Reicha Horn Trios

[Z-Tuba Dude]

Years ago, I remember hearing the Reicha horn trios performed by tubas. At the time I understood that they just changed the clef/key signatures.

I just ordered the music, and upon receipt of the score, I saw that the 3rd part goes in and out of the bass/treble clef.

Does anyone know if there is an edition in which the 3rd part stays in treble clef? If not, is there a way that the 3rd player can easily deal with the changing clefs?

Thanks!

[corbasse]

There won't be any edition with treble clef only. It would be highly impractical, 6 ledger lines unter the staff is a bit much for easy reading especially since any horn player who can play that part should be able both to read bass clef and transpose with ease.
Fortunately you will only find a few different pitches written in bass clef, and with some preparation and thinking it won't be a problem. Don't forget the weird custom of writing bass clef horn parts an octave too low...

If you read the treble clef parts as bass clef with 3 flats, you should read the bass clef bits a sixth down. 2nd space C becomes E flat 1 ledger line under the staff. 99% of notes you encounter in bass clef will be within the tonic triad or directly derived from them (they're natural horn parts after all) So, if you know your E flat scales you won't meet any surprises

Luckily, this site also has a perfectly legal and free version of all 24 trios and has a lot more treble clef than most other editions I know. One catch: bass clef is written in the right octave so the bass clef bit in Nr 20 goes down to a pedal BBb...

[corbasse]

I just noticed that on the site I liked to you can download the source files as well. They're written in capella. I think you can get a trial/demo version and try to change everything to treble clef (or down to bass clef in E flat while you're at it )

[Z-Tuba Dude]

The best way to overcome tis is to learn trebble cleff! You can read ledger lines above the staff? Well, middle C is the first ledger line above the bass cleff staff, and the first below trebble cleff. Think of the trebble cleff as just a lot of ledger lines. This method might seem bass-ackwards to some, but it helped me learn trebble cleff and tenor cleff rather quickly, like within a few measures. Of course I'm assuming it's not Bb trebble cleff, like trumpet music, but concert trebble cleff instead. Try it out, it's kind of fun. If you don't like it then just re-write the part in bass.

Thanks, but the issue is really not the ability to read treble clef, but that the part switches back & forth, and the transposition for horn is different in bass clef, than it is it treble clef!

[Alex C]

I have the Reicha Trios published for tuba trio since 1997. Contact me by PM if you want a copy.