What Instruments Do We Play?

[EigenUser]

I can understand that. I played viola all through my teens and then picked up horn around age twenty and found myself wishing I'd started off with the horn! It was just so much more natural to make the sound with me rather than with two objects I was holding.

I think my choice in viola was in a large part due to the charming and charismatic viola teacher I had, who often kept me motivated despite starting late-ish for a string player ( and thus being a bit slower than the army of Suzuki children ).

So much of life is due to our surroundings.

The horn is my favorite brass instrument. Are you familiar with Schumann's quadruple? One of my favorite pieces.

Also, since you're a Messiaen fan, have you ever tried the Appel Interstellaire from Des Canyons aux Etoiles? I don't often listen to unaccompanied works, but I've played that movement by itself before. I like the spacious atmosphere it conveys.

[not edward]

Ex-violinist here... never very good; didn't play anything harder than the Bach Chaconne and the Dvorak and Tchaikovsky concerti.

Played some piano, but was a lot worse at it.

[Fagotterdämmerung]

The horn is my favorite brass instrument. Are you familiar with Schumann's quadruple? One of my favorite pieces.

It's fun! Another hornful Romantic work I'm rather fond of is Brahm's 4 Songs, Op.17 for women's chorus, horns and harp. It's light in substance, but the spare texture is exceedingly pleasing.

Also, since you're a Messiaen fan, have you ever tried the Appel Interstellaire from Des Canyons aux Etoiles? I don't often listen to unaccompanied works, but I've played that movement by itself before. I like the spacious atmosphere it conveys.

It certainly explores a lot of intriguing horn timbres, though I tend to enjoy it more as something of a break in the work than extracted as a set solo piece ( very similar to Abîme des oiseaux in that respect: better as a movement than as a concert solo piece ). Not that that seems to have stopped hornists using it that way - and why not, I suppose... there's not much by big names for horn all on its lonesome.

[Jo498]

I am impressed that so many play or sing or at least used to.
I used to play the clarinet for several years, but I was never good (dabbled with one rather trivial Stamitz concerto and looked at the easier bits of the Brahms quintet when noone was listening because I am really in love with that piece) have not played since around 2000 (I somehow stopped when my father died after a short illness unexpectedly and never played regularly afterwards.) I still have a clarinet but it would probably have to be overhauled... It's a pity, maybe I should really try again.

[Dax]

Well, you could have played all those "tenor tuba" parts in R. Strauss, Holst's The Planets, and Stravinsky's Rite, plus the "Tenor horn" part in Mahler 7.

Not really. Tenor tuba = euphonium which is the same pitch as a baritone horn, but it's a tuba! A wider bore, a a uite different sound and quite different for the lungs. The part in The Planets is about as echt euphonium as you can get, but Mahler 7 has a genuine baritone horn part (German tenor horn = rest of the world's baritone horn)

[Karl Henning]

[...] Abîme des oiseaux [is] better as a movement than as a concert solo piece [....]

Certainly true!

[jochanaan]

Not really. Tenor tuba = euphonium which is the same pitch as a baritone horn, but it's a tuba! A wider bore, a a uite different sound and quite different for the lungs. The part in The Planets is about as echt euphonium as you can get, but Mahler 7 has a genuine baritone horn part (German tenor horn = rest of the world's baritone horn)

You know, I've wondered about that M7 part.  Makes sense.  And of course I know they're different instruments, but they could possibly play the same parts in a pinch...

[Karl Henning]

I saw someone pinched by a euphonium once, and it was not pretty.

[North Star]

A euphemistic euphonium?

[Philo]

I used to play the trombone and piano, but now I don't do anything musical.

[Fagotterdämmerung]

  I've always been sorry Euphoniums never found a place in the orchestra. They're considerably more agile than the other brass in that register ( trombones are slide-inhibited to a degree; horns are a bit sluggish on the lower end of the bass clef ). The closest we had was the century-long life of the French C tuba: really a high pitched euphonium wearing a clever disguise, leaving a legacy of red-faced, modern day tuba players trying to manage the parts on instruments an octave lower in its wake.

[Lisztianwagner]

I use to play piano, which is my main instrument; but I can also play some percussion instruments like the glockenspiel and the xylophone.

[Bruckner is God]

flute, piano and violin.

[king ubu]

Clarinet and saxophones ... started with the recorder, of course, then switched to clarinet at 11 (I think). When starting to explore jazz a couple of years later, the saxophone grabbed my attention more and more - and tenor it should be. Later on got a soprano and an alto as well, and when I did my army service as part of a lousy army band (still not all too easy to get in, but really, it was a letdown on all levels), I got me a baritone, too (which would have been way too expensive to buy myself).

All five instruments are still around, but alas I stopped playing several years back. Last time I did play was at my sister's wedding (three sax duets with a friend, two jazz tunes and the old OZ traditional "Waltzing Mathilda"), but after that I had to get a tooth implant right on front, and while things are decent enough now, I've not really picked up playing again since ...

[jochanaan]

...All five instruments are still around, but alas I stopped playing several years back. Last time I did play was at my sister's wedding (three sax duets with a friend, two jazz tunes and the old OZ traditional "Waltzing Mathilda"), but after that I had to get a tooth implant right on front, and while things are decent enough now, I've not really picked up playing again since ...

Time to try again, or so it seems.  It's never too late.

[Mirror Image]

I'm used to play piano, which is my main instrument; but I can also play some percussion instruments like the glockenspiel and the xylophone.

You 'used' to play piano, Ilaria? Don't play anymore? You're speaking in past tense.

[Lisztianwagner]

You 'used' to play piano, Ilaria? Don't play anymore? You're speaking in past tense.

No, I still play piano. Maybe I expressed myself in a wrong way, I thought to speak in present tense with "I am used", that it was like "I use".

[Mirror Image]

No, I still play piano. Maybe I expressed myself in a wrong way, I thought to speak in present tense with "I am used", that it was like "I use".

Ah, okay, but to speak in the present tense, though, you wouldn't need to say "I'm used" or "I am used," you would actually say something like "I play the piano". Using the word 'used,' at least where I come from, makes it sound like someone is saying they once played the piano, but no longer play it.

[king ubu]

Time to try again, or so it seems.  It's never too late.

Oh, I know! I'd never consider giving away any of my instruments, the tenor is my favorite (though it's not one of the hallowed Selmer Mark VI ones, just a Super Action II from the 90s), but I love the alto as well - a 1971 Selmer Mark VII that to my ears sounds gorgeous.

Actually, towards the end of high school, I was considering studying clarinet at the conservatory instead of going to university, but I couldn't really see myself as a teacher (and I'm extremely ambivalent as far as jazz schools are concerned - would have I have attempted to become a musician, it would surely have been jazz for me, but just as surely not a jazz school).

[jochanaan]

...(and I'm extremely ambivalent as far as jazz schools are concerned - would have I have attempted to become a musician, it would surely have been jazz for me, but just as surely not a jazz school).

I'm with you on that.  The best way to learn jazz is the down-and-dirty way of going to clubs and sitting in with the house band during open jams.