Re: Concert pitch question (confused ex-tuba player)

[antlists]

On 17/09/2021 22:58, Michael Seifert wrote:
>         Trombone player here.
>
>         You and I play instruments that are in concert pitch.  This means that when 
> you & I look at a C printed on the page, and move our fingers/slide/lips to 
> play it, a C comes out of our horns.

Nitpick here - our instruments belong to the trumpet family, not the 
horn ...
>         Finally, note that trumpet players are perfectly used to this 
> transposition, to the extent that “C trumpet” parts (i.e. trumpet parts in 
> concert pitch) are a rarity and a nuisance, particularly if you’re not used to 
> older orchestral repertoire.

Unless you really do have a C trumpet - I believe they do exist.

>  If you’re planning to give this part to a trumpet player, leave it as it is;  
> they’ll know what to do with it.  Horns are more used to doing weird 
> transpositions on the fly, but “Horn in F” is still the most common, so there’s 
> no real need to transpose this for them either.  The only reason to transpose 
> these parts into concert pitch would be to play it with other concert-pitch 
> instruments (like other low brass players.)
Note that I believe this slightly odd setup historically comes from the 
fact that the trombone (or rather sackbut) was written in concert 
because it could play chromatically since before the dawn of "classical" 
music, while most brass instruments could only play arpeggios until the 
end of the true classical era (Mozart's horn concertos were written for 
natural horn), and so were written in the key of C for convenience.

And it is now useful in that let's take a trumpet player - they can in 
the middle of a piece switch between Bb trumpet/cornet, D trumpet 
(popular with Handel, or was it Haydn), and repiano (Eb) cornet, without 
having to remember which fingering goes with which written note - the 
music has been transposed so C is always the open note.

And that's why brass bands are all written as transposing treble clef. 
It's normal over a career for players to switch between instruments, or 
play a couple of different instruments (eg Bb/Eb cornets) in a single 
concert. That way they don't have to relearn the fingering every time 
they switch instruments - and that includes the trombones! (Bass 
trombone excepted.)

Cheers,
Wol