[LUTE] Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation)
Vance Wood [EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb: I think the difference that allows one to understand the vocal part with the instrumental part is the basic relationship between the tab. notation and the vocal. In tab, to my mind, most of the relationships (until you understand the voicing etc.) is vertical. It is easier to insert the vocal parts in this vertical relationship than in staff notation where the relationships are horizontal and in your mind you are trying to insert the voice into a moving target. hm, that might explain some awkward approaches toward, and reocordings of, style brise music, i. e. its perception as broken chords instead of broken melodies. Regards, Mathias -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation)
I think the difference that allows one to understand the vocal part with the instrumental part is the basic relationship between the tab. notation and the vocal. In tab, to my mind, most of the relationships (until you understand the voicing etc.) is vertical. It is easier to insert the vocal parts in this vertical relationship than in staff notation where the relationships are horizontal and in your mind you are trying to insert the voice into a moving target. I was once able to help a key board student understand Bach by showing them a horizontal approach to the parts as opposed to the standard two hand horizontal approach. I may have screwed them up for life but at the time it helped. Vance Wood. - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Marcus Merrin [EMAIL PROTECTED]; lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 12:05 PM Subject: Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation) Marcus, I can't say that I've found that tab has made it easier for me to sing at play at the same time - it seems to be more or less that same whether tab or notes for me. I have noticed, however, that its very easy for me to sing ABOVE the lowest note of whatever I'm playing, but very very difficult for me to sing below the instrument. Something in the brain... Perhaps the tab helped you out because it mostly only marks the start times of the notes you play on the lute so that your brain was able to see it as a series of events that you have little control of once the string is plucked. When we're singing, of course, we have a continuum of notes tied to breath control, etc. Modern notation more or less reflects this with the embedded rhythmic notation, dynamics, etc. Therefore, when you look at tab with a voice part, the brain is able think about them in two seperate catagories. When we play the lute (or guitar or piano) from pitch notation, we're still only performing a series of self-contained events, but the notation itself makes it LOOK indentical to the voice part. Maybe now that your brain has learned to differentiate between the two skills via tab reading, it can now do this regardless of what you actually see in front of you. Chris --- Marcus Merrin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I had a related experience which is probably not unique to the way *my* brain is wired. When I was a guitarist, I could never wrap my head around playing and singing at the same time from a vocal/instrument score.. I know many pianists and guitarists who have the same difficulty. Curiously, as soon as I started to learn lute tablature it all just fell into place pretty much overnight. I assume that staff and tab notation take slightly different paths through our mental processes because one is a graph of pitch vs. time and the other is a plot of finger position vs time. I guess pitch and finger position are sufficiently far apart in our heads not to interfere with one another the way pitch and speech do. The curious thing is that after this discovery, I found to my surprise that not only did my ability to sing and play from staff - voice/tab - lute emerge, but also that reading both from staff notation became easier and to my complete mystification, my previously very limited keyboard reading skills improved too. Has anyone else found that learning tab is the magic bullet for sightreading difficulties? Marcus Jon Murphy wrote: Tony, P.S. Does anyone else who dabbles in different instruments experience the same phenomenon as I do, one example of which is that I can play the gamba from alto clef, but I can't read it on the keyboard? TC Yes, in a sense. I play double strung harp (along with other instruments). My left hand has a reading problem (nothing to do with my brain g). Pieces written for the 2X will often use the treble clef for both lines, but as the instrument has 3 1/2 octaves I'm often reading the bass clef for the left hand, sometimes tranlating it up an octrave and sometimes in the written range. It involves a mental adjustment (and there are some small harp pieces that are all in one stave of the treble using up and down whatchumacallums (note flags) to indicate the hand. Best, Jon To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation)
