Tim Roberts <t...@probo.com> 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
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