Posted by Jay Bertolet on May 05, 2001 at 11:05:10:
In Reply to: Contra-Octave in band playing posted by Austin H. on May 03, 2001 at 17:31:29:
This may be the longest thread ever on this BBS! Many good points have been made in this discussion and I'd like to reflect on some of the statements made.
My view on octave dropping is that you better be REALLY selective when you do it, if at all. I was very surprised to read about the example of players dropping octaves during a session with Ron Nelson and one of his pieces. When deciding whether to drop octaves, I always first consider whether the composer would have had access to such techniques when he wrote the piece. If any band composer knows tuba pedal tones, it is Ron Nelson. If he didn't write it, I would never do it.
For me, the primary concern is the texture of the piece. A perfect example of this is Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde", a piece the FPO has been performing this week. For those of you who don't know, the tuba part consists of only 34 consecutive notes, in 6 bars, near the end of the 4th movement of a 6 movement work. Everybody in the orchestra has more to play than the tuba. Sprinkled throughout the work are various moments when the tuba could have been used very effectively. There are parts in both the contrabassoon and bass trombone parts that would play much easier on tuba. So why did Mahler choose not to use the tuba? I think the answer is that he wanted a specific texture and that he didn't make his decisions about scoring strictly based on what instruments could play in a given range. Doesn't this speak directly to the validity of adding a different texture to a piece as a pedal note would? I don't care if it "sounds good" to me. What matters is how I'm rendering the piece of art the composer has created. You try this sort of thing in an audition and you'll be out the door quickly.
Obviously, we all can relate to the process of analyzing a tuba line and making a rational decision of whether dropping the octave fits. We can also make a decision about if this technique fits with the mood of the music or if we can actually do it in a way that works. But we can never know what the composer was hearing in his head when he created the music so trying to justify this choice based on what you think the composer was thinking is laughable. There's just no way to know unless you can actually ask the composer, a luxury we don't have with deceased composers. I have played the Fantastique a number of times and I have never taken the Dies Irae down an octave. It just doesn't fit with Berlioz's intention of presenting this Death Mass scene as a mockery. I don't care who does what, I don't agree with it for me. What I do agree with is taking the last few notes of the run in the last movement up an octave, as Berlioz originally wrote.
Hey Dave Z., do you remember that Sousa Band concert we did last year? How many times during that set of shows did any of us take things down an octave? The only one I remember was the final chord of the sacred suite. I thought our approach as a section was pretty good and stayed within the realm of tastefulness. So with three professional level players in a section and all those pieces we played and there was only one note taken down an octave by one player in one piece. Doesn't that speak to the necessity of very careful planning and selection in such instances? There are so many guidelines and restrictions that have to be met before I'll take something down an octave that this ratio seems about right to me.
My opinion for what it's worth...