Nicely said, But there is yet the question as to what note is correct. I'm sure we all know the format of the tempering of the natural scale, but that has put a memory scale into our heads that is the equal temperament piano scale. But you have made the point, the sound in one's head is the goal. The ascending and descending scales are different when dealing with other temperaments, or the natual scale. But most of us are indoctrinated to the sound of equal temperament - even in singing where the variations are infinite. There is no note that is correct, the Scot's pipes are in a limited mode, and the various whistles all have a bit of a variation in relative pitch. Nothing is perfect. I don't know the serpent, but I'm sure it all fits. The wind instruments, whether horn, trumpet, reed or whistle, all have fixed formats that can be bent a bit by fingering. The stringed instruments can be bent a bit by tuning, or on the fretted ones a bit of fussing behind the fret. It all comes back to the same thing, some instruments work off the modes and scales of the West, and some the less accurate (in the Pythagorean sense) of their own scales. Ir is fun to work with the quarter tones and the disharmonies. Best, Jon To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation)
I had a related experience which is probably not unique to the way *my* brain is wired. When I was a guitarist, I could never wrap my head around playing and singing at the same time from a vocal/instrument score.. I know many pianists and guitarists who have the same difficulty. Curiously, as soon as I started to learn lute tablature it all just fell into place pretty much overnight. I assume that staff and tab notation take slightly different paths through our mental processes because one is a graph of pitch vs. time and the other is a plot of finger position vs time. I guess pitch and finger position are sufficiently far apart in our heads not to interfere with one another the way pitch and speech do. The curious thing is that after this discovery, I found to my surprise that not only did my ability to sing and play from staff - voice/tab - lute emerge, but also that reading both from staff notation became easier and to my complete mystification, my previously very limited keyboard reading skills improved too. Has anyone else found that learning tab is the magic bullet for sightreading difficulties? Marcus Jon Murphy wrote: Tony, P.S. Does anyone else who dabbles in different instruments experience the same phenomenon as I do, one example of which is that I can play the gamba from alto clef, but I can't read it on the keyboard? TC Yes, in a sense. I play double strung harp (along with other instruments). My left hand has a reading problem (nothing to do with my brain g). Pieces written for the 2X will often use the treble clef for both lines, but as the instrument has 3 1/2 octaves I'm often reading the bass clef for the left hand, sometimes tranlating it up an octrave and sometimes in the written range. It involves a mental adjustment (and there are some small harp pieces that are all in one stave of the treble using up and down whatchumacallums (note flags) to indicate the hand. Best, Jon To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation)
Marcus, I can't say that I've found that tab has made it easier for me to sing at play at the same time - it seems to be more or less that same whether tab or notes for me. I have noticed, however, that its very easy for me to sing ABOVE the lowest note of whatever I'm playing, but very very difficult for me to sing below the instrument. Something in the brain... Perhaps the tab helped you out because it mostly only marks the start times of the notes you play on the lute so that your brain was able to see it as a series of events that you have little control of once the string is plucked. When we're singing, of course, we have a continuum of notes tied to breath control, etc. Modern notation more or less reflects this with the embedded rhythmic notation, dynamics, etc. Therefore, when you look at tab with a voice part, the brain is able think about them in two seperate catagories. When we play the lute (or guitar or piano) from pitch notation, we're still only performing a series of self-contained events, but the notation itself makes it LOOK indentical to the voice part. Maybe now that your brain has learned to differentiate between the two skills via tab reading, it can now do this regardless of what you actually see in front of you. Chris --- Marcus Merrin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I had a related experience which is probably not unique to the way *my* brain is wired. When I was a guitarist, I could never wrap my head around playing and singing at the same time from a vocal/instrument score.. I know many pianists and guitarists who have the same difficulty. Curiously, as soon as I started to learn lute tablature it all just fell into place pretty much overnight. I assume that staff and tab notation take slightly different paths through our mental