Interesting and thoughtful response. Thanks. In Berlioz' treatise on orchestration, he comments (actually I think it was from Strauss when he edited it) that horn players would rather transpose than read a key signature. Speaking for modern horn players, I think most of us (but not all) would disagree with that statement.
But the generation to which he was referring was the one that made the transition from hand horn to valve horn. For them transposition was normal and key sigs were not. The result is music from a few composers, Struass and Wagner are examples, that is more difficult than usual to transpose because it is very chromatic and the diatonic, general interval methods that work well in earlier music do not work as well. Do you think that this is a similar transitional phenomena? Or maybe one of those oddities of music notation which continue even though it's initial purpose is lost in history? Richard Smith > > > Perhaps if you observed it in two successive readings of essentially > the same music, but with a different presentation, it would make more > sense to you. I think musicians react to what they see. Hand-copied > music of a certain style brings out familiar aspects of the music to > some musicians. We all want to make the correct impression on the > musicians reading our music, and an inkpen font helps that. > > Sometimes. > > In some ways. > > > _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
