Posted by Klaus on July 08, 2001 at 10:52:56:
In Reply to: Re: Euphonium: Bb or C??? posted by Shon on July 08, 2001 at 09:34:30:
You are right Shon! At least almost.
Being one of the few European boarders I have to blurr the picture, which seems to be my sole onboard function. A true story as an example:
In 1993 I was asked to sub for the bass bone of a youth (sic! * 100) brassband going on tour through eastern Europe. One of the stops was in southern Poland at an international band meeting cum contest. The only other band from the West was from Belgium.
Their bass boner (a team player) and I (a loose gun in any context) were bringing in sounds, which the easterners never had heard before. My King 7B rightfully catching much more interest than the "Belgian" Bach 50 something.
However no bad feelings surfaced, so the Belgian band invited me as their only guest player to join a night of "German" dances, that they gave in the restaurant of the common huge Las Vegas size (but not LV style) hotel.
Took up the invitation gladly. Until I saw that the bass bone part (or was it the 1st tuba part) was in bass clef. No big deal in itself, but is was in bass clef Bb. Fortunately my years of horn playing had honed my transposition skills, if not exactly in the bass clef area. So my brain had to run at higher speeds than my normal standards. Never thought that would be possible for any human being.
But is was: My fellow Belgian bassboner took up a new instrument from scratch. He played the 2nd tuba part. Also written in BC Bb. And he did this on a CC tuba. He deserved, and was treated with, my outmost level of admiration. In the terms of my narrowscoped brain he had to play a transposition of a major third downwards. Not the most common transposition in any context.
This was my abrupt introduction into the Flemo-French tradition of transposed bass clefs.
As a side anecdote I might report on Boris, the bassboner of the Polish Military Conservatory band, which took part in the band meeting. He played the best bone of the 5 instruments in his section, a Yamaha 354 in bad slide shape.
During the night of Belgian German dancing he stood glued to my bell rim (I was sitting on the right wing of the horseshoe formation). We shared no common linguistic vocabulary, but I could se a question burning in his eyes. And I encouraged him to put it into body language: His wish was not to play my instrument, just to try the workability of my slide (which was new and unbroken back then). Boris got his try-out. And almost dropped dead, when he sensed the (relatively) unobstructed action of the King 7B slide.
Morale (sub-morale at least): If you enjoy the brass playing of Eastern bands/orchestras, then please do remember that the players are excelling themselves on instruments we hardly would allow to be distributed for school usage in the West (NC not to be counted to the West in this context).
Klaus