John Detwiler wrote:

>Bob K writes:
>
>>BTW, Does anyone know the 'Equale for 4 Trombones, WoO 30'? I am terribly
>>curious what LvB does with 4 brass instruments alone, and I've never heard
>>it.  Surely -someone- on the List has the Beethoven Box on DG?
>
>Don't have the Box, I actually got the Equale from a disk of trombone
>quartets, titled, I think, The Four Aces, almost all of it transcriptions.
>The Equale (there are three) are, in essence, chorales.

YOu find them on a number of trombone quartet discs here and there.  I
don't remember which ones now.  Check out the brass section in Tower or
wherever.  I'm not sure I even have any myself.  Schwann lists one by the
Datura Quartet on Ars Musici.  Never heard of the group and I have no idea
how good they might be.  The work lasts maybe three-five minutes.  I've
played them many times.  There is also a set of chorales for four trombones
by Bruckner.  I've played those a few times, too, but can't remember if
they're transcriptions.

>I've played a transcription of these for horn quartet, in a horn master
>class at a music camp I attended recently.  The sound was much deeper,
>richer, than the trombone quartet,

WHOA!!!

>I can only assume, though, that Beethoven would have written the Equale
>for this group instead.  <sigh> If only there had been valves...

Uh, maybe he got it right the first time.

You have no idea of the dark thoughts I used to get sitting behind the
HORNs in a Brahms symphony listening to them struggling down in the low
register where *we* should have been playing.

And of course I can't close without repeating the great performance
instruction I saw in a piece of excerpts from West Side Story. Over a whole
note was written "stuffy [or a similar adjective] to sound like a horn."
We always made sure we showed that to the horn players. They'd get self
conscious and start emptying out crooks.

Roger Hecht