Yesterday afternoon I went to the year’s first meeting of the
West Gallery
Quire.
It was my first chance in a while to play serpent with a lot of
other people. I think I’m getting better.
Of course, the low notes are always a bit better when I’ve been
playing even lower notes on the tuba all summer. There was also a
good tuba player in the Wakefield Summer Band this summer, and
playing with him got me listening to the people I play with
better. And I think the
cornetto practicing is making my lip muscles work better for some
of the parts that are more idiomatic for a cello or a viol than
for a serpent.
I spent some time thinking about how many of the pieces would
be easier to play if I had a serpent in C instead of D. The serpent maker who
was at BEMF last June had one
that worked pretty well at about the same stretch as my D serpent,
so all I’d have to do is write a (large) check. And then make up
my mind to either play the notes that would be easy on a D serpent
on the C serpent, or carry both instruments.
I’m a lot better on the hard notes now than I was even a year
or two ago, so maybe I’ll just work on playing the D serpent
better.
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