Klarinet Archive - Posting 000053.txt from 2011/01

From: "Doug Sears" <dsears@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Tuba mirum - K.626 (off-topic)
Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2011 14:24:22 -0500

1 Corinthians 15:51-52. Paul writes, "Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not
all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an
eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be
raised imperishable, and we shall all be changed." At this moment, most of
you will probably be hearing Handel's "Messiah" echoing in your heads.

The Greek original for "at the last trumpet" is "en te eschate salpingi",
and "salpinx" just means "trumpet". Of course, trombones didn't exist in
Paul's time. I don't know what Luther was thinking when he wrote "Posaune",
almost 270 years before Mozart's Requiem. But really, the question for us is
what Mozart was thinking. David Guion writes that, because of Luther's use
of Posaune, "To the German mind, therefore, the trombone was like the voice
of God himself."

--Doug Sears

----- Original Message -----
From: "Karl Krelove" <karlkrelove@-----.com>
To: "'The Klarinet Mailing List'" <klarinet@-----.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2011 9:52 AM
Subject: Re: [kl] Tuba mirum - K.626 (off-topic)

Sounds like an issue for a Biblical scholar, then, rather than a musical
one. As much as I've read indicates that he earliest Latin versions of
scripture were translated from earlier Greek texts, so I guess the real
authority might be whatever word the earliest Greek versions used and what
it meant at the time.

Karl

-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Sears [mailto:dsears@-----.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2011 12:28 PM
To: The Klarinet Mailing List
Subject: Re: [kl] Tuba mirum - K.626 (off-topic)

> That aside, is a trombone (whether a modern or period instrument)
> the instrument that is specified in the earliest sources (as it is in my
> Dover score)? If so was it because the slide allowed more pitches than the
> natural trumpets of the period would?

In the German-speaking world, the instrument that ushers in the day of
judgement is known as "die letzte Posaune", the last trombone, rather than
the last trumpet, I guess because that's how Luther's translation of the
Bible has it. That seems like a plausible reason for Mozart to use trombone,
but since he was setting the Latin text and wasn't Lutheran one might want
some confirmation of this idea.

--Doug Sears

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