Transposing Instrument (Horn) Shenanigans
Hello,
I have been using MuseScore to make modern editions of classical music manuscripts on IMSLP. Recently I have decided to transcribe an orchestral work from the late Baroque (1749) that uses trumpets and horns. From my research, I have learned that brass instruments of the Baroque era were valveless and switched pieces of tubing (crooks) to change key.
The piece is written in D Major. As expected, the oboe, string, and vocal parts are written with D Major key signature (2 sharps). However, the horn and trumpet parts are also written like this, unlike the usual method of writing transposing instrument parts in C (to deal with the issue of transposing). So, I decided to use Trumpets and Horns in D. I turned on the "Concert Pitch" option in MuseScore and was able to write out these parts with the 2-sharp key. When I turn off the "Concert Pitch" button, the parts transpose to C (the way it should work).
Here's where the problems start.
In the original manuscript, the horns play notes as high as G5 (in the D Major key signature). When I write these notes in MuseScore, it lists some of the notes as scarlet, meaning they are unplayable, or gold, meaning they are beyond normal range. When I turn off "Concert Pitch" and put them in C Major, some notes appear as ridiculously high pitches with up to 3 ledger lines. This explains why the notes would be unplayable. However, many of the horn notes are well within the normal range. It's just some instances where the horns "overstep their boundaries."
Even more oddly, the trumpet part transposes from D to C perfectly, with none of these issues. The trumpet notes never go beyond the playable.
I am not a brass instrument or Baroque instrumentation expert, so forgive me if I don't understand this. The piece is quite beautiful, and I would like to finish it, but those darn horn parts are just a mystery to me. Any advice would be appreciated. I am sending pictures of the original manuscript brass parts, as well as my MuseScore versions (both in D Major and C Major). For reference, "Trombe" means trumpets and "Corni" means horns.
Thank you!
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Original Manuscript .png | 698.5 KB |
| D Major:concert pitch.png | 31.75 KB |
| C Major:not concert pitch.png | 30.99 KB |
| Unplayable D Major:concert pitch.png | 15.5 KB |
| Unplayable C Major:not concert pitch.png | 15.42 KB |
Comments
This manuscript is quite odd looking. It seems to be written in concert pitch rather than transposed. Transposed of course has the key of C for the horns and trumpets. As you look at more scores you will see this is not what is expected.
You did not mention the name of the score. Being able to research the score will help with a better answer. It is possible that this is a horn that sounds an octave higher than the normal D horn. There are definitely two separate C horns sounding an octave apart used into the late Romantic era. It would not surprise me to find uncommon horns in the Baroque era, much as there are a variety of strings including viols (not violas) and Viola da gambas (yet another instrument) as well as a variety of now rare wind instruments.