(no subject)
"Even today the bassoon has the least regard of all woodwind instruments for the 'official' fingerings and, especially in the upper part of its compasss, every player has to experiment with fingerings until he finds those which best suit his type of reed, his style of playing, and the instrument he is using"
Yeah, that basically describes my life. When in doubt, make up a fingering and check it with a tuner...
So I discovered that the piece I played for juries on my very modern bassoon with *counts* 19 keys? (off the top of my head, I may be missing one or two) was originally composed for a bassoon with 4 keys. Ok, so maybe only Kelly will understand any of this, but imagine playing on a bassoon with only 2 thumb keys for the left hand for low Bb and D (and a hole for low C) and 2 pinky keys for the right hand for F and G#, plus 6 finger holes and a thumb hole for each thumb. And now imagine playing a pretty hard concerto that I had to practice on my modern bassoon on that bassoon. And then take into account that it was composed for such a bassoon. It boggles my mind...
And I thought the MODERN bassoon was hard to play. Imagine playing an F#, already INCREDIBLY out of tune on just about every modern bassoon, on a bassoon without any F# key. Sure, they had some random cross fingering that got you somewhat close, but you had to lip it from there. And in one book I read stated that in order to produce A, Bb, and B on the earliest bassoons, the technique was to not lift any fingers, but simply by the way in which the instrument was blown. So on the earliest bassoons all 3 had the same fingerings and you just had to lip them where you wanted. I can't even imagine.
And the sickest part is that I really want to play on a 4- or 6-keyed bassoon.
Yeah, that basically describes my life. When in doubt, make up a fingering and check it with a tuner...
So I discovered that the piece I played for juries on my very modern bassoon with *counts* 19 keys? (off the top of my head, I may be missing one or two) was originally composed for a bassoon with 4 keys. Ok, so maybe only Kelly will understand any of this, but imagine playing on a bassoon with only 2 thumb keys for the left hand for low Bb and D (and a hole for low C) and 2 pinky keys for the right hand for F and G#, plus 6 finger holes and a thumb hole for each thumb. And now imagine playing a pretty hard concerto that I had to practice on my modern bassoon on that bassoon. And then take into account that it was composed for such a bassoon. It boggles my mind...
And I thought the MODERN bassoon was hard to play. Imagine playing an F#, already INCREDIBLY out of tune on just about every modern bassoon, on a bassoon without any F# key. Sure, they had some random cross fingering that got you somewhat close, but you had to lip it from there. And in one book I read stated that in order to produce A, Bb, and B on the earliest bassoons, the technique was to not lift any fingers, but simply by the way in which the instrument was blown. So on the earliest bassoons all 3 had the same fingerings and you just had to lip them where you wanted. I can't even imagine.
And the sickest part is that I really want to play on a 4- or 6-keyed bassoon.