processes because one is a graph of pitch vs. time and the other is a plot of finger position vs time. I guess pitch and finger position are sufficiently far apart in our heads not to interfere with one another the way pitch and speech do. The curious thing is that after this discovery, I found to my surprise that not only did my ability to sing and play from staff - voice/tab - lute emerge, but also that reading both from staff notation became easier and to my complete mystification, my previously very limited keyboard reading skills improved too. Has anyone else found that learning tab is the magic bullet for sightreading difficulties? Marcus Jon Murphy wrote: Tony, P.S. Does anyone else who dabbles in different instruments experience the same phenomenon as I do, one example of which is that I can play the gamba from alto clef, but I can't read it on the keyboard? TC Yes, in a sense. I play double strung harp (along with other instruments). My left hand has a reading problem (nothing to do with my brain g). Pieces written for the 2X will often use the treble clef for both lines, but as the instrument has 3 1/2 octaves I'm often reading the bass clef for the left hand, sometimes tranlating it up an octrave and sometimes in the written range. It involves a mental adjustment (and there are some small harp pieces that are all in one stave of the treble using up and down whatchumacallums (note flags) to indicate the hand. Best, Jon To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation)
interesting idea. i wonder if the difficulty you experience in singing while playing the guitar is due to the guitar being your first instrument. was it? having got over the hurdle of learning one instrument - any instrument - learning the second becomes more or less a case of adapting what you already know. this could free your mind to take singing on board as well. i can sing and play when i have to but play in this instance usually means strumming two-finger chords. notation is simply beyond me and learning by tab is a very slow, step by step procedure. luckily, all i'm interested in playing are early dance melodies. if i had to tackle anything more lengthly and complex i'd have to buy a foot stool ... and a music stand ... and then i'd have to get one of those finely crafted cabinets for sheet music ... where would it end? - bill --- Marcus Merrin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I had a related experience which is probably not unique to the way *my* brain is wired. When I was a guitarist, I could never wrap my head around playing and singing at the same time from a vocal/instrument score.. I know many pianists and guitarists who have the same difficulty. Curiously, as soon as I started to learn lute tablature it all just fell into place pretty much overnight. I assume that staff and tab notation take slightly different paths through our mental processes because one is a graph of pitch vs. time and the other is a plot of finger position vs time. I guess pitch and finger position are sufficiently far apart in our heads not to interfere with one another the way pitch and speech do. The curious thing is that after this discovery, I found to my surprise that not only did my ability to sing and play from staff - voice/tab - lute emerge, but also that reading both from staff notation became easier and to my complete mystification, my previously very limited keyboard reading skills improved too. Has anyone else found that learning tab is the magic bullet for sightreading difficulties? Marcus Jon Murphy wrote: Tony, P.S. Does anyone else who dabbles in different instruments experience the same phenomenon as I do, one example of which is that I can play the gamba from alto clef, but I can't read it on the keyboard? TC Yes, in a sense. I play double strung harp (along with other instruments). My left hand has a reading problem (nothing to do with my brain g). Pieces written for the 2X will often use the treble clef for both lines, but as the instrument has 3 1/2 octaves I'm often reading the bass clef for the left hand, sometimes tranlating it up an octrave and sometimes in the written range. It involves a mental adjustment (and there are some small harp pieces that are all in one stave of the treble using up and down whatchumacallums (note flags) to indicate the hand. Best, Jon To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html ___ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com
Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation)
