Re: wind instrument transposition (was Good work, Keith!)

[Tim Roberts]

I hope you will permit me to flog this dead horse a bit more.

Tim Reeves wrote:
> But different horns were chosen not because of the difference in tone 
> quality (so much), but simply to fit into the key of the piece, "back in 
> the day". There's no reason to write horn in D except that the piece is 
> written in D.

I agree with you, but that's simply not the case here.  The first
movement of the Dvorak is in concert G, and he's writing for horns in C
and E.  Both of those REQUIRE key signatures.  Consider if the piece had
started with a major scale.  For the concert instruments, that requires
no written accidentals.  The F is sharped from the key signature.  Now,
no matter what you argue, a horn in E playing that scale has to finger
an Eb major scale.  If the key signature is Eb, no accidentals are
required.  But with no key signature, I have to put accidental flats on
B, E, and A.  That's what strikes me as odd.  The horn must play a
written Eb.  Why do it with accidentals, and not the key signature?

Even if I forgive the situation with horns (which have always been a bit
odd ;), that doesn't explain the trumpets, which are in the same boat. 
It just doesn't make sense.

By the way, the situation you describe also applied to clarinets during
Mozart's day.  An orchestral clarinetist was expected to have clarinets
in A, Bb, and C (just like today, as it happens), and there was an
unwritten rule that you never wrote music for clarinet with a key
signature with more than 2 flats or more than 1 sharp.  But, you always
wrote a key signature!

Now, there is another possibility -- one which I was trying to allude to
in my original message.  We are assuming this score matches Dvorak's
autograph.  It is quite possible that this is simply a "bug" in Keith's
transcription.  I was trying to establish whether there was a 19th
Century precedent for this.
 
> When Haydn, or in this case, Dvorak (who continues the conventions past 
> the time when it was necessary to do so, the valved horn coming into being 
> in the 1830s) writes for four horns, two in E and two in C, it's so that 
> he can get notes that would require more stopping (right hand horn 
> technique), without the stopping.

Understood, but that still does not explain the lack of a key signature
for horns and trumpets.  I completely agree that a piece in G, written
for a horn in G, requires no key signature.  That's not the case here.

-- 
Tim Roberts, address@hidden
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.