Transposing

[VodkaDilc]

One of the horrors of playing the organ for school assemblies year after year (at an ungodly hour, at least from the vantage point of retirement) was beginning to play a familiar hymn in the usual key, then glancing at the music halfway through verse one and realising the hymn book has it in another key. Then there's no option but to continue transposing - easier to do at mid-day than it is at 8.30am.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Interesting - there must be some clever mathematics behind the positioning of the frets I guess. So probably ratios rather than just a shift in frequencies. If moving the capo up to each fret position gives an exact semitone raise, then of course it's possible to transpose easily. Is it really that acccurate, across all the strings?

I have never had or played a guitar, so didn't know this. Interesting.

It's accurate for most uses - putting a capo on is like putting a finger across all six strings at once, so, for the first fret, instead of the E A D G B E of the open strings, you get F Bb Eb Ab C F (which makes for easier playing certain keys if all you're doing is giving a broken or strummed chord accompaniment to a singer or in a band). Move the Capo up to the next fret, and the "open" strings become F# B E A C# F#. And so on.

The quality of sound tends to get compromised the higher up the fretboard you go - in that photo, it looks as if Johnson is Capoed at Bb Eb Ab Db F Bb which will make a sound more like that of a Ukulele than a guitar (even if you play the strings in the right place!)

[cloughie]

It's accurate for most uses - putting a capo on is like putting a finger across all six strings at once, so, for the first fret, instead of the E A D G B E of the open strings, you get F Bb Eb Ab C F (which makes for easier playing certain keys if all you're doing is giving a broken or strummed chord accompaniment to a singer or in a band). Move the Capo up to the next fret, and the "open" strings become F# B E A C# F#. And so on.

The quality of sound tends to get compromised the higher up the fretboard you go - in that photo, it looks as if Johnson is Capoed at Bb Eb Ab Db F Bb which will make a sound more like that of a Ukulele than a guitar (even if you play the strings in the right place!)

No no no no no not Boris with a little ukulele in his hand, then maybe that is better than having the leadership of the country!

[Dave2002]

No no no no no not Boris with a little ukulele in his hand, then maybe that is better than having the leadership of the country!

What would you have him do? Clean windows perhaps!

[cloughie]

What would you have him do? Clean windows perhaps!

Running a laundry!

[Dave2002]

Running a laundry!

Oh Woo! I mean Wu.

[Dave2002]

No

But it's all a compromise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRsS...&frags=pl%2Cwn

This one is perhaps more helpful- https://youtu.be/XT4oOYj4SwQ

[Pabmusic]

Thanks for the replies to my question about clarinets. I can confirm that my copy of the Mozart Concerto with piano accompaniment has the piano part in B flat.

I was wondering whether there is something about the tone of a C-clarinet that Beethoven preferred over the B flat instrument. In the Fifth Symphony, for example, the first three movements (C Minor, A flat Major and C Minor) are scored for B-flat clarinet whereas in the finale, in C major, he switches to C-clarinet. I would have thought that by 1808 a clarinetist would be capable of playing a C major piece on a B flat instrument.

Part of the answer lies in the amount of plumbing necessary to cover the 'break' effortlessly. In 1808 that was not yet optimised (and wouldn't be for almost a century), so that transposing on a B-flat clarinet might well have meant not only awkward fingerings but weak notes with dodgy tuning in the wrong places.

[Pabmusic]

I've never knowingly heard a C clarinet from the early 19th Century - but I have heard a (more) modern version, which the player described as "a bit 'plastic-y'". Perhaps (and a big caveat around this conjecture) the C instrument was a bit more "piercing" - better in keeping with the piccolo in that Finale?

A common convention among the Viennese Strausses was to have either a pair of identically pitched clarinets (in A,C, or B-flat) or A + D, or B-flat + E-flat. the latter together allowed an increased range onto really squeaky territory.

[BBMmk2]

At the moment, with my current project, there are a few transposing instruments that have to reconfigure for modern concert band.

