Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Verdi Requiem


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Posted by Long posting on December 01, 2002 at 02:36:19:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Verdi Requiem posted by Chuck(G) on November 30, 2002 at 23:57:08:

Hi Chuck

I like your carpet covered roof very much, but it remains a mystery for me, how you get your instruments sticking to it. There also was a York tuba behaving like this a short while ago. I could not even make my dog hang onto the roof for even the shortest photo session.

As for the mouthpieces for older instruments:

They generally were much smaller than we use them today.

We talk a lot of pollution today. But we do not always realise, that one of the worst areas is that of sound.

Decades ago I studied literature theory at a decent level at the University of Copenhagen. French inspired structuralism was hip back then. One of the things I remember specifically about was how certain parameters have shifted over the ages. During the pre-gun-powder medieval centuries, the secular community had next to nothing of, what we call noise. Hence church bells were considered a sign of the divine, because they gave the community an aural experience, that transcended the normal.

Even my childhood 5 decades ago in small North German towns was much quieter, than is my present everyday life in a somewhat larger, but not large, Danish provincial town. I love to visit Copenhagen, but would not like to live there.

People today also tend to consider noise transcendent, but now in comparison to a decent level of human life. Hence it is no longer considered divine, but the opposite.

This might sound far out in a musical discussion, but it has a bearing there as well.

I have a Hawkes & Son G bass trombone from 1919. Its bell shows signs of a rough life, so it might very well have been used in a brass band in a British mining town. A community that also had a very alert relationship to sound. When the steam fife of the mine sounded out of the normal pattern of the marking of shifts and breaks, then something was badly wrong.

Yet the parades of local miners band could call the population to its feet and make it follow the band through the streets.

Today such a band playing that type of equipment would not make itself heard around the next corner of the street. My old G bone still has its original mouthpiece with it. It has the dimensions of a VB 11C model tenor trombone mouthpiece!

Around 25 years ago I read a text written by Denis Wick in the now defunct magazine Brass Quarterly. There he told (in my old memory paraphrasing) about being an ambitious youngster hating to play 2nd bone in a 2nd rate touring opera company under 3rd rate conductors around 1950. Of how he won the 1st spot in the LSO. And of the revelation, when the NYPO visited London presenting the British pro brass community for for much larger equipment, than the peashooters of French and British origin, that they traditionally used. (This topic recently has been touched on this board in the discussions of the original tuba for the RVW concerto).

In his circa 1971 book on trombone technique DW tells how he and other Brit trombone pros took the step further and used larger mouthpieces than their US colleagues.

Vincent Bach in his circa 1965 mouthpiece guide tells of areas traditionally using small mouthpieces, but he does not specify them.

What I since have learned from my own ears and from collecting old brasses, these areas are/were the old UK, the old (and present day amateur) Germany, present day Eastern Europe, and the old/present day Latin countries of Europe and America. Here I am speaking in VERY rough generalities, that can easily be counter-proven in lots of specific cases.

What conclusions does this long consideration lead me to about the original mouthpiece for an upright Eb Orsi cimbasso no less than 50 years old? I honestly think it has been sized like a VB 7C!

My pre-WWII Cerveny oval Kaiser Bariton came with a mpc stamped 7C (in bare brass, might not be original, but the tenor tromb+ sized stem fits the instrument). I now play that instrument with a DW4AM.

I play the old Hawkes G bone on the DW4AY. And if I were not addicted to the flexibility of the DW#4 series with its variations in cup (A and B) and stem (S,M, and L) sizes, I would use the VB#3 for some of my 10 instruments talked of here.

The VB#3 was a very good mouthpiece for me 30 years ago. It was the first one, where I had the backbore opened. And it was the last one, where I did not do that alteration myself.

Sorry for the very long posting, but when I am provoked to open the large book of history, I tend to point to quite a lot of its pages. And pages involving myself inevitably will be among them.

Klaus


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