At 4:33 PM +0200 8/24/07, Daniel Wolf wrote:
I have a general aesthetic question for people involved in bands. Is there a rationale beyond the pedagogical for wanting band scores to meet some prescribed contemporary and standardized instrumentation? Might there not be some legitimate musical reasons for omitting certain instruments or requiring others, or for allowing or disallowing optional doublings or playing cue note? If someone has articulated a case for a particular standard for band instrumentation, I'd certainly be interested in reading it.
You've touched on a sore point, Daniel, and it is an important one. Fundamentally, there is no prescribed instrumentation for the concert band, in the sense that there is for the orchestra. And this forces band composers and arrangers into a situation where they may want certain specific tone colors, but cannot be assured of having those instruments and players available. Which means, in turn, that they must cross-cue important passages, or double them more thickly than they might want to, to make sure that the musical elements will be there even though the preferred tone color will not.
This relates, in general, to the lower instruments in each section. Alto, tenor, and bari saxes are almost always available, but bass is not, nor is soprano. Bb clarinets abound, but one might not find an Eb soprano, Eb alto, Eb bass or BBb contrabass. One may want true bass trombone, but instead have only 3rd trombone. And one may want true cornets and flugelhorns, but will have only trumpets. And one may or may not have any oboes at all, more than one bassoon, and probably not English horn or contrabassoon.
In the case of orchestras, the idea is to "play as scored," which means that if additional instruments are needed for a particular composition, the orchestra manager hires the additional players. Very few concert bands are in any position to do the same. The only exceptions are (a) those which consider themselves to be truly professional and WILL hire additional players; (b) University wind ensembles for which the school owns the more exotic instruments and can assign students to learn to play them; or (c) ensembles of fixed instrumentation, such as traditional brass bands.
There are also traditions involved. Some bands use double bass, others do not. The USAF Band has long used cellos; most bands do not. Baritones and euphoniums are used interchangeably in the U.S., and the special sound of the cornet has all but disappeared.
Of course one can always CHOOSE to omit certain instruments, as indeed orchestra composers can also do, but fundamentally band players want to be playing all the time on everything (as long as there are enough rests to rest the lips!). I'm sure that individual publishers have their own "standard" band instrumentations, but the problem is that none of them is truly a "standard."
John -- John R. Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
