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This forum discusses notation and reading practices arising from different national traditions. And we try to help out by providing available links, when somebody wants parts. I like that whether I am on the asking/answering sides in any given situation or not. I like reading scores and parts. With the Sousa marches made available through the US-LOC I have entered several sets of parts into scores because I wanted to have a better look at Sousa’s musical tool-box (these scores are not cleaned up graphically, so they stay with me). So I am reasonably aware about the developments in American band scoring as they happened over Sousa’s career, even if some of the editions obviously were not by Sousa himself.

The slide trombone appears not having been available in all Civil-War-era bands or in the more immediate post-Civil-War-era bands. Rather there were parts for two Bb tenors and one Bb bass, which were all written in Bb treble clef and likely equalled the British baritones and older small euphonium respectively. In some Sousa march editions the tenor parts are provided in bass clef also, but then for trombones. The Bb bass part then also comes in bass clef marked 3rd trombone or Bb bass.

My band playing has had me seeing close to all Western notation practices including parts written fully or partially in octaves. I also have seen divisi in other intervals like thirds and sixths and, on single chords, in fourths or fifths. Until today I never saw a full part written in fifths, and as the music isn’t oriental, these fifths only are visual, but not intended to come out aurally.

The normally separate Bb treble clef and bass clef concert parts in this sample have been joined into one part. As I am not out after any edition or editor, I only show the left end of part:
Was this notation practice ever common?

Klaus

I corrected my error, so Wade is not crazy. Only in hindsight I am able to trace this odd error, which I will tell about here for others to avoid it.

Due to arthritis I have programmed one mouse knob to do double clicking.

That lead to a double upload of my original posting, which I didn’t see immediately.

When I saw my error, the top posting had had one reader, so I deleted the lower posting. As that was the original one marking the .jpg-file in the list database, the file apparently was deleted from that database.

File was reloaded.

Sorry for the inconvenience to Wade and other early readers!

Klaus

I've seen this before—but not very often Klaus. I saw it used in a Gem Series feature in TUBA (now ITEA) magazine several years ago. Very handy in that you can have both BC and TC parts on one page (BC reader plays upper note, TC reader the lower note).

Don't know how common this is (or was) however.

I am used to playing from scores, also piano/organ scores with more lines in the same staff. Musically this notation in fifths is nonsense, and I would be disturbed by it, as I try to use the other lines as references for my own playing.

A different notation problem had me advance way ahead of the band in a concert, where I had to sight read a part generated by photo-copying it from the score and cutting&pasting the lines into a single part. The “through” lines at the beginning and the end of the staves had no been removed. And the pasting was done in a way making the part looking like a two-stave piano score. So I of course only played every other line, like I always do when playing from piano scores. I found out about the problem and found the right place again, but my deeply engrained reading habits had this error happening a few times more during the performance of that piece.

The practice of applying two different clef and different keys onto the same part actually was very common in the baroque era, where engraving was a very costly factor in issuing music commercially. Traverso flutes and alto recorders shared a large solo repertory of popular music issued for amateur players. Only the traverso basically is in D with a D foot and the alto recorder basically is in F with an F foot, yet both instruments reading concert notation. The traverso prefers sharp keys, the alto recorder prefers flat keys. Simple solution:

The traverso version is engraved in treble clef with its appropriate keys. And the alto recorder reads from the exact same notes only as if they were written in the French violin clef, which has G not on the 2nd line, but on the 1st line from the bottom of the stave. The French violin clef and the appropriate keys then are written right after the treble clef with is keys at the beginning of the stave. The result is the recorder version sounding a minor third above the traverso version despite the two instruments reading the same notes. Point is: no confusion arising from parallel musical lines.

I cannot read the French violin clef too well, but that doesn’t matter, as I can read the bass clef, which also has the G on the bottom line. So when I played the Telemann E/G minor solo sonata, I read from the modern flute edition in E minor. Only my alto recorder sounded that piece in G minor.

Klaus

I play in a band that specializes in mid-19th-century brass band music (mostly Civil War, but not all). Many of the arrangements of this period were customized for a particular band's instrumentation. We have a number of tunes taken from original charts of this period, but not a lot survive. There are several near-complete band books from northern bands still existing, but the only southern book that has much still archived is from the 26th North Carolina; since this band was made up of members of the Moravian Church band in Salem, NC, it was a remarkably accomplished group, and was reputed to be Robert E. Lee's favorite band.

Common practice of the period was to have 2-4 instruments pitched in the Bb range of the current euphonium. Tenor, baritone, and bass usually had the same pitch; the difference in the instruments usually had to do with the bore sizes and relative brightness/darkness of tone.

Most of our music is written for tenor 1, tenor 2, and baritone. Most of the music marked Bb bass is a doubling of the contrabass part (usually Eb contrabass saxhorn, not BBb) an octave higher. We rarely use this part.

Our current instrumentation (ideally, but not always practically) is 2 Eb sopranos (sometimes an Eb soprano flugelhorn), 3 Bb cornets, 3 Eb alto horns, 3 Bb tenor/baritone horns, 3 Eb contrabasses, 3 percussionists. Ideally, our music is one player per part except for the contrabasses, but we double some parts when we have more players than the arrangement calls for.

GC wrote:I play in a band that specializes in mid-18th-century brass band music (mostly Civil War, but not all).

19th century.

*applies facepalm* *repeats*

Thanks. Fixed.

Jeez, that was dumb.

The only place I have seen notation like this is in a saxophone method book on the duets. In that case, it's so the top line is for Eb (usually alto) and the bottom line can be played by either an Eb or Bb instrument. Other than that, maybe Sousa just wanted to pull one over on Bach and write an entire part in parallel fifths?

Just for clarity: The sample is not at all related to Sousa beyond the American editor obviously adapting a European march to a then common US type of band instrumentation. The sample is not chosen haphazardly, but was found via a most relevant link provided in a recent thread.

Klaus

Klaus,

I'll have to admit that I didn't look carefully at your example, and apologize for wasting space by talking about something totally different from what you were asking. I'll have to admit that I've never seen notation like this before, and I've spent a fair amount of time reading old scores. It's interesting, but I hope I'll never have to read a part written like this even though its intent is pretty clear.

It's really not too different from the principle of writing bari sax or Eb contra-alto clarinet parts on tuba parts with a treble clef notation and adjusted key signature with a few modified accidentals thrown in as needed. At least the notes are in the same positions on the staff.