why do some instruments transpose instead of just calling the notes what they sound like at concert pitch?
In: 21
There are several reasons for transposing instruments:
Back around the Baroque and Classical eras, brass instruments were a glorified pipe that could not change lengths, like we can today with valves. The Sackbut (predecessor to modern day trombones) could by using a slide, but it was pitched too low and didn’t have the brighter sound of a trumpet to be of real value to composers. As a result, there were several lengths of trumpets and French horns, each of which corresponded to a musical key – B-flat, C, A, D, and E-flat were among the most common of that era. The trumpet player sees a note on the second-to-bottom line of the treble clef (a G) and plays their second partial, regardless of what trumpet they’re playing on. The sounding note would sound different depending on the key of the instrument they’re playing on – on a Bb trumpet, the audience would hear an F, on a C, they would hear a G, on an A, they would hear an E, and so on. That specific note on the staff would always sound a perfect fifth interval above the key of the instrument they played on. IIRC, trumpet players would have different instruments for each key, while French horn players had different “crooks,” each of which corresponded to a certain key, that they would simply change out depending on the key the composer called for. (Furthermore, and this goes beyond ELI5, each partial/overtone has a specific tuning tendency and timbre – the 5th partial on brass instruments is typically sharp, the 6th tended to be flat, and the 11th is extremely sharp. Players would already know to compensate for this to play in tune on those notes.)
Second reason: you may be asking “well they’re professional musicians, they should be able to just transpose on the spot!” In modern days, they absolutely do. A big focus of earning a performance degree today is learning to transpose any key to whatever instrument you’re playing on. BUT, the way the overtone series works in C (on C trumpet, you have middle C, the G above that, C above, E, G, Bb, C, D, E, F, G) means most of the notes in the middle register, where most of your playing occurs, falls directly on the staff. Reading 3 or more ledger lines quickly becomes tiresome when you’re doing it for an entire piece, and if the part is handwritten (as practically every part back then was), it can be confusing if you have to squint (is that two or three lines? Is that just a smudge?) Additionally, ink was incredibly expensive back in the 1600-1800s, and marking ledger lines on copies of scores and parts would be a huge expense to the composers, who already made a meager salary. By keeping the music on the staff, which was already written out, composers saved a lot of money for themselves and a headache for their players. (Again a bit beyond ELI5, string instruments avoided this problem of ledger lines by changing clefs, particularly cellos. When the music gets too high or high and stays there for a while, composers did and will change clefs to avoid a passage where every note is 4-5 ledger lines above or below the staff. String basses avoid the low ledger line problems by having all their music transposed up an octave.)
So when did everything change? In the early 1800s, the valve was invented. This allowed trumpets, french horns, and when they were invented, tubas, to play every note in the chromatic scale by pressing the right series of valves down. For this reason, every tuba part you ever see will be in concert pitch – they never had carry around different crooks or instruments to play in the right key, since every note was available to them right off the bat. Since then, most every part for each instrument has been written in a key that avoids ledger lines as much as possible for that instrument – Bb for trumpets, Eb and Bb for saxophones, F for French horns, and Bb for clarinets, again to avoid headaches from the performers.
If you have any questions or want anything more in depth, feel free to message me!
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