No, I mean vocal chamber music with transposing instruments. On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 1:35 PM, John Howell <[email protected]> wrote:
> At 1:04 PM -0500 10/1/12, Robert Patterson wrote: > >I switched back to concert pitch a few years ago. In my advancing years I > >want no unnecessary barriers. > > > Hi, Robert, and of course to each his own on > questions like this one. I personally find that > a concert pitch score presents me with > unnecessary barriers, since I want to see exactly > what the players in front of me see. But of > course I learned to read transposed scores > starting in junior high school or perhaps even > earlier, when I discovered my father's > Rimsky-Korsakov orchestration books. And I > continued to do so as I learned to play the > various instruments themselves. But since I'm > not a pianist, I've never felt restricted to just > two non-transposed clefs. > > > >Another reason is that in recent years I have > >started writing a lot of vocal music, and no singer should ever be > >presented a transposed score, not unless the singer has perfect pitch, or > >unless you don't want to hear the pitches you wrote. > > > I have to admit that this has me baffled. When > would you EVER write for voices as transposing > instruments?!!! Of course it's necessary to read > all 9 movable clefs in order to do any historical > research at all, but those aren't transpositions > and never have been. Once the tenor C-clef was > abandoned for choral tenor parts (post Brahms), > that left the plain G clef ambiguous and on > occasion confusing, as witness the efforts of > Novello and some other publishers to come up with > an alternative (TWO G clefs side-by-side, etc.), > but the tenor sub-8 G-clef solves that problem > nicely and without any ambiguity. Tradition > takes care of most of the rest. > > Note entry is another story, of course, and I > usually prefer to use concert pitch for that, but > for conducting a concert pitch score presents a > real barrier because I have to THINK about what > the notes would be for the player instead of > simply reading them as is. > > But to each his own. > > John > > > -- > John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music > Virginia Tech Department of Music > School of Performing Arts & Cinema > College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences > 290 College Ave., Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0240 > Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 > (mailto:[email protected]) > http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html > > "Machen Sie es, wie Sie wollen, machen Sie es nur schön." > (Do it as you like, just make it beautiful!) --Johannes Brahms > > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale > _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
