MY DREAM OF CHANGE
Can anyone help to make this reality?

Dr Sokol Saraci, Professor of Trumpet, University of the Arts, Tirana, Albania

 As a professional trumpet player I would describe the brass (especially trumpet) situation in Albania as follows:

The Albanian brass school has shown good progress, after enduring a poor and isolated political and economic history in Albania during the 1990s. Looking back, I can remember how hard it was for us. After graduating we had to build step by step a professional background, seeking out information that could help to make us well educated, so we could feel comfortable facing the world.

Contact with Western musical traditions and expanding our knowledge and exchanging artistic experiences with our American colleagues developed a complete different level in the Albanian brass school. It also gave professional players access to quality pedagogical sources, so of course most things are definitely getting better.

However, as a professional player, and professor and teaching every day in the University of Arts in Albania, I am concerned about many unresolved issues, in particular the diversity of trumpets. All Albanian trumpet players - orchestral performers, professionals and students - only have a Bb trumpet. This creates not only difficulties in performing original orchestrations in various music styles, but it also makes gives us huge problems with transpositions. However at present funds are not available for these additional instruments.

My desire is to create a real trumpet laboratory in the University to give the students the chance to play all types of instruments:  flugelhorn, cornet, trumpets in C, D and Eb, natural trumpet and piccolo trumpet. It would be amazing for them to feel all those sounds and to have the possibility to discover all the tone colours of each instrument, to experience a wide trumpet repertoire, and raise their playing to another level.

Being a teacher and guide to my students has always been my dream, and that is what I hope for the future – to open a new window for the next generation.. I will always search for improvement, which means sometimes dreaming of a different reality. As the great Richard Wagner said: ‘Imagination creates Reality’.

Dr. Sokol Saraci
Professor of Trumpet, University of the Arts, Tirana, Albania 2018        

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Sokol Saraci is professor of trumpet and director of the chamber music and wind instrument department in the University of Arts in Albania. His education started with a degree from the University of Tirana and continued with a master’s degree from the University of Tetovo, Macedonia. After that he won a Fulbright Scholarship to the Truman State University in Missouri USA. On returning to Albania he gained a PhD with his research into wind orchestras in Albania. His publication Trumpet and the Trumpet Player is a guide to daily practice. He is well known as a successful teacher, bringing inspiration, brightness and wisdom to his trumpet classes.

He has been principal trumpet in the National Opera in Tirana for many years. He also plays chamber music and appears as a concerto soloist in Albania and around Europe.

Horn Transposition Made Easy

by Stewart Thorp

(JEWM Staff Member & Horn player?)

When playing the horn, one of the major obstacles is the issue of transposition. This short article sets out to demystify the subject in a clear and approachable way for both teacher and pupil.

Firstly, what do we mean by ‘transposition’? Quite simply, transposition means making a piece of music sound higher or lower. To put it simply, the transposition of a set A by n semitones is designated by Tn(A), representing the addition (mod 12) of integer n to each of the pitch class integers………… but hang on, let’s make it even easier...

When we see ‘Horn in F’ this quite simply means that when we play a C we get an F. So, when we have ‘Horn in Eb’ in our score and we see a C in the music we must play a C that will sound like an Eb. So far so good! So, how do we get a C to sound like an Eb? Eb is quite close to F isn’t it, so couldn’t we just pull the tuning slide out? Well no, don’t be ridiculous! We’d need to have a very long tuning slide and that would make a trombone; and we wouldn’t want that, would we. To achieve this amount of pitch change we need to transpose, which is where we started. All this nonsense of using the tuning slide is just an irritating and pointless distraction. I wonder if you’re really suited to the horn. Anyway, if a C sounds an F on an F horn then it stands to reason that we need to play a bit lower to get an Eb, but how much lower? Well, let’s try playing a B, which is a bit lower than a C, and see where this gets us. Playing a B on an F horn will produce an E. Aha, almost there! The next logical step (half-step really, but let’s not complicate the matter) is to play a Bb on the F horn which will produce an Eb. We’re there! Quite simply then, when we have a horn in Eb part to play on an F horn and we see the written note C we need to play a Bb to produce an Eb. And that’s all there is to it! You are now able to read a part for horn in Eb and play all Cs with confidence!

In my next article I will deal with the written note G for horn in Eb on an F horn and why playing a horn in F part on a Bb horn is a metaphoric anachronism. Happy blowing!