Some Fingerings for Chester
by Truman Harris
Whenever the Schuman New England Triptych
third movement shows up on a program, the bassoons tend to be a bit restless.
A well-known principal player once remarked to me at an audition that he had spent
half his time preparing "Chester" and the other half on everything else!
I've
used a set of alternate fingerings for years and never thought much about it,
until I recently saw that Dilyana Kirova, a Catholic University graduate
student, was able to learn the passages in only a week. She then performed
in concerts with the National Symphony with congratulations from colleagues.
Notes
1. These fingerings are intended to be used
with a
high note crook, such as a Heckel B or BD, a Yamaha Super Bocal, an
Allgood, or something similar, or a high note reed. The high C#
fingering in particular won't work very well otherwise. After
playing the opening chorale with your usual bocal, there are plenty of rests
during which you can switch bocals or reeds and then play the remainder of
the movement with the high equipment.
If you're playing this at an
audition, note that these excerpts are in both parts,
and could occur on a second bassoon audition!
2. These solutions illustrate an important
principal in our efforts to invent fingerings to solve technical passages, the
notion of
anchors.
Notice that the Low Eb key in the left hand, and the Bb and Ab keys in the
right hand are always used. This keeps those fingers anchored
securely to the instrument while the others are flying.
3. There are other solutions for these passages (we've seen some that anchor the low F key instead of Ab), and we don't claim this is necessarily the best way to do it. If you like your way better, of course, do it that way.
4. New England Triptych is protected by copyright. Do not re-publish the graphics without permission of the copyright holder.
5. Using the fingering charts -- "Eb"
means the key on the long joint played to produce low Eb (one line below the
bass clef) with the left hand fifth finger;
"Bb" means the right hand thumb
Bb key on the top of the boot;
"Ab" means the right hand Ab key played with
the fifth ("pinky") finger on the boot;
"hi C>" means the key on the wing
joint that you normally play with your left thumb to produce High C on the third
space of the treble clef.
6. There's a
learning curve here, as all of these fingerings are new and unfamiliar.
Give yourself a little time to get used to them and build in the motor
co-ordination before deciding that they won't work for you.
7. We welcome suggestions for improving
these fingerings.
8. The graphics (made with
Finale) are large files (498 Kb
each) and may take a while to download over a slower connection....
9. Our thanks to Dilyana Kirova for her help with this project.