Very refreshing to hear that, Steve. Prior to my playing and teaching in Rome, Italy, I supplemented my scholarship at Juilliard by being a teaching fellow in the solfegge dept. (Ear Training Dept., actually). When I got to Italy, I was amazed (and humiliated) by how much better at clef reading my students were than I, all of whom applied clef transposition to their horn playing. Of course, they also thought always in concert pitch, naturally reading normal F horn parts in mezzo-soprano clef. Their mental imaging of the proper key signature was second nature. The "old school" way works very well.
William Vacchiano, the legendary principal trumpet of the New York Philharmonic, was a great advocate for "number" transposition, which first requires very fluid command of scales. He put numbers (scale degrees) to each written pitch and mentally applies them to the new key. He was quite brilliant at it. It works well for horn with the exception 9at least for me) of the occasional Wagner Opera which sometimes requires many changes in the course of a single piece. What I like most about clef transposition, is that you are always calling what you see the actual pitch that is sounding (minus accidentals). Half of my students in Italy had perfect pitch, partly I believe due to their ability to recognize any given line as "DO" (always fixed at C). O. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, January 14, 2005 12:55 PM To: horn@music.memphis.edu Subject: [Hornlist] Re: transposing When I taught 5th grade, we did transposition right from the beginning. No problem, the students also did solfege, thus understood the functions, root, 5th etc. The real secret of teaching something like that (anything really) is to start with the sound FIRST, then show the student what it looks like later. Do it the other way round and you'll just have some very confused students. - Steve Mumford _______________________________________________ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/pandolfi%40deerfield.edu _______________________________________________ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