[Dave2002]

The Stravinsky/Prokofiev habit of writing scores with untransposed instruments does not extend to the parts, which are usually transposed. (Though I suppose there may be exceptions.)

Do many composers write scores without transposing? Indeed, was it perhaps always thus, with other people copying the parts for transposing instruments and doing the transposition then?

Do (some?) composers "think" the music with transposition in mind?

Also, if the scores are written without transposition, does this not add another possible layer of confusion between conductors and players - or is the general competence of either the players or the conductors, or even both, such that in practice it doesn't happen?

[Pabmusic]

Do many composers write scores without transposing? Indeed, was it perhaps always thus, with other people copying the parts for transposing instruments and doing the transposition then?

Do (some?) composers "think" the music with transposition in mind?

Also, if the scores are written without transposition, does this not add another possible layer of confusion between conductors and players - or is the general competence of either the players or the conductors, or even both, such that in practice it doesn't happen?

I can't be categoric, but I'd say that writing all instruments at actual pitch is very much a 20th-century thing. There are enough autograph manuscripts of 18th and 19th century music to suggest that transposition was the norm (offhand I can't think of any examples that aren't transposing. A quick look at facsimiles of scores by Mozart, Weber, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Parry, Elgar, Dvorak, Mahler and R, Strauss confirms this). The 20th century saw several composers who wrote at pitch - Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Hindemith (I think) but most who didn't.

Thinking transpositions isn't all that difficult. Horn players do it all the time (rather than follow key signatures) I'm told. I can write a C for clarinet knowing it is a B-flat in fact. I don't think I 'learnt' to do that either, and I certainly don't mentally transpose anything - it's just how it's done.

And yes - I personally find 'at pitch' scores a menace for precisely the reason you say. Penguin started to bring out a series of scores many years ago (Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms) with all instruments written 'at pitch'. They didn't catch on.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Penguin started to bring out a series of scores many years ago (Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms) with all instruments written 'at pitch'. They didn't catch on.

Oooh, they did! A certain Senior Lecturer in Music used to use the Penguin scores to illustrate sections at the piano - telling us that the Landscape format made them easier to read and gave more Music per page. Nothing at all to do with not having to transpose the Clarinets in Bb, Horns in F etc at sight!

SIBELIUS presents scores "in C" but the parts therefrom are in the transposition the composer gives when listing the instruments at the start of the work. I think Study Scores in C are very useful when following a piece of Music or trying to do a quick harmonic analysis - but they're a menace to conduct from: wasting time sorting out which pitch class you mean with the Clarinets in A, the Horns in G, and the Baritone Sax ("When you say 'F#', do you mean my F# - sounding D#, or your F# which is my A?" "Shut up - you're playing a flute!").

I think (it's been many, many years since I saw a conductor's score) that Boosey & Hawkes supply the instruments in transposition in their (hire-only) conductor's scores of Stravinsky's works - it's only the on-sale study scores that have everything in C.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

SIBELIUS and other Music notation software does save a lot of potential heartache. When I handwrote scores, I always put the transposing instruments in transposition (it made copying parts so much easier, and was no more difficult than writing the Tenor Trombones in that funny clef). I once wrote a Cor Anglais part onto the first clarinet line of a score (which would mean that the resulting sound would have come out a fourth higher than the sound that was intended) - and I didn't notice until I came back to the piece the next day. I glared at the damn thing for half-an-hour until my forehead bled, willing myself to prefer what was written -- but, no: it had to be rubbed out and re-written on the correct line. With SIBELIUS, a copy&paste job that takes seconds - with pencil & paper, getting on for an hour's work.

Tell that to young composers today, and they don't believe you ...

[Ein Heldenleben]

I LOVED those scores - trying to dig one up of Brandenburg 3 ( I think) now - though thinking about it that simply scored work doesn't really need it .
Please can the experts answer one question ? In a modern c major scored piece of music ( e.g, Ades , Ligeti) is a Bflat clarinet playing a written note C as a sounded C or a sounded B flat ? I suspect from Ferney's answer above its the latter.