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Re: 'Musical' Notation...

Author: Chris P
Date: 2016-06-20 20:49

Shame not all music had metronome markings as Baroque and Classical era music is open to interpretation where tempos go. Had the metronome been around back then, that would definitely give us a better idea of the actual tempos the composers wanted.

As for trills and band players, most band players that have little or no knowledge of music outside that of band music tend to play trills and other things just as they'd play a Sousa or Alford/Ricketts march or not understand how accented appoggiaturas work when written as a grace note and where to place it.

So as an example, take an arrangement of a Mozart piece for concert band ('The Marriage of Figaro' springs to mind), you'll get the endings of phrases blasted out instead of the volume dropping away a bit as well as the ends of notes cut clean instead of slightly dying away.

Similarly with the attack on notes which can be hard ("TAAAAHHH!" instead of "da-"), so there are a lot of things that the printed music can't convey whereas the band instructor/director should be able to shape the sound as they want and explain and more importantly demonstrate to the players what they want.

One thing that helps is not to listen to other concert or military band interpretations of such works, but listen to an orchestral recording to get a better sense of what the music can sound like in it's near-to-original setting and try to emulate those sounds, shapes and phrasings.

But there are too many things for some players to get their head around if they don't fully understand the concept.

Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.

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