Crescendo Help

Thanks for that, been working on the crescendo for a few hours, here's what I've got now:



I decided to take the viola and cello up to forte also seen as they are carrying the melody.

I have some questions about assigning music to players.

As you can see I've labelled flutes 1 and 2, and I'm pretty sure I've got them the right way seen as flute 1 comes out on top.

The bassoon parts are confusing me, seen as the instrument that plays during the crescendo ends up playing the lower note of the octave. So I'm not sure whether this part should be assigned to player 1 or 2.

Oh, I also have a question, how do the players know how loud to build their crescendo and how quickly? Do they have to kind of look ahead in the music?

Thanks.

- The flutes are labelled correctly, but the stems are very confusing as it is now. Make all stems of the second flute go downwards and all stems of the first flute go upwards.

- Assign it to the second bassoon. It's not uncommon at all to have the second instrument play while the first pauses, and it would be unusual in such a case to have the first bassoon play the lower note of the octave.

- Yes, the players have to look ahead and see to what dynamic the crescendo leads and play the crescendo so that they arrive at that dynamic at the right moment. But sometimes you can also explicitely write "molto crescendo" for a big/fast crescendo, "poco crescendo" for a small one, and "crescendo poco a poco" for a very long crescendo that builds up quite slowly.

One more thing to consider is "orchestra psychology": Musicians often tend to make crescendi much faster and stronger than diminuendi (people love to play loud ), so to compensate you may consider only writing "cresc." or crescendo hairpins fairly late, but bring in your "dim." or diminuendo hairpins very early. But even if you don't do this, it is something that the conductor will generally do on his own, i.e. show crescendi quite late but show diminuendi very soon and strongly. Of course this is less of an issue with a first-class orchestra, but honestly, how many of us get their pieces performed by the Berlin Philharmonic?

Thanks Gardener.

to compensate you may consider only writing "cresc." or crescendo hairpins fairly late

My only beef with doing this is that some notes that are meant to be part of the crescendo will not be, seems kind of a sloppy way to notate.

That "poco a poco" etc. stuff is very handy.

Originally Posted by Chris

My only beef with doing this is that some notes that are meant to be part of the crescendo will not be, seems kind of a sloppy way to notate.

Well, I didn't mean specifically in your example. You have a rather short crescendo there, so it makes sense starting the crescendo right away. But if you have a long passage that you want to get gradually louder, it is generally advisable to stay reserved with your crescendo markings and build up the sound more by adding instruments first.

But as I mentioned, you can very well also write a very long crescendo, as the conductor will generally know how to show it in a way that it doesn't grow too loud too fast.

• If two instruments are sharing a staff, the 1st player's stems must go up and the 2nd player's stems must go down.
• Your cello part is in alto clef, which is incorrect - cellos read bass, tenor, or treble clef. The cello part should probably be in tenor clef.
• The oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn entrances need to indicate which player is to be playing (i.e., 'I', 'II', or 'a2')

Originally Posted by flint-wwrr

• If two instruments are sharing a staff, the 1st player's stems must go up and the 2nd player's stems must go down.
• Your cello part is in alto clef, which is incorrect - cellos read bass, tenor, or treble clef. The cello part should probably be in tenor clef.
• The oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn entrances need to indicate which player is to be playing (i.e., 'I', 'II', or 'a2')

Thanks Flint, I had to look up this tenor clef stuff, I thought there was only bass, treble and middle.

The tenor clef is just a C clef one line higher than the alto clef. It is the most common clef for higher parts in instruments that normally play in the bass clef, such as celli, bassoons, or trombones (very high parts, especially for the cello, will still be written in treble clef of course).

There are lots of different clefs in theory, although today only bass, alto, tenor, and treble clefs are widely used (but traditionally every singing voice was written with their own clef for their register, which is why they still have names such as "bass", "alto", and "tenor").