[Trombone-l] trombones and choral music

[Howard Weiner]

At 20:22 30.04.2007 +0000, james meador wrote:

>Yes, the 'bass trombone' Schubert wrote for was not really a bass 
>trombone but rather a large bore tenor trombone pitched in the key 
>of Bb.  Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven wrote with the same instrument 
>in mind even though their parts all specify 'bass trombone' and 
>Schubert specifies trombone III.

Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven as a rule also specify "trombone III" 
and not "bass trombone." -- Modern scores are not reliable here, not 
even the supposedly "Urtext" complete editions. You have to consulte 
the Critical Report (often at the back of the volume, but sometimes 
published separately) and look for the section on "Sources." There 
you'll find that Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven inevitably labelled 
their trombone parts "Trombone I," "Trombone II," and "Trombone III" 
or some variant thereof (i.e., "Trombone Imo," "Trombone 2do," 
"Trombone IIIzo," etc.


>True bass trombones were pitched either in F or G.

Yes and no! In many seventeenth-, eigtheenth- and even 
nineteenth-century sources it is a B-flat instrument that is 
expressly labelled "bass trombone." The trombones in D and E 
(seventeenth century) and later E-flat, F, and G are inevitably 
referred to as "Quartposaunen," regardless of whether they were a 
fourth, fifth, or third below the tenor. On the other hand, some 
references to "Bass trombone" do indeed indicate an instrument 
pitched lower than the tenor, but such references seem to be few and 
far between.

Howard



--
Howard Weiner
h.weiner at online.de
http://howard-weiner.de/

Tosca jumped to a conclusion.