Beethoven Trio - Piano, Flute, & Bassoon - low brass options

[imperialbari]

Piano part to be found at IMSLP. This project presents the original flute and bassoon parts plus their alternatives in the original octave as well as one octave down (please read the Introduction). Woodwinds from oboe through contrabass clarinet, brasses from piccolo trumpet through contrabass tuba, strings from violin through double bass. Alto, tenor, & bass clefs plus treble clef in several transpositions:

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Yor ... 0WoO%2037/

[imperialbari]

Trio
for Piano, Flute, and Bassoon
WoO 37
Written in Bonn, likely in 1786
Composed by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827)
Wind solo parts edited by Klaus Smedegaard Bjerre 2015

After the editions of solo pieces by Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Elgar, and Nielsen allowing for performances by other instruments than the original solo instrument this project now returns to the young Beethoven. The editions of his duets for clarinet and bassoon were met with an interest well deserved by their sweet music. The music here still is sweet and the bassoon still is involved, but then the music is technically more demanding, especially the flute part, and the involvement of the piano expands the tonal scope.

Exactly the involvement of the piano influences the policy behind this edition. In the Beethoven duet editions I wrote out the full notation of many of the period performance indications like grace notes and appoggiaturas. The present piano part is so demanding that I assume a good deal of period acquaintance from the involved pianists. The actual interpretations of period practices are not cut in stone and they involve personal decisions by the performers. I rather will leave it to the performers to develop a unified performance than introduce potential clashes between the pianists’ interpretations and my interpretations of the wind parts. Yet I will not hide that I lean toward most of the grace notes, especially those written as eight-notes, being appoggiaturas played on the beat. One prominent sample is in bar #205 of the flute part. Here the grace note C# and the main note D should be played as straight and slurred eights with an accent on the C#.

The source of this project, also the playing material for the pianist, is the piano score found, for free, at IMSLP:

http://tinyurl.com/WoO37

This page holds 3 different uploads of this score. I chose the one placed uppermost of these 3 for the utterly pragmatic reason that it is scanned in high resolution, so that the beams of the 32nd and the 64th notes stand out separately.

This source indicates harpsichord for the keyboard part, which may be supported by some unisons and octaves between the flute and the keyboardist’s right hand. With a performance by a flute, a bassoon, and a modern grand piano, the latter maybe will tend to overshadow the flute in the lower range unisons, which hardly would have been Beethoven’s intention. The keyboard often plays in thirds or tenths with the bassoon, but I don’t remember seeing any unison passages between keyboard and bassoon.

Of course this edition also was inspired by repeated calls (on TubeNet) for repertory for flute or violin with low brass. If the high demands of technical abilities are met, performances by flute or violin together with piano and euphonium are immediately possible. Tubas of any pitch will have to take the bassoon part down an octave, which changes the chord inversions in some places where the bassoon does not play the formal bass notes. Purists wouldn’t employ brass instruments in this music anyway, but I think this music may work with a tuba also. Especially if the pitches of the piano and of the tuba are so well matched that difference notes will occur.

If the bassoon part is taken down an octave, it also is possible to take the flute part down an octave. Of course the soundscape will differ very much from that of Beethoven’s original instrumentation. Still this editor finds such low wind constellations very relevant pedagogical tools for instrumentalists with very little repertory from this period, when they want to get a first hand experience with the music of this era. There are relevant versions for violin, viola, cello, and double bass plus for a diversity of brasses and woodwinds. All are compatible as long as the flute part in an 8-bassa version isn’t combined with the bassoon part in a version playing in the original octave. I have looked at the possibility of making versions for 2 bassoons or for 2 euphoniums, but I saw no chance getting to a useful solution without changing the relative octaves within each of the wind parts, maybe even redistributing passages between the wind parts. I am no ready to do this at the present time.
The parts have the page turns laid out so that the pages may be placed on the stand in 4 layers:
the 4th (back) layer has the 2 pages of the 3rd movement
the 3rd layer has the single page of the 2nd movement
the 2nd layer has the 2 pages of the 2nd repeated part of the 1st movement
the 1st (front) layer has the 2 pages of the 1st repeated part of the 1st movement
- pages then are removed from the stand when the respective sections have been played.

Performances with brass instruments involved likely will avoid doing the repeats for reasons of embouchure stamina as a performance with all repeats will play for around 30 minutes. Yet all versions of the flute part attempt to overcome the problem of combining a manageable page turn after the 1st repeated part of the 1st movement with a manageable way of repeating the 2nd part of the 1st movement. At the bottom of page 2 there is a preview of the first 7 bars of the 2nd repeated section, so that the first 4 bars may be played in their context with the transitional scale in the preceding 2nd ending of the 1st repeated part. The 1st layer then may be removed during the 3 bars of rest and the playing then may be continued from the 8th bar of the 2nd section.

The Flute part:
Versions in the original octave (compatible with versions of the bassoon part in the original octave as well as in the 8-bassa octave):
Flute Oboe
Eb Clarinet Bb Clarinet
Piccolo trumpet in A & Bb Eb Cornet
Violin

Versions one octave down (only compatible with versions of the bassoon part in the 8-bassa octave):
Clarinet in A & Bb Basset Horn
Alto Clarinet Bass Clarinet
Alto saxophone
Horn in F Eb Horn
Bb Baritone - written in all treble clef (due to the many ledger lines there will be no version in the bass clef)
Bb Euphonium - written in all treble clef (due to the many ledger lines there will be no version in the bass clef)
Viola
Cello - written in all tenor clef (due to the many ledger lines there will be no version in the bass clef)

The Bassoon part:
Versions in the original octave (only compatible with versions of the flute part in the original octave):
Bassoon - written in all bass clef as opposed to the piano score which has this part in the tenor and bass clefs
Bass clarinet
Ophicleide - written in all bass clef, possible on C and on Bb ophicleides
Horn in F - written the treble and bass clefs - takes a single F horn or a double horn
Wagner Tuba - notation like with the horn version - takes a bass tuba in F or a double tuba
Bb Euphonium - written in all treble clef
Euphonium - written in all bass clef
Cello - written in all bass clef

Versions one octave down (compatible with versions of the flute part in the original as well as in the 8-bassa octaves):
Contrabass Clarinet Contrabassoon
Tuba - all bass clef Eb Tuba - written in treble clef, brass band style
BBb Tuba - written in treble clef, brass band style
Double Bass - takes a 5th string or an extension of the E-string

Korsør - February 20th - 2015

Klaus Smedegaard Bjerre

[imperialbari]

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