At 7:26 PM -0400 5/30/09, Christopher Smith wrote:
I write sometimes for a local orchestra that mostly plays common-practice repertoire, and very few large works, though they have pops concerts sometimes (that's my job!) Three of the hornists only play with this orchestra, and whenever my parts come back after a concert, these three parts have every sharp and flat from the key signature pencilled in! Only the second hornist, who is an active freelancer as well, reads the parts with key signatures as is.
Most band hornists, on the other hand, have never learned to transpose but are quite good at reading (i.e. "remembering," which is what it is) key signatures. When I played horn I studied the orchestral excerpts books and taught myself to transpose--it was expected!--and insisted that the members of my section read the Eb band parts (about half the parts 50 years ago) on their F horns, as I did. If I put Eb parts in front of my community band players nowadays I don't think they'd have a clue! And since those are the players I recruit when our String Orchestra becomes a Chamber Orchestra, I'm very grateful for the publishers who make parts in modern transpositions and modern clefs available.
I except from these comments those music majors studying their instruments with competent teachers, who make sure they can handle all the transpositions, clefs, and everything else that goes into being a working professional, but even they may know the theories but have not had a whole lot of practice.
There are many differences between the orchestra and band worlds--just as many, I'd guess, as there are between the classical and jazz worlds. This is only one of them.
John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences 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 "We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition of jazz musicians. _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
