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

[David Rogers]

Tim Roberts <address@hidden> writes:

> 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? 


Regardless of your (quite correct) distinctions between sense and 
nonsense in musical notation, what has been done with the brass in 
this score is the custom (in all music before the 20th century) 
and is therefore correct in all respects, despite its strange 
appearance. This is what Dvorak wrote, and is what the players 
expect to (and therefore need to) see.

A rough and possibly inaccurate explanation: The confusion comes 
from the fact that these instruments were originally (before the 
development of valves and special playing techniques) capable of 
only the notes in the harmonic series of their fundamental pitch, 
and that fundamental was always notated as a low C regardless of 
its actual sound. Players apparently went by the feel of the 
instrument according to its harmonic series, and their notation 
was intended as a harmonic-series guide, not as a representation 
of concert pitches. When they added tubing to the instrument, 
players regarded it as moving the instrument's low C, and never 
said to themselves "my low note is now an E" or whatever it might 
have been - the low note was always low C, and named as such, 
regardless of the sound.

Speculation on my part: Different notes in the harmonic series of 
a brass instrument, especially an instrument built without the 
benefit of modern technology, are out of tune in fairly 
predictable ways. Always knowing that (for example) your written 
high E had to be played sharper than the instrument wanted to play 
it, that your middle C would need to be played a bit on the low 
side, and that your high B flat was hopelessly out of tune and 
ought to be avoided, might have been convenient. In addition, one 
gets to know one's own instrument with all its possibilities and 
shortcomings. Thinking of "notes of the instrument" and NOT "notes 
of the scale" has distinct advantages in a situation like that.

--
David