Please see my other reply to David's post about how these notes CAN be
played on a valveless tenor. To expand:
The Eb down to C in question can be played in 4th through 7th position.
On modern instruments, played by players who do not cultivate this
series of notes, there is a noticeable timbre difference, but on smaller
bore instruments, the sound can be cultivated to match well. (Actually,
it can on large-bore instruments, too. Often when a player gives up an
F-attachment for the cleaner-blowing tenor without a valve, they will
work on this "falset" range to cover occasional low notes. I have heard
some very good players who can play in this range well enough to never
need a valve.)
Weiner has found more than one instance of documentation of knowledge of
this extended range back into the 18th century (possibly earlier, I
don't recall).
I have, on a couple of occasions, used these notes in performance when a
composer has forgotten that a bass trombonist has only two arms and has
written low valve notes to be played with a plunger or harmon mute +
wah-wah. I remember one particular instance, in which, in a middle of
harmon wah-wahs in the staff (playable) the bass trombone part jumped
down to a low Db (not playable, conventionally). I used the falset
note low Db in 6th position (which I do not practice much, since I have
valves on my bass trombone, but the result was passable). We recorded
that piece - I could refer you to the LP in a local library, if I
remember the name of it. (This was vivid to me as it was my first
recording session with the LO, as a sub at the tender age of 18!)
Now, the question that arises from your response, Andrew, is (even
where/when this "falset" technique might not have been known) which are
you gonna believe - the parts or the players and instruments? Yes,
there are some low notes in the classics*, but if Weiner has
established that the alto trombone was unknown in Vienna, and the bass
trombone quite rare, does the fact that composers wrote for them make
that fact invalid? I could show you several examples of contemporary
composers writing notes that are not playable on modern instruments
(such as a low B for tenor trombone - this has appeared almost with a
frequency to be considered "routine"). Is the fact that the tenor
trombone cannot conventionally play low B negated by the fact that
several composers have written it?
The most common trombone section of a community orchestra in the US in
the first third of the twentieth century also consisted of three tenor
trombones with no valve (check any picture from the time). Yet they
played the Beethoven Fifth, the Brahms First, etc. How did they do it?
They either played the high and low notes on the parts
*Yes, there are some low notes in the classics, but not as many as you
might think, when you start looking at them. You say 'Beethoven
routinely wrote down to C.' But I know of no Beethoven bass trombone
part that extends below F, including passages in _Fidelio_ and the Ninth
which studiously avoid obvious places for lower notes (the dark passage
in the second act which is the only real reason for trombones having to
sit through the rest of the opera extends down, in octaves, but jumps to
unison for the low D's, D#s and E's). As far as Mozart - I believe
there are a few low notes in _Don Giovanni_ (I don't have that part
here) but there is only one quarter note low D in _The Magic Flute_.
The choral pieces do not go any lower than the bass voice. My other
post discusses the Haydn _Creation_, which actually gives evidence for a
Bb bass trombone by going both too low and too high for the F bass trombone!
Raymond Horton
Bass Trombonist
Louisville Orchestra
Andrew Stiller wrote:
On Jan 20, 2009, at 7:38 PM, Ray Horton wrote:
... the most common trombone section of the classical era was three
Bb tenors.
Both Mozart and Beethoven (and at least a few early Romantics)
routinely write the bass trombone down to C. No valveless tenor can
play this note. So much for that theory.
Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://www.kallistimusic.com/
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