Oops! - Transposition Stories

trumpetmike · Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2003 2:31 pm Post subject:

I’m feeling in a confessional sort of mood, so I thought I would share a couple of stories about transposition, as a lesson to anybody who cares to read them.
The first is a lesson entitled “always check things before the gig!” I had been booked to do 2nd trumpet in a local orchestra, doing a programme that could have been title “the trumpet audition.” Scheherazade, Hansel & Gretel, Carmen, along with a couple of others that feature in the majority of auditions. On top of this, the conductor (who was a trumpet player) had also done an arrangement (featuring trumpet quite heavily!) of a couple of folk songs for the encore.
The rehearsal started and the first player was nowhere to be seen. We waited. Half an hour, no first trumpet. I have, by now, phoned every trumpet player I know, none of them are available. So, I am instructed to do all the first parts.
We are, by now, running very late. The conductor dashes through the pieces at breakneck speed, no rehearsing, just running bits. We reach the end of the rehearsal having not touched the encore. The orchestra know it already (having rehearsed it before the day), but I have not yet played it.
Between the rehearsal and the concert I am responsible enough to take a look at the parts in some detail (well, I was young and hadn’t played any of these pieces before). I get them all sorted out, including the encore.
We play the concert (with only one trumpet) and it all goes well. Until the encore.
The opening was very dissonant. I came in with the tune and got a glare from the conductor. I had counted accurately, I was playing the right rhythms, and I couldn’t work out what was wrong. During the first three lines, the accompanying dissonance gradually resolved, I continued to play the tune (as it was written) and I was still getting a glare.
Have you ever had that cold feeling come over you?
The conductor mouths at me “it’s in C!!!”
Oops!!
The one thing I didn’t check before the gig – what key the trumpet part was actually in!!!

The second story is very much related, entitled “the composer doesn’t always know what they wrote.” This was whilst at university, playing in a specialist contemporary music group. We gave numerous world premieres (of pieces no-one will ever have heard of!) and got very used to composers asking us to play very unmusical pieces and styles. We had been rehearsing a fiendishly difficult piece for a few weeks ready for the premiere, for which the composer would be present. The piece went very well indeed. It sounded as good as we had ever made it (cluster chords abounded, great if you like that sort of thing) and afterwards the composer came up to us and congratulated us on a splendid performance. He was also very pleased that we “coped with the transposition for trumpets in C.” We were all playing Bb trumpets.
Nobody had told us it was for trumpets in C.
Oops!!

Well, having read a few other stories on this forum I thought I would share these with anyone who cares to read them. Hope you have enjoyed them. Sadly they are both true!
I would be very interested to hear if anyone else has had similar experiences.

samlg · Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2003 3:01 pm Post subject:

TrinityTrumpet · Regular Member Joined: 20 Feb 2003 Posts: 14

This wasn't particularly embarasing, but it was funny because the conductor was just as stupified as the trumpets were. I got my undergrad degree (in Economics but a minor in music) from a small liberal arts school. Some of the ensembles were pretty good, others had their limitations. One of the big things was that if you were getting some kind of degree in music (or just a decent player and getting a music scholarship) you were expected to play in nearly everything. The strength of the ensemble depended on how many major/minors, or scholarship, players were involved, as the remaining chairs were taken up by people who usually lacked talent and/or motivation to practice and improve. With this system, some of the performances were great, others were...interesting (for lack of a better word).

Anyway, the symphony sits down for the first rehearsal of the year. I was the principle trumpet, and a good friend of mine was playing 2nd. I believe the first piece we played was the Borodin 2nd Symphony (although I'm not sure, and this story makes more sense if the piece was German: ). What I do know for sure is that the top of the page said "Trumpet in B." Now my friend and I are both taking lessons with a local symphony musician, we've both worked on a lot of the standard excerpts, we can both transpose fairly well, and we're both using C trumpets. We were thinking "well, this is different, but I guess we can transpose down a half step (into B natural)."

The orchestra sounded OK, until our entrance, which was strong, confident, and a half step off. The conductor started the piece over again, and sure enough the same thing happened a 2nd time.

The great part of the story though, was the musical version of "Who's on First?" that ensued between myself and the conductor. The conductor was just assuming that the two trumpets knew what the correct key was (as I was minoring and she was double majoring in music, and we were both fairly serious musicians). I thought it would be easier to use concert pitches in our conversation; he was assuming we were using Bb trumpets and trying to give us the pitches in Bb (Of course rather than stating this way, he was saying things like "Ok, right here, play a C#"). Anyway, between the two of us being off as to the way were describing the pitches, and the fact that the trumpets were in the wrong key to begin with ('B' means Bb in Germanic music, 'H' means B natural), it took a good 5-10 minutes of "play this note" "but we have this note in our part..." give and take with the conductor before things were straightened out. By this point most of the orchestra, not being serious players and therefore somewhat clueless to begin with, is dumbfounded as to what we're talking about, and outright laughing that the conductor and the 1st trumpet are getting into a somewhat heated discussion as to what note is written on the downbeat of m.59.

