are not, and therefore that a potential player has to spend time learning this "new" instrument. Which is exactly what happens in our wind ensemble, because our clarinet professor insists on it. It's considered prestigious to be the person selected to play the Eb soprano. Same thing is true for the alto, bass, and lower clarinets. Takes practice. And I suspect that the orchestral players who play Eb soprano on such things as "Symphonie Fantastique" might take offense. Of course ANY clarinet in any key has to be well made and well tuned, and schools do not tend to buy the most expensive professional instruments.
So it's not a matter of adding instruments to the basic ensemble but of omitting instruments that are not used in the particular piece, and substituting the closest reasonable instruments when the originals are obsolete.
Yes, I understand exactly what you're saying, and of course it's possible to delete instruments from a given ensemble, but you'd have to have a conductor who believes in doing so, and players who accept that it is a good idea to have a few minutes off.
Aaron's suggestion that it might be time for a HIP approach to earlier band music might be just the ticket, for those interested in that kind of thing, but that will always be a small minority.
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 _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
