source file: mills3.txt


Subject:  Re: Historical temperaments

From:  alves@orion.ac.hmc.edu

I wrote:
>>The use of unvalved
>>brass in the lower harmonics will naturally restrict key choices

Gary replied:
>
>   Actually, that detail in particular isn't completely true, depending on
>what you mean by "restrict". [Gary goes on to describe crooks.]

Yes, obviously. I should have been clearer. I was speaking not only of the
keys in which the pieces were written, but also the ones to which they
modulated (and wanted to include brass). Even so, not all twelve horn
crooks were in common use in Mozart's time, and trumpets were generally
restricted to Bb, C, D, and Eb.

Other considerations affected key choices as well. Woodwinds of the time
did not sound the same in all different keys, even if they could play
chromatically. String players tended to play open strings when possible
(the opposite of today). Thus in the context of the previous discussion,
there were many considerations that determined key choices in ensemble
music in addition to temperament.

>   By the way, Karl Haas once said that (Robert) Schumann was the first
>composer to specifically call for a valved horn.

Just goes to show what a learned musicologist Haas is. According to my old
copy of the Carse History of Orchestration, parts for valved horns began to
appear in 1835, several years before Schumann began to write for orchestra.

Bill

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^ Bill Alves                                      email: alves@hmc.edu ^
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