I play the serpent and have fooled around a little with cornetto. With both of those instruments, the fingering only has a casual relationship to the pitch. The standard fingerings (usually) do make it easier to get the correct note, and some fingerings can make certain notes very difficult to hit, but most of the work is done by your lips. It's a bit like singing; you have to have the correct note in your head or you are unlikely to be within even a step or so. It makes them a lot more difficult to play than modern brass, but handy when you miss a fingering since you can usually get the correct note out anyway. I've even heard of a cornetto player who demonstrates this feature by playing an ascending passage while using the nominal fingerings for the corresponding descending passage. Guy - Original Message - From: Jon Murphy [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Howard Posner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2005 12:56 AM Subject: Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation) Howard, You have a point here, but if the point is that there is not a difference in the difficulty of a sound on different wind instruments then you are wrong. When I lost that best of instruments (due to age, cigareets, whuskey - and the wild, wild wimmen probably had nothing to do with it - but they were fun), lost the voice, I took to the penny whistle. (And there may be some on the lute list, and harp lists, that wish I'd stuck to it). No one can accuse the penny whistle of being complex - there is no embouchere to produce the sound, just blow. But yet there is a difference between instruments as to pitch shift. I have a collection of whistles, some cheap and some expensive. As I'm sure you know the whistle is basically a two octave instrument (can go more with skill) that changes octaves on the overblow. I have whistles, of the same basic pitch, that have a subtle octave break, but need a contining addition of wind to continue in the upper octave - and I have others that need a real push to jump from C to D (most whistles are D scale based), but then nothing additional to go to the top of the upper D scale. The same must apply to trumpets and cornetti, and the horns. I've not played them, but have to feel that the overall construction and pitching of the horn may not define it's particular comfortable pitch level. I believe Daniel is correct, although in the whistle of my experience the breath control is the defining factor, while in the trumpet/horn group the embouchere comes in. Best. Jon To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation)
P.S. Does anyone else who dabbles in different instruments experience ... I can play the gamba from alto clef, but I can't read it on the keyboard? TC sometimes, for me its a mental thing. One night I was playing tenor recorder in a small band, for live dance. We had planned a long set of free galliards, as librarian I had chosen several pieces from our repetoire, all were arranged on the stands, and off we went. I wasnt alone in having trouble, but I can only tell you what my problem was - brain lock at the changes between pieces, we were supposed to run it all together, with a continuous drum beat; but the problem for me was the various editions all were done to different degrees of 'reduction'. One was in 6/4, another 6/8, yet another in 3/4;2/4;6/4; 3/2 even. No problem in rehearsal, each piece considere seperatly. Yes, a case of not enough rehearsal, and, as librarian, I should have prepared performing editions of all of it, using common editorial practice for all. -- Dana Emery To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation)
Tony, P.S. Does anyone else who dabbles in different instruments experience the same phenomenon as I do, one example of which is that I can play the gamba from alto clef, but I can't read it on the keyboard? TC Yes, in a sense. I play double strung harp (along with other instruments). My left hand has a reading problem (nothing to do with my brain g). Pieces written for the 2X will often use the treble clef for both lines, but as the instrument has 3 1/2 octaves I'm often reading the bass clef for the left hand, sometimes tranlating it up an octrave and sometimes in the written range. It involves a mental adjustment (and there are some small harp pieces that are all in one stave of the treble using up and down whatchumacallums (note flags) to indicate the hand. Best, Jon To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation)
Howard, You have a point here, but if the point is that there is not a difference in the difficulty of a sound on different wind instruments then you are wrong. When I lost that best of instruments (due to age, cigareets, whuskey - and the wild, wild wimmen probably had nothing to do with it - but they were fun), lost the voice, I took to the penny whistle. (And there may be some on the lute list, and harp lists, that wish I'd stuck to it). No one can accuse the penny whistle of being complex - there is no embouchere to produce the sound, just blow. But yet there is a difference between instruments as to pitch shift. I have a collection of whistles, some cheap and some expensive. As I'm sure you know the whistle is basically a two octave instrument (can go more with skill) that changes octaves on the overblow. I have whistles, of the same basic pitch, that have a subtle octave break, but need a contining addition of wind to continue in the upper octave - and I have others that need a real push to jump from C to D (most whistles are D scale based), but then nothing additional to go to the top of the upper D scale. The same must apply to trumpets and cornetti, and the horns. I've not played them, but have to feel that the overall construction and pitching of the horn may not define it's particular comfortable pitch level. I believe Daniel is correct, although in the whistle of my experience the breath control is the defining factor, while in the trumpet/horn group the embouchere comes in. Best. Jon To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation)
Daniel F Heiman wrote: The point is that on brass instruments, pitch is in large part determined by the tension of the lip muscles. Let's say that we are talking about playing an 'a above the staff in modern treble clef. This is at least a moderately high note on either a modern or a Baroque valveless trumpet. To produce that note in the Tief-Kammerton environment, the player has to generate frequency of about 800 Hz. To produce that note in the Cornett-Ton environment, the player has to produce a frequency of around 940 Hz. The difference in terms of muscular effort required is quite substantial. But why would it be? In either case, he's playing the 11th harmonic on whatever horn he's playing. He should be doing the same thing with his embouchure (which is buzzing with his lips, not producing the frequency that comes out the bell) and the only thing that would change is the length of the horn he's blowing. The same buzz that produces the A above the staff on a trumpet in C will produce a written A on a trumpet in E flat, but it will sound the C a third higher. This is the same pitch difference, more or less, as there would be between tief kammerton and chorton. (Time out for those who may not know what Dan and I are talking about: The valveless trumpet for which Bach--and Beethoven and Mendelssohn--wrote always read a part written in C, and used longer or shorter lengths of inserted tubing to adjust the trumpet's length, and thus pitch, to whatever key it was playing in. The longest was in nominal B flat, the shortest in F.) If high notes were harder on a shorter horn, some composers would surely have written lower for the trumpet in F than for the trumpet in C. But I don't see that: I think Bach's trumpet parts, for example, always top out at written D above high C regardless of the actual pitch. Perhaps we've strayed a bit off topic? Let me try to reel it in. Trumpet parts were written in a sort of tablature, with the notes representing not pitch per se, but what the player needed to do. And the notation lent itself to transposing by picking up a bigger or smaller instrument, just as a lutenist might transpose a lute song tablature by playing it on a D or A lute instead of a G lute. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation)
You are perfectly correct - but thank God I'm not a professional, expected to do all that transposition on sight (sorry, Michael - site-) reading. P.S. Does anyone else who dabbles in different instruments experience the same phenomenon as I do, one example of which is that I can play the gamba from alto clef, but I can't read it on the keyboard? TC - Original Message - From: Howard Posner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2005 10:08 PM Subject: Historical pitch (was lute notation) Tony Chalkley wrote: If you happen to be playing with a wind instrument, you've kinda got to go with its pitch. This I think is what gave rise to Baroque pitch being lower, not the note at which strings break. The premise is correct, of course, but the historical conclusion doesn't necessarily follow. Say it's 1695 and you want to use the newfangled woodwinds like the oboe and bassoon, which come from Paris and are at Parisian pitch, about A=392, or a whole tone below 440. You can lower everything to that pitch, but you can also raise the pitch to 440 and use the woodwinds as transposing instruments. Or you can have two sets of pitches a whole tone apart, as was the case in Bach's Leipzig where there was high pitch in church to match the organ, and low chamber pitch. I certainly agree that strings are not likely to be the driving force in a systemic raising or lowering of pitch. It's a fairly easy thing to put on thinner or thicker strings to change pitch, but it's a time-consuming and expensive job to re-pitch an organ, and a hopeless task with a woodwind. HP To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation)
What was the low pitch in Bach's Germany - 392? SS Salvatore Salvaggio http://www.Salvaggio.50megs.com Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation)
