{Spam} Re: {Spam} Re: {Spam} Re: [Finale] {Spam} OT: Historical Horn Notation Question
At 11:29 PM -0500 10/29/10, Robert Patterson wrote: I don't personally know a single professional horn player who works from F-transposed parts. Yes, and that's what the folks on the jazz and commercial side need to understand. Part of an orchestral horn player's pre-professional education is working through the orchestral excerpts books and learning to play from original notation in any reasonable transposition at sight. The worst I ever ran into was in high school, when I was still a horn player, and was playing 4th in a university conducting class orchestra. One of the Brahms symphonies has horn in B, a tritone transposition!!! (And yes, it was REALLY for horn in B, or H, and not in Bb basso!) My problem is that in our small-town-with-a-large-university, when I recruit horn players for our chamber orchestra they are often band players, not orchestral players, and they have NOT learned to transpose from original parts, so I've had to learn where to obtain the transposed parts (and sometimes to transpose them myself for those players). But it's like the need to provide euphonium parts in band arrangements in both bass clef and transposed treble clef. You can argue all you want about why it shouldn't be necessary, but in practice it is, and we give the players what they want to see. 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:john.how...@vt.edu) 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 Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
{Spam} Re: {Spam} Re: {Spam} Re: [Finale] {Spam} OT: Historical Horn Notation Question
On 30 Oct 2010 at 10:01, Florence + Michael wrote: The last time I had to mark up a set of orchestral parts from a critical Bärenreiter edition of a Mozart opera, there were two sets of horn parts. The horn players told me they preferred to use the parts written as in the original, without key signatures. Both parts of that don't surprise me, i.e., that Bärenreiter provides alternate parts in modern notation, and that the players prefer the original! As to David's original question, I would think that the key signature was just a mistake made by a careless engraver. This is my conclusion at this point, but it's unusual to find such a- musical things in engraving, in my experience. I have come to be believe that most engravers were fine musicians with good musical judgment, and served as another layer of editing to make the readings clearer and better. This particular edition is not from a major publisher, so I've not seen anything to compare it to. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: {Spam} Re: {Spam} Re: {Spam} Re: [Finale] {Spam} OT: Historical Horn Notation Question
As far as horn transpositions go, the worst are not the Brahms parts in H. The worst are the Wagner parts that change transposition every few bars - part of the early experimentation in which Wagner treated valves as quick-change crooks. In the first 16 bars of the first horn part of the famous Prelude to Act 3 of _Lohengrin_ there are five transposition changes. And, yes, pros prefer to read the original version of that, also, as a rule. Sure, nowadays there is no reason not to include the transposed F horn parts in any new printed editions, but teachers should continue to teach the players to grow and not use them. Same with Bb trumpets, and bass clef trombone parts. The players need to be able to read the thousands of editions out there which do not have substitute parts, unless they want to put severe limits on their musical contribution for their entire musical lives. Both treble and bass clef euphonium parts are always necessary in band - but that's a different tradition. Good players will want to learn the other clef, so more music will be available to them, but others can continue happily playing in bands only with their beginning clef if they wish. Actually, a euphonium player benefits by learning bass, treble (Bb), treble (C), and tenor clefs, as well as F horn transposition. That way he or she can jump into many situations in which a euphonium part is not included but in which a horn or some other instrument is missing, can read solo music for voice or any other instrument, etc. etc. One can get old just waiting around for that occasional euphonium gig. Raymond Horton Composer, Arranger Bass Trombonist, Louisville Orchestra Minister of Music, Edwardsville (IN) UMC VISIT US at rayhortonmusic.com On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 1:00 PM, John Howell john.how...@vt.edu wrote: At 11:29 PM -0500 10/29/10, Robert Patterson wrote: I don't personally know a single professional horn player who works from F-transposed parts. Yes, and that's what the folks on the jazz and commercial side need to understand. Part of an orchestral horn player's pre-professional education is working through the orchestral excerpts books and learning to play from original notation in any reasonable transposition at sight. The worst I ever ran into was in high school, when I was still a horn player, and was playing 4th in a university conducting class orchestra. One of the Brahms symphonies has horn in B, a tritone transposition!!! (And yes, it was REALLY for horn in B, or H, and not in Bb basso!) My problem is that in our small-town-with-a-large-university, when I recruit horn players for our chamber orchestra they are often band players, not orchestral players, and they have NOT learned to transpose from original parts, so I've had to learn where to obtain the transposed parts (and sometimes to transpose them myself for those players). But it's like the need to provide euphonium parts in band arrangements in both bass clef and transposed treble clef. You can argue all you want about why it shouldn't be necessary, but in practice it is, and we give the players what they want to see. 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:john.how...@vt.edu) 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 Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
{Spam} Re: {Spam} Re: {Spam} Re: [Finale] {Spam} OT: Historical Horn Notation Question
On 10/29/2010 3:06 PM, Chuck Israels wrote: Curious - why is the convention not to have key signatures in horn parts, when all other transposing instruments have them? What is the use of this convention? Historically, trumpets, horns and timpani didn't have key signatures. This is back before valves on the horns and trumpets. Their music was all written in the key of C and they were told which key their instruments needed to be in, and it all worked out just fine. The horns held out against the use of key signatures even when valves were added, but trumpets and other transposing instruments got them. I think it was because the horn players were the kings of the brass section in the orchestras before the advent of valves because they got the juicy melodic parts. -- David H. Bailey dhbai...@davidbaileymusicstudio.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