Things worked out fine in the end, the conductor and the trumpets got a laugh out of the real problem, and we read the rest of the part very well. It did give everyone a little entertainment though during the first rehearsal of the year.

[ This Message was edited by: TrinityTrumpet on 2003-09-07 12:12 ]

[ This Message was edited by: TrinityTrumpet on 2003-09-07 12:15 ]

walter · Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2003 5:29 pm Post subject:

I play in a reading orchestra <http://orchestrasociety.com/>. Often, I don't even see a piece until 5 minutes before playing it. Sometimes, finding the key (Ab, A, Bb, B, C, D, Eb, E, F, G) that a piece is written in isn't obvious. Also, my 55 year old brain doesn't register what my eyes clearly see. Needless to say, all of us who do this gig sometimes assume (an ass out of you and me) that a piece is in Bb or C.

The thing that sometimes gets to me is whether a piece is in low F or high F. I've also seen transcriptions of things like the Mozart Posthorn Sonata that could be done just as well in one octave or another.

One of my teachers (Doc Reinhardt) said that I should just be ready to play in any possible tranposition. I thank him dearly (if not in practice, at least in intention) for his words of wisdom.

trombapaul2 · Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2003 5:04 am Post subject:

Thankfully, I can count on one finger the number of times this has happened.
A friend of mine and I were playing a wedding and, at the last minute, the organist
pulls out a piece for two trumpets and organ we had never seen. We couldn't rehearse
it with the organ as guests were starting to arrive so we went out in the hallway and
just ran down our parts with the organist present. I don't recall the piece or the composer
but I'm certain it was Baroque. Consequently, we were both certain it was for D trumpet
so we played it on Piccs in A. Nowhere on the page was it marked for trumpet in what!!
We strode into the loft and the organist started the piece with a 32 bar intro. We made
our entrance as strong and as confident as possible. After 1 note, we realized we were reading Bb parts. Now, normally, a 1/2 step transposition is no big deal but we were
so shocked by what happened, it took nearly half the piece for the other trumpeter
and myself to regain our composure and start playing like we'd actually picked up the
horns before and knew which end to blow in. To add to the pressure of the moment, the organist is a perfectionist so the evil glare we were getting from him was indescribable.
Also, the wedding planner was insistent that everything go perfectly (for those of you
who live in the Detroit area, it was a typical Grosse Pointe wedding). The glare from her
was equally as evil. The kicker was when the bride and groom came up to us afterwards
with "Oooooh!! The music was absolutely lovely!!! We're going to recommend you to all
of our friends". Thank heavens the ones whose opinions really counted, didn't have a clue!

Paul
_________________
"NEVER practice...ALWAYS perform" (Bud)

"NEVER look at the trombones...it only encourages them" (R. Strauss)

"What the hell does sound have to do with music?" (Charles Ives)

deftness202 · New Member Joined: 25 Nov 2002 Posts: 1 Location: GPW, MI

just out of curiosity, what church would this have been (I live in GP, so I probably know the organist)

trombapaul2 · Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2003 7:06 pm Post subject:

Hey there,

The wedding was at the G.P. Academy and Fred DeHaven (of Christ Church
Grosse Pointe) was the organist. I don't recall who the wedding planner was
but they handle about 90% of the services that go through the Academy.

Paul

pushyred · Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2003 3:46 am Post subject:

Once in college orchestra we were playing a contemporary piece. This was not the first run through of the piece and I knew things sounded "a little different" this time. I was almost to the bottom of the first page until I realized I had the wrong horn in my hand. My second trumpeter didn't catch it and niether did the conductor (who usually missed nothing).

Of course there's the other side of the coin when as a joke on our very good natured wind ensemble conductor (and my trumpet teacher) we began Light Cavalry a half step above the written key. Man was it funny when the woodwinds came in!

[ This Message was edited by: pushyred on 2003-09-12 06:47 ]

[ This Message was edited by: pushyred on 2003-09-12 06:49 ]

fuzzyjon79 · Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2003 12:27 am Post subject:

I read New World Symphony up an augmented 4th one time... we had B flat horns... the piece was written for trumpet in E......what a pain in the butt!

_________________
J. Fowler
"It takes a big ole' sack of flour, to make a big ole' pan of biscuits!"