Traverso

• Oct 31, 2015 - 22:10

I miss the selection list for the instruments at the old music selection possibility for Traverso. One in the Baroque period a widely used tool. Is it possible to add these.
I know that I could choose a flute at the general instruments but this is actually another instrument with other options
Kind regards
Fred Paul Vogel

Comments

• Nov 1, 2015 - 05:35

I guess you are referring to the current list "All instruments" compared to that of 1.3.
Perhaps you can simply change the name of the instrument (right click: Stave properties...) and his "Usable pitch range".

Attachment Size
traverso.png 96.26 KB

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• Nov 1, 2015 - 10:45

Thanks for your response but I do not use Muse score 1.3 but MuseScore version 2.0.2 revesie f51dc11.
Of course I know that you can change the device name, but would be better if I could choose in the Tablet under ancient music instruments (Dutch version) for Traverso.
Sincerely
Fred Paul

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• Nov 1, 2015 - 14:28

Thanks for your answer but it's true. A baroque flute (barock) is always made of wood or ivory and has a completely different sound than a metal flute.
A flute has a range of d ' to a'''. A modern flute has a range from c ' to c'''
Therefore I would like to distinguish between these instruments
Sincerely
Fred Paul

Vielen Dank für Ihre Antwort, aber es ist nicht richtig. Ein Barockflöte (barock) immer aus Holz oder Elfenbein hergestellt und hat einen ganz anderen Klang als ein Metallflöte.
Eine Flöte hat eine Reichweite von d' is a'''. Eine moderne Flöte hat einen Bereich von c 'bis c'''

Daher würde Ich mag, um zwischen diesen Instrumenten zu unterscheiden

Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Fred Paul

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• Nov 1, 2015 - 16:20

Jojo--I feel a bit presumptuous questioning you on a point of German (since I don't speak, read, or write more than a few words of German myself), but my speciality is Baroque repertoire and this point has come up in the discussions with our German translator and proofreaders when preparing the text commentaries that go in all of our editions.

The word 'Querflöte' was used during the Baroque period to distinguish what we now call the traverso in English--a relatively new instrument at the time--from the much older recorder ('Blockflöte'). Interestingly, in the same period the traverso was known in English as a 'German Flute'; it became known as a 'traverso' (borrowed from the Italian) in English later (remember there was a huge influx of Italian musicians and composers to London in the early 18th century).

Those Baroque flutes were made of wood, had one key (later, in the Classical period, more keys were added), and had a bottom note of d. Today, however, there is confusion, because yet another instrument has since been invented, the Boehm-system flute (in the 1830s), and over the years since, the term 'Querflöte' got applied to that instrument.

The consensus of my German translator and proofreaders is that to distinguish among the three very different kinds of flutes, we should use the term 'Traversflöte' to refer to the wooden, Baroque transverse flute, 'Blockflöte' to refer to the recorders, and, as you mentioned, either 'Flöte' or (depending on context) 'Querflöte' to refer to the modern, metal flute.

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• Nov 1, 2015 - 17:30

Thanks for the explanations .We are broadly agree. But my point is that there is called Traverso in the Dutch version of MuseScore among ancient music and choice as possible, and not just different recorders. The flute also is not mentioned there.

FredPaul

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• Apr 6, 2016 - 15:00

Is the traverso really new to the baroque? I have a couple of renaissance flutes -- way harder to play than baroque traversos -- and the famous illustrations in the Cantigas the Santa Maria has a pair of flute players. (And not to my disappointment recorder players: only a double recorder and a pipe-and-tabor.)

https://eeleach.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/cantiga_14.jpg

So they seem to go back at least to the 14th century.

Victor.

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• Nov 2, 2015 - 09:38

So, do we need a new entry for Traverso in instruments.xml ? If yes, can someone get the required information? (ambitus, midi program, transposition and so on)

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• Nov 2, 2015 - 21:03

In general, the information on that page is quite good. The info on the one-keyed 'Baroque flute' (what early-music specialists now call the 'traverso') is accurate, although it's not complete.

The range of a traverso (in Helmholtz denomination) is d' to a''', although that high a''' is not an easy note to produce. Also, the quality of the instrument itself has a bearing on the upper end of the range; some cheaper, plastic traversos won't be able to produce those last few high notes with any degree of dependability.

In addition to the high a''', the f''' is known to be a particularly difficult note on many traversos. Thus, the range for a professional would be d' to a'''; the range for amateurs should be restricted to no higher than e''', possibly as low as a c'''.

Parts for the instrument are written in treble clef, in concert pitch, at the real octave.

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• Nov 3, 2015 - 08:50

I suggest we use the long name "Baroque Flute" as that is clearer to non-early music specialists.

The specialists can change it easily enough in Staff Properties.

The sound is somewhere between the recorder and the modern metal flute - not quite as edgy as the recorder and not quite as smooth as the modern flute.

What would be great is for someone to provide samples so it could be added to the default soundfont or made into an SFZ for use with Zerberus.

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• Nov 4, 2015 - 03:12

Yes, Amateur D4 to E6; Professional D4 to A6, no transposition, G-clef.

The instrument can be placed under the expanded 'All Instruments' menu, as it is not often used by modern composers.

Long and Short Names:

In the English version of MuseScore, I would identify the instrument as a 'traverso' because that is the name most English-speakers who know what one is are used to using. In addition, the term 'Baroque flute' is somewhat restrictive, implying that the instrument is fundamentally different in sound to a classical (Mozartian) four-key flute, which it is not. The primary difference between the two is in technical agility. They are both made of wood, and both the baroque one-key flute and the classical four-key flute are much mellower and gentler instruments than the Bohem-system metal flute of today. The term 'traverso' can be applied to either instrument, but cannot be mistaken to mean a recorder or a metal flute. The short title for the traverso should be 'Trv.' The term 'transverse flute' is never used in English, so there is no danger of confusion.

In German, as I mentioned earlier, the most indicative name for the instrument is 'Traversflöte'. I will leave it to you to figure out a good abbreviation in German for the short-title. ;o)

In French, it may be called either a 'traverso' or 'traversière baroque'; it must NOT be called a 'flûte traversière' (which refers specifically and exclusively to the modern, metal flute). Short title could be 'Trv. bar.' or simply 'Trv.'

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• Nov 3, 2015 - 17:31

I am late, as often happens!

I see the PR has already been merged, but I am not sure MuseScore really needs this addition. I understand that it is easier to select a ready-made entry than to edit a similar one, but I am afraid this addition would need modifications anyway and that it could lead to an uncontrolled multiplication of entries.

Surely there are difference between the modern flute and the XVIII c. flute, but it can hardly be maintained that is a really different instrument; in fact, as a Baroque flute player, I believe the difference to be minimal from the perspective of a notation programme.

1) The difference in extension is trivial: the earlier flute has a smaller range and any XVIII c. flute piece will surely fit into the modern flute range, the additional notes simply being unused. It is the same reasoning which led to the dismissal of the two variants of 6-stringed and 7-stringed bass viol: just keep the 7-stringed and everything will fit anyway.

As these instruments refer to a closed corpus (nobody writes any more for the Baroque flute or the viol; and, if anybody occasionally does, it is so rare to be irrelevant), the range is not even 'educational', to guide the inexpert copyist.

2) The choice of the recorder sound patch is even more questionable: the recorder is a completely different instrument and has a very different sound, much more different from any flute sound than the XVIII c. flute sound is different from the modern flute sound. So, the modern flute patch is still the nearest match for the Baroque flute sound (not to mention that recorder patches in most sound fonts are simply horrible!).

3) Even the name is questionable: if one needs this instrument, (s)he is engraving a piece of Baroque music and:
3a) the mention of "Baroque" in the name is entirely superfluous
3b) for sure it was not named as such in the source, and the name originally used is the label one usually puts in if anything more specific than the generic "flute" label is deemed necessary.

A few more observations.

4) "We already have Baroque Oboe": I didn't notice and I think this to be even more questionable than all the above! Again, there are surely differences, sound included, but here we are speaking of two moments of clearly the same instrument (not even the Böhm innovation, here).

5) Why to limit to just two steps, Baroque and modern? Why not an 8-keyed flute or a Romantic oboe? At which time granularity shall we stop?

6) Why not Baroque bassoon, or XVIII c. clarinet(s) or any other evolutionary step of any instrument? Why not even "Basso continuo", which not an instrument at all, but is definitely a part label occurring more often than all the above, in modern editions?

So, I am afraid additions like this can only open cans of worms, without any really advantage.

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• Nov 3, 2015 - 17:50

Thank you for speaking up Miwarre. Never too late.

I did merge this PR. I'm ready to revert it, modify it or whatever once the (Baroque) flute players have settled. But don't be afraid of "uncontrolled multiplication of entries", I wouldn't merge the addition of a dozen of baroque flutes ;)

I don't know the particular instrument but in my opinion, an instrument is worth adding if:
1/ It's different enough in term of range or other properties
2/ there is a status quo that the default for this instrument are common enough

We have also to keep in mind that for many users (but not the OP) if a instrument is not listed in the new score wizard, MuseScore is not capable of writing music for this instrument...

So now, flute players, baroque composers, please speak up. Do you want Baroque flute to be added as an instrument, if yes, how?

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• Nov 4, 2015 - 03:53

Miwarre, I always appreciate your comments and I don't think I've ever read one of them without learning something new. In this particular case, I am not in agreement with you on some of your points (although I am on others), so I will demurr as delicately as possible.

1) The difference in extension is trivial: the earlier flute has a smaller range and any XVIII c. flute piece will surely fit into the modern flute range, the additional notes simply being unused. Yes, that is true, but the inverse proposition is not, and I believe that is the more important consideration. Someone writing or transcribing for the traverso--which is something I do quite often--needs to know that the instrument cannot hit either a middle C or the B below it, which Bohem flutes with a B-foot can do. They also need to know that notes above e''' can be seriously problematic for all but highly-skilled players with high-quality instruments, which is not the case when writing for a modern, metal flute. Standard textbooks on orchestration do not usually include specifications for early-music instruments, and, as we saw on the 'old flutes' website, even specialty websites don't always contain all the information necessary.

As to your second point, about the recorder sound patch, I agree wholeheartedly. The recorder sounds in the new default sound font for 2.0.x are uniformly horrid. They should be flushed into the deepest black hole available, and replaced with (pending something better) the recorder sounds from the default sound font in 1.3. But neither of them should in any case be used for the sound of a traverso. If there are no good sound patches available for the traverso at present, it would be better to use the sound for a standard flute until something better can be found.

For your third point, about the name of the instrument, please see my reply to Jojo, in which I discuss my perspective on that in some detail.

Finally, as to whether MuseScore should include instrument definitions for such things as Baroque bassoons, chalumeaux, etc., I understand your 'slippery slope' argument, but OTOH I believe that discussions such as this one will help keep things from getting out of hand.

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• Nov 4, 2015 - 07:19

OK, changing it to concert flute sound should be easy. Renaming to "Traverso" and "Trv." is easy too. I'll prepare a PR and let the dust settle on this for more opinions...
There's also an "Instrument description", not sure whether it is used anywhere (and it won't get translated), but still would like to get it right, should it be "Traverso" too, or "Baroque Traverse Flute"? It seems more like a comment in that instruments.xml file

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• Nov 4, 2015 - 08:46

You have to bear in mind that MuseScore is used by non-early music specialists.

I am quite knowledgable about early music and the first time I had heard the term Traverso on its own was when it appeared here, although I immediately knew the instrument being referred to from my prior early music knowledge (which is mainly of keyboard music).

We therefore need to come up with a term which conveys what this instrument is to the ordinary MuseScore user - Traverso doesn't convey the fact that it is a flute to anyone without specialist knowledge.

If Baroque Flute doesn't convey this properly then we need to find a name which conveys the fact that it is a flute to the ordinary user browsing the All Instruments list.

Would Traverso Flute be the answer?

Incidentally I have always known it as the German Flute, which was how it was known contemporarily.

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• Nov 4, 2015 - 21:29

@Recorder485: thanks for your "delicateness"! I'll try to correspond...

1) Range: I see your point and I agree that the issue might be debatable. For engraving existing (Baroque) pieces for (Baroque) flute, there should be no problem: the pieces should already take the possible range into consideration.

About arrangements, if someone is arranging a, say, violin piece (not to speak of a post-Baroque violin piece) specifically for Baroque flute without knowing the characteristics of the instrument (and without having someone more knowledgeable at hand), I am not sure it is MuseScore responsibility to educate him.

Also, this easily leads to the "slippery slope" syndrome; the Renaissance flute(s) have an even smaller range (I have forgotten the details, as it is a dozen years at least I do not touch one) and Renaissance music is much more prone to 'arrangements' than Baroque music. So, we would also need a full complement of Renaissance flutes, each with its range. And so no, and so on...

So, to me, it is debatable that there be any actual gain under the range aspect in adding a new Baroque flute entry.

2) Sound patch: I'm glad we agree! Anyway, no gain in adding a new entry under the sound aspect.

3) Name: my point is not that a specific name is better than a specific other name. Rather, that each name we end up choosing, chances are that it will be "wrong" more often than not and the user will need to edit the instrument and/or staff properties anyway, exactly as it happens now for the (generic, but essentially modern) flute entry.

Either the user do not care about historic instruments and then (s)he would not care about it being labelled anything else than "Flute". Or, (s)he does care and then (s)he will presumably keep the original label, which might be French, Italian, German, English, Spanish, ... regardless of the user system language, reflect different periods and/or local practices; and so on.

Again, no gain even under the name respect.

So, in summary, I believe we add some complexity, open the door for any kind of future arguments and proliferation of instruments, without any clear gain.

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• Nov 6, 2015 - 02:00

We're actually not that far apart on this question for most points; but I'd like to try what the management-school geeks call a 'cost-benefit analysis' to see if we can settle on a common ground (no musical pun intented!).

To start with, what I'm thinking is that yes, in an ideal world anyone wanting to write/arrange/transcribe for an instrument should know its essential characteristics, but we don't live in an ideal world so that's not always going to be the case. In fact, it's not uncommon for professional arrangers to refer to orchestration textbooks when writing for an instrument they do not happen to play themselves. I keep a copy of Blatter on the bookshelf in my office, and I am not ashamed to admit that I don't remember, offhand, the exact range of an E-flat or A-flat clarinet, or whether a tenor trombone can trill from B to A# (it can't, unless the player has a bionic right arm). When I need to know such things, I can look them up...but having at least the range information embedded in the instrument definintion in MuseScore is a wonderful convenience that I appreciate a lot.

Here's where the 'cost-benefit' analysis comes in: What is the 'cost' to MuseScore of the developers looking up (or consulting people like you) that basic range, clef, and transposition information ONCE? Because that's what it amounts to: Jojo and Nicolas and Marc and Thomas only have to look up that data one time, and as soon as they put it in the code, it's there for all the REST of the MuseScore users any time they need it. The 'benefit' of them doing that is that all MuseScore users, whether they know the capabilities of the traverso--or chalumeau, or Hecklephone, or the corno da caccia in C--can confidently rely on the range information embedded in the instrument properties.

More to the point is WHY an arranger or composer should use MuseScore rather than one of the big-name commercial scorewriters such as Sibelius or Finale.

Obviously there is a financial element to that question; some people use MuseScore simply because it is free, but I don't see that as the most important reason. I am fortunate in that I have enough money to purchase Finale or Sibelius should I wish to do so, but the fact is that I DON'T wish to, and I am using MuseScore at a professional level to produce commercial editions. In fact, I PREFER using MuseScore to either of the 'big two' because when I run into a need for something new to be added to the program, I can present my need DIRECTLY to the people who actually write the code, instead of wasting my time talking with an outsourced 'customer-service' rep in Bangladesh or Moombai who has no authority to do anything but waste my time giving me an endless string of non-answers and evasions.

A few months back, I found that 2.0.1 didn't include pizzicato for the gamba; within 24 hours of my posting a question about that on this forum, Jojo had written new code to fix the problem. Just TRY getting that kind of response from one of the big commercial scorewriter companies. It Just Ain't Gonna Happen...and THAT'S why MuseScore is superior to Finale or Sibelius, and why, in spite of the fact I could afford those expensive programs, I will stay with MuseScore.

That's why I believe it's important for the MuseScore development team to take the small amount of extra trouble (the 'cost') to add less common instruments such as the traverso to the data-base (the 'benefit'). It's not a question of being MuseScore's responsibility to do so; it's more a question of MuseScore offering a low-cost benefit that the competition doesn't even want to hear about.

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• Nov 6, 2015 - 02:15

We're actually not that far apart on this question for most points; but I'd like to try what the management-school geeks call a 'cost-benefit analysis' to see if we can settle on a common ground (no musical pun intented!).

To start with, what I'm thinking is that yes, in an ideal world anyone wanting to write/arrange/transcribe for an instrument should know its essential characteristics, but we don't live in an ideal world so that's not always going to be the case. In fact, it's not uncommon for professional arrangers to refer to orchestration textbooks when writing for an instrument they do not happen to play themselves. I keep a copy of Blatter on the bookshelf in my office, and I am not ashamed to admit that I don't remember, offhand, the exact range of an E-flat or A-flat clarinet, or whether a tenor trombone can trill from B to A# (it can't, unless the player has a bionic right arm). When I need to know such things, I can look them up...but having at least the range information embedded in the instrument definintion in MuseScore is a wonderful convenience that I appreciate a lot.

Here's where the 'cost-benefit' analysis comes in: What is the 'cost' to MuseScore of the developers looking up (or consulting people like you) that basic range, clef, and transposition information ONCE? Because that's what it amounts to: Jojo and Nicolas and Marc and Thomas only have to look up that data one time, and as soon as they put it in the code, it's there for all the REST of the MuseScore users any time they need it. The 'benefit' of them doing that is that all MuseScore users, whether they know the capabilities of the traverso--or chalumeau, or Hecklephone, or the corno da caccia in C--can confidently rely on the range information embedded in the instrument properties.

More to the point is WHY an arranger or composer should use MuseScore rather than one of the big-name commercial scorewriters such as Sibelius or Finale.

Obviously there is a financial element to that question; some people use MuseScore simply because it is free, but I don't see that as the most important reason. I am fortunate in that I have enough money to purchase Finale or Sibelius should I wish to do so, but the fact is that I DON'T wish to, and I am using MuseScore at a professional level to produce commercial editions. In fact, I PREFER using MuseScore to either of the 'big two' because when I run into a need for something new to be added to the program, I can present my need DIRECTLY to the people who actually write the code, instead of wasting my time talking with an outsourced 'customer-service' rep in Bangladesh or Moombai who has no authority to do anything but waste my time giving me an endless string of non-answers and evasions.

A few months back, I found that 2.0.1 didn't include pizzicato for the gamba; within 24 hours of my posting a question about that on this forum, Jojo had written new code to fix the problem. Just TRY getting that kind of response from one of the big commercial scorewriter companies. It Just Ain't Gonna Happen...and THAT'S why MuseScore is superior to Finale or Sibelius, and why, in spite of the fact I could afford those expensive programs, I will stay with MuseScore.

That's why I believe it's important for the MuseScore development team to take the small amount of extra trouble (the 'cost') to add less common instruments such as the traverso to the data-base (the 'benefit'). It's not a question of being MuseScore's responsibility to do so; it's more a question of MuseScore offering a low-cost benefit that the competition doesn't even want to hear about.

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• Nov 6, 2015 - 08:03

I can associate myself entirely with the text above. A lot of information about the Traverso is if you want to know is available on the Internet. If Viola da Gamba player I mainly play the so-called ancient music on period instruments or copies of them. My fellow musicians and so I would really appreciate if the Traverso next series of your subscriber old instrumente was recorded I MuseScore.
Verde a heart cry. If I were the general running comments on this topic itself read, my cry "Let everybody do first delve into the details of the Traverso" and especially should listen to this instument (you tube) one will find out that some of the arguments against the Traverso are no arguments.
Fred Paul Vogel

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• Nov 7, 2015 - 18:55

@Recorder485:

Range: your argument is totally reasonable, in itself. I probably rate the use cases you describe as less frequent than you do (as, today, Baroque music is a closed corpus), but this is rather subjective. I am not against adding the Baroque flute in itself.

Once we add it, however, I (or someone else) will ask for the various sizes of Renaissance flutes to be added: they have different, smaller, ranges than the Baroque equivalent(s) and Renaissance music is more usually 'arranged' than Baroque music. So, they make even more sense to add. And also the many types of medieval and Renaissance harps, and so no, and so on... And at each step we would move onto more and more unstable ground (who can establish a 'standard' range for early harps?).

Reversely, if Bach's flute has an entry for itself, why not Wagner's flute (which still has a smaller range than today flute, but slightly larger than the Baroque one)?

It is the "slippery slope" syndrome I fear, not the Baroque flute itself, which is a very nice instrument I myself played for a while. It is not MuseScore responsibility or goal to provide or to become an Encyclopedia of Organology.

Name: also the name aspect seems still open to me. "Baroque flute" would seem (to me only?) odd in a Baroque score (why not "Baroque violin" or "Baroque harpsichord", then?); but any contemporary term would, at least, depend from the language of the score (or of the score author) and any default provided by the programme would be 'wrong' more often than not (at least in my case, I transcribe at least French, German and Italian scores).

That said, as I have repeated myself several times now, I'll shut down. I hope not to see in the near future a score of Bach's A minor Partita for flute, engraved with Musescore and in which a Baroque flute is called for... (Incidentally, in the manuscript source, the instrument is named "flûte traversière"...).

Thanks!

M.

P.S.: does 485 refer to a pitch? It would be a rather flat C, wouldn't it? Does it refer to some specific practice?

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• Apr 2, 2016 - 16:21

Michael, are users without that specialist knowledge even likely to want/need/choose the instrument in the first place? The only way someone who doesn't know an instrument could make that decision is by listening to one, and listening to a synthesised playback is not going to be much help, especially since we're stuck using sounds that are the closest approximations in many cases (such as this one).

There are a lot of instruments in the 'All Instruments' workspace that only specialists would recognise by name: How many people would know what the Tarogato, Duduk, Dizi, or Octavin are without looking them up? In the brass list, I see something called a 'Rag dung,' (which I could not resist looking up!): It turns out to be a long, straight, copper trumpet native to Tibet, but should we rename it "Tibetan straight trumpet"? I don't think so. If someone is curious, they will look it up; if they are not, they won't use it.

Maybe we should consider adding a sort of 'instrument glossary' to the documentation for the program--the Handbook--with a link on the Choose Instruments dialogue? (That could, otoh, wind up being a very large project, equivalent to writing a basic textbook on instrumentation. Hmmm....)

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