NOTION Music Forum

Gentlemen,
in a three oboe player situation, which one doubles on english horn?
Philip?

Traditionally, If doubling, usually the third. But it really depends on what kind of music you're writing and what the specific demands are. Remember, whichever oboe you chose must have time between entrances to switch instruments.

tubatimberinger wrote:t really depends on what kind of music you're writing and what the specific demands are.

Late romantic. With EH playing an expressive solo line of some lenght. Can a third chair handle this duty?

Remember, whichever oboe you chose must have time between entrances to switch instruments.

Thank you. I will take care of this.
And, talking about time, how many bars are needed to a string section to switch off mutes?

I’ve seen a few modern scores use the third oboe to play the English horn, but I imagine that a conductor may have oboists switch parts if another chair is more capable of taking dual parts.

I’m not a string player, but I’ve seen players add or remove mutes in a few beats (at a moderate tempo), though, this may be due to the type of mute used. I don’t know the specifics, but I know one cello player who keeps her mute on her music stand while one of my old professors had a mute that seemed to have been placed (or attached) below the bridge and could easily slide into place when needed.

Regardless, it might be better to think about time needed in terms of seconds instead of beats. Try looking for a string forum or website to see if they have any more instruction.

Thank you Tim and Philip.
I talked about "bars" to avoid to use "time" twice in a phrase.
Don't blame me, I'm only after at reading too much Henry James these days...
Nice suggestion: I'll check string forums.
Greetings

Late romantic. With EH playing an expressive solo line of some lenght. Can a third chair handle this duty?

It depends on a few factors:
What is the level of player you are writing for? If professionals, the question of 'handling it' is irrelevant as any professional oboist is gonna be able to play both. If you are writing for students, you might wanna reconsider the use of Cor Anglais all together as they might not even own an English Horn.


Are you even having real people perform this (or is it just for an audio rendering). If you are actually preparing parts for real musicians to play, I would direct you away from N3 as the notation features are severely lacking in several base-line level aspects which make the parts that N3 outputs unusable in the average rehearsal setting. This applies especially when dealing with a professional orchestra as they are used to these base-lines and employ librarians whose job it is to make sure the parts are readable and to their standards. I have several horror stories I could tell you.


How much of the 3rd oboe part is actually Eng. Horn? Maybe just do away with the 3rd oboe part all together and make the entire part for English horn?

as for Strings; it only takes like 2-3 seconds to mute/un-mute their instruments. It is usually attached to their instrument and therefore is very easy to do without too much effort. Also, I highly recommend cracking a couple of musical tomes about orchestration (Kennan, Adler, even Berlioz) before jumping into full orchestral writing especially if you are gonna have live musicians play your music. N3 like all soft samples can lie.

tubatimberinger:

You say "I would direct you away from N3 as the notation features are severely lacking in several base-line level aspects which make the parts that N3 outputs unusable in the average rehearsal setting. This applies especially when dealing with a professional orchestra as they are used to these base-lines and employ librarians whose job it is to make sure the parts are readable and to their standards. I have several horror stories I could tell you."

Could you please tell us more about this? What "base-line level aspects" are lacking? If we are aware of them we may be able to find work arounds... Please give us the benefit of your experiences.

Kirkl wrote:Could you please tell us more about this?

Maybe on a thread on his own... please...
I will prefer to keep this one about my inhabilities in orchestration.
Thank you.