At 9:37 PM -0500 10/12/12, Robert Patterson wrote: > >That said, if you can't read C scores, there's a whole lot of important >literature that is a closed book to you.
But even if you can, there is information that SHOULD be obvious but is hidden behind the concert pitch score. Case in point. Prokofiev, "Peter & the Wolf." Concert pitch score. I recruited the wind section for our community orchestra, and I wanted to tell the clarinetist which instruments he would need. But Prokofiev did not designate the part (in the score, which is all I had to look at) as either Bb or A clarinet, just "clarinet." He could have, easily enough, but he did not, and it makes a difference on the "Cat" theme. And without seeing the transposed part that the player would have seen, the only way I could figure it out was to go through note by note to check for low Dbs!!!! What should have been a simple answer to a simple question was hidden, and even when I found a low Db (concert) I had to guess that there were no instrument changes throughout the clarinet part. I agree that each kind of score has its place and its use, but as a conductor (I was not on this particular concert) I want the necessary information in front of me on the page, and that means seeing the parts exactly as the players will see them. Admittedly my area of special interest happens to be early music rather than atonal or non-tonal music, so my experience in that area is very limited. But well over 90% of ALL music that's performed day in and day out IS tonal and does use key signatures and functional harmony. And part of my frustration is the simple fact that even with parents who were both music educators, I was never exposed to the system of 9 movable clefs (OK, 3 clefs placed in 9 different ways on the staff) that was used, taught, and understood for centuries, until I hit graduate school. (Except of course for alto clef, since I played viola from around the age of 9.) And with that late start I still get thrown by soprano, mezzo-soprano, and baritone clefs, and have to decode tenor clef, all of which Nadia Boulanger was still teaching through the mid-20th century. I still have to think of mezzo-soprano clef (C on the 2nd line) in terms of horn in F, which I learned to read and transpose in junior high school! 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
