Klarinet Archive - Posting 000143.txt from 2000/07

From: Michael Moors <mdmoors@-----.us>
Subj: [kl] Sousa on the hoof!
Date: Tue, 4 Jul 2000 03:38:39 -0400

Dear List,

Much of Sousa's original manuscript can be seen at the University of
Illinois Music Building, top floor. Also there are many period clarinets
and Herbert Clarke's Trumpets. Historical pictures are all over the
place. It's a place where you could spend days at! They are putting the
original manuscript on Microfilm to make it available for band directors
and scholars. You can go into drawers and see the original manuscripts, an
weird feeling.

FYI,

Mike Moors

At 04:02 PM 7/3/00 -0700, you wrote:
>Edwin V. Lacy wants to know:
>
><<<[I]n the original edition of The Washington Post March by John Phillip
>Sousa, published by Carl Fischer. . . .there is an error in the tenor
>saxophone part which makes it unplayable unless you happen to know the march
>fairly well
>and are able to skip around, skip a measure in one place and add one in
>another place. . . . My question is, how could this error have occurred and
>how could it be that it has never been corrected in all these years?>>>
>
>The short answer is that they screwed up while engraving the plates -- used
>to happen all the time, esp. if the engravers were not musicians, which
>apparently was often the case. Many old editions of all kinds of stuff
>contains similar errors (anyone ever see a complete list of the errors in
>Lincolnshire Posy? Are you sure it's complete?).
>
>The Sousa band probably did not read from the printed edition. At first,
>there was manuscript; after that, the poor chump playing tenor probably just
>dealt with it. In many cases, given the performance practice in the Sousa
>band, this would be to lie out - the trio was often cut down to a few
>players anyway. Given the caliber of performer in that ensemble, moreover,
>it would get pencil-fixed in a jiffy.
>
>Fixing the problem would require a new plate (or an expensive fix to the old
>one). Remember, all of these old marches were published in the half-page
>format so that 2 parts could be printed on one plate; fixing an error on
>this part would open Pandora's box on the other one. Since the error would
>be found out only after each copy was already sold, why bother? (Fixing it
>for the next purchaser wouldn't make Fischer any more money, which I suspect
>is the culprit here).
>
>Chances are, given the stereotypical IQ of tenor saxophonists in general,
>most band directors shrug it off anyway.
>
>kjf
>
>(who owns, and occasional plays, two tenor saxophones).
>
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___|/__ |___|__________ |___|__________|_ _|___|______ _|__O__________| |
/ O
Michael D. Moors
http://www.ehhs.cmich.edu/~mmoors/

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