Instruments for a brass quartet/quintet

[royjohn]

I've been talking with a trumpet player about forming a quartet or quintet to play for recreation and a few times a year at church services. IDK who I will be able to scare up besides the 1st trumpet...there is a euphonium player who is a church memeber, if he wants to play with us, but IDK yet. So my question is: what other instruments might be used for the inner voices? Would a euph play the trombone part, a horn part or the second trumpet, or any of those? Any thoughts?

royjohn, 75 y/o tuba newbie

[2nd tenor]

I’d be thinking a couple of trumpets plus a tuba plus a trombone or a euphonium but nothing is cast in stone. Matt Kingston has lots of quintet and quartet arrangements - there’s some flexibility in which instrument plays which part- and IIRC Moravian music is for small groups in churches.
https://www.mattkingston.com/

[Sousaswag]

There’s no reason a euphonium can’t play the trombone parts.

I’d be more concerned with the trumpets. If you can find another you’re set.

Horn could play a trumpet part but it would probably be easier for them to play the horn part.

[bone-a-phone]

Classic brass quartet instrumentation comes in a couple of different flavors. 2 trumpets, 2 trombones is one. Trumpet, Horn, Trombone, Tuba is another. 2 trumpets, tbone, tuba. Accumulating players is one issue, then you're going to have to find music (or transcribe) to fit your players abilities.

Finding a trombone/horn/euph player who can read music for another transposition or in another clef might be part of the trick, depending on what kind of musicians you have access to. For example, trombone players can't typically read french horn music. Euph players don't always read tenor clef. Horn players can't necessarily read concert pitch or bass clef.

Euphonium and trumpet don't always blend well, trombone and trumpet are usually better. Cornets or flugels are better with euph.

If you're going to play out of the hymnal, you might want to get trumpet players with C trumpets, and horn or euph players who can read concert pitch. Trombone and tuba players generally read concert pitch.

Transcribing can be a lot of extra work if you don't have electronic versions of the music.

If you don't have music specifically written for your instrumentation, it can all be a little confounding.

[djwpe]

I love playing in brass quintets, but every quintet has 2 problems:


Trumpet 1 and Trumpet 2

[bloke]

The most literature in the most styles covering the most situations and pertaining to the most diverse special days of the year is going to be found written for brass quintet.
When you move to quartets, there’s going to be less.
When you move to trios, suddenly find yourself playing virtuoso level parts that resemble cello parts.
A really accomplished trumpet and the same level of horn player asked me to play in a trio with them (recreationally/weekly) a few years ago for a while (before the horn player moved to Tasmania, if you can believe that). I tried covering the bottom trio parts on the F tuba, and finally had to move to the euphonium (most were written for trumpet/horn/trombone) to play most of the pieces… and if I didn’t read ahead two or three bars – due to all the notes – I was sunk… particularly the pieces that were transcriptions of string trios.
Anyway… I guess I’m basically (strongly) encouraging you to try to organize a quintet, both for reasons of sheer quantity of available music and for the quantity of available music that is accessible to most players.
…and yeah, (re: DW’s point) finding two trumpet players who can really sparkle in a quintet is a challenge, but so is finding one for a quartet or a trio.
me…?? I’ve always just worked it backwards. If a quintet with two sparkling trumpet players contacts me (to rehearse either weekly or bimonthly recreationally, etc.), I will almost certainly agree to play. If they are less than sparkling, I’ll explain that I have a lot of instruments to fix all the time, and a lot of repairs to do on my property, here. (I suppose it’s a lot like when a politician or bureaucrat is just about ready to be deposed or arrested, and claims they are stepping down to “spend more time with their family”.)
Truth be told, I’m not currently in a recreational quintet, but one particular church seems to hire the same five people all the time, fortunately with four other players who are all my betters… and one of my per service orchestras has formed the five of us into a quintet, whereby the first trumpet player in the quintet is extraordinarily fine, and the other one (in their 20’s) started out four years ago being OK, and has soared nearly straight upward over the past four years - regarding their technical and musical prowess… so I’m particularly lucky that I’m working with two different groups from time to time which both feature some really great trumpet players and other players…and am picking up a little bit of grocery money at the same time.

AGAIN: >>> QUINTET <<<

[Mary Ann]

Agree on choice of quintet because of the available lit. You still might find yourself making arrangements of things for church services. For example, I did an quintet arrangement of Simple Gifts. The only really good music I can think of for a quartet would be the hymnal, and you'd need trumpets who could read C parts and a horn player who could play C basso.

I play euph on the tbone part in a recreational quintet, and we have a LOT of fun playing badly. The 1st tpt, no matter who it is, will play sharp.

[bloke]

sidebar: Simple Gifts

Before Mark Ridenour was hired by Chicago, he was around here for a few years. I don’t know how many people know this but he is QUITE a fine arranger, and in manuscript wrote a quite nice abbreviated version of the Copland “Simple Gifts” (among other remarkable arrangements) for brass quintet, and those charts are still floating around town in Xerox of Xerox form.
I haven’t seen him in quite a few years… We caught a glimpse of each other when I was studying with Gene one summer at Ravinia, and said hi to each other as we were walking past in opposite directions… It seems to me that if someone approached him nicely, he might share some of his arrangements with them.
For all I know (??) maybe some of them are published now. I don’t keep up with stuff like that.

Finding out more and more about Mary Ann - over these years, I suspect that her arranging skills are quite acute as well - as are Wade’s. Yet another really talented quintet arranger is my friend who plays horn, Bob Gilbert , who is Alan Gilbert’s uncle. Bob lives around here as the Gilbert family cradle is over by the Tennessee River. I don’t think there is a single Gilbert that is not a full-time professional musician. The first one was Bob‘s father, who left the family farm with his violin to see if he could make a living playing in the vaudeville houses in Memphis, rather than pushing a plow.

[royjohn]

Thanks for all your replies, which are helpful. I got sent an arrangement of Shall We Gather at the River by the church pianist, who would like to help arrange this group. It was in MuseScore and I joined that to print it out. Apparently there are about 100 pages of various brass quartet and quintet arrangements and the pianist says it is not difficult to change the key on a part if needed, so we may have some music to work with. I am currently playing CC tuba, but I do have a BBb, so I could match the Bb trumpets and trombones with the latter and then if we had a horn it would just be a matter of accommodating them. We'd have to see how a euph managed...got to find the personnel first, I guess.

royjohn, 75 y/o tuba newbie

[Mary Ann]

There isn't any reason to "match" the Bb trumpets with an BBb tuba. Most people will prefer a smaller tuba for quintet so that you don't overwhelm the other instruments. A Miraphone 184 CC is very popular, as are Eb tubas and the occasional F. Canadian Brass uses a 3/4 CC, Empire Brass has always had Eb, I think. When I had my 184 CC, I lent it to the Tucson Symphony tuba player to use in the official TSO quintet, and he wanted to buy it from me because it was "perfect" for that application. I thought so too.

[bloke]

Trumpet players (in quintets with which I'm hired to play) nearly always bring a B-flat, a C, and a