At 5:00 AM -0400 9/10/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Apart from the lack of surviving instruments at such high pitches (and the difficulty of playing extreme harmonics at these pitches) analysis of the counterpoint and instrumentation used by Bach in this work have led me to the conclusion that it must have been intended for the horn and not the trumpet. Just compare the relative positions of the violin, oboe and recorder at the opening and the "trumpet" part must be an octave lower. And before anybody points out that the recorder part is an octave too high, it was standard practice to treat recorders (and flutes) as if they played at four foot pitch, even though they were now notated at sounding pitch.
I'm not sure that any musical analysis could prove such an hypothesis, but as a practical matter it would solve a number of problems now without answers. I've read this speculation before, although I can't remember where. But I would have to actually HEAR this played by equally excellent players to be convinced, and it would probably have to be a natural horn because a modern horn played with modern technique would still blow the other soloists off the stage!
About recorder notation, yes, you are partially correct. Alto recorder IN SOME CASES (but not when reading from vocal scores) is now notated at pitch, and so is tenor recorder if you ignore the difference between treble clef and treble-sub-8 clef. The smaller and larger instruments are still notated at 4' pitch, an octave above the voice parts for which they are named.
In the Broadway score of The Wizard of Oz there is a brief passage marked "Recorder" in one of the reed books. It apparently means soprano recorder, but it is notated at pitch with multiple ledger lines, and is normally (perhaps always!) played on piccolo rather than recorder.
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