Sal Salvaggio wrote: What was the low pitch in Bach's Germany - 392? The question assumes there was one low pitch in all of Germany, which is not the case. Here are a couple of web sources on the subject. I don't vouch for either of them. From http://shop.store.yahoo.com/ohscatalog/newbacorinst.html: The new Bach Organ at Thomaskirche in Leipzig, where J. S. Bach was active for 27 years, replicates the one that Bach knew as a youngster in his hometown of Eisenach where his uncle was the City Organist. Built in 1696-1707 by Georg Christoph Stertzing to a 60-stop specification drawn by Bach¹s uncle for St. George¹s Church, the organ is long extinct. But, because it must have had strongly formative influences on J. S. B., the replication of it by organbuilder Gerald Woehl of Marburg has drawn much interest. Among its many features is tuning to the ³choir pitch² of Bach¹s time, A=465 Hz., as well as a device which lowers the pitch of the entire organ two semitones to baroque chamber pitch, A=415 Hz, for performance with instruments. From www.dolmetsch.com/defsb.htm throughout his life, Bach worked with instruments at a number of pitches including Cornett-Thon (around 470 Hz.), Kammerton (about 418 Hz.) and Tief Kammerton (403-395 Hz.). The notation of various voices varied, depending on where he was at the time (all pitches given as a' in Hz) Weimar (1708-1717): the organ was at Cornett-Thon, and during his first year he wrote a part for an 'oboe' a major second higher than the other voices (organ, vocal, strings), implying that the strings and vocals were pitched to the organ, and that the oboe was pitched a note lower than that of the organ, pitched at the highest version of Kammerton. By the end of 1714, this oboe disappears and has been replaced with an 'hautbois' which was pitched a minor third lower, as were the bassoon and the recorder. Their pitch was Tief-cammerton. All his Weimar works show this disposition Köthen (1717-1723): the pitch is the same for all instruments. In trying to establish what it was, the vocal scores help. The range of the parts is unusually high, and when Bach used Köthen material in Leipzig, he lowered the vocal parts to Tief Kammerton. One can assume therefore that this was the Köthen pitch. The problematic trumpet part in the 2nd Brandenburg would be much easier on an instrument at Tief Kammerton. [I have no clue why it would make any difference to the trumpet player what the pitch was, since his notes would be the same --HP] Leipzig (1723-1750): surviving sheet music for most of his vocal works shows that strings, vocals and woodwinds were all pitched at Kammerton, while the organ and the brass were higher by a major second. Bach's predecessor Kuhnau had mentioned in an earlier letter to Mattheson that the organs of the Thomas and Nikolai churches were at Cornett-Thon. But he had woodwinds at his disposal at both normal Kammerton and Tief Kammerton pitch, which therefore differed in pitch by a minor second. From the time of his appointment at Leipzig until 4th July 1724, Bach wrote a number of works in Tief Kammerton. In the 1730s, he transposed the Magnificat from E flat (Es) to D, most likely because he had no longer had to deal with woodwinds pitched at Tief Kammerton. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation)
On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 21:23:00 -0700 Howard Posner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Sal Salvaggio wrote: What was the low pitch in Bach's Germany - 392? The question assumes there was one low pitch in all of Germany, which is not the case. Here are a couple of web sources on the subject. snip Bach worked with instruments at a number of pitches including Cornett-Thon (around 470 Hz.), Kammerton (about 418 Hz.) and Tief Kammerton (403-395 Hz.). The notation of various voices varied, depending on where he was at the time (all pitches given as a' in Hz) snip Köthen (1717-1723): the pitch is the same for all instruments. In trying to establish what it was, the vocal scores help. The range of the parts is unusually high, and when Bach used Köthen material in Leipzig, he lowered the vocal parts to Tief Kammerton. One can assume therefore that this was the Köthen pitch. The problematic trumpet part in the 2nd Brandenburg would be much easier on an instrument at Tief Kammerton. [I have no clue why it would make any difference to the trumpet player what the pitch was, since his notes would be the same --HP] Howard: Next time we see each other, remind me to bring along a trumpet so you can experience it for yourself. ;-) The point is that on brass instruments, pitch is in large part determined by the tension of the lip muscles. Let's say that we are talking about playing an 'a above the staff in modern treble clef. This is at least a moderately high note on either a modern or a Baroque valveless trumpet. To produce that note in the Tief-Kammerton environment, the player has to generate frequency of about 800 Hz. To produce that note in the Cornett-Ton environment, the player has to produce a frequency of around 940 Hz. The difference in terms of muscular effort required is quite substantial. Note that the commentary says that only the vocal parts were transposed, so the page handed the trumpet player was still the same. What he would do is use a crook and maybe a longer set of tuning bits at Tief-Kammerton than he would for the other pitch standards in order to make his set of harmonics line up with the notes he is being asked to play. Daniel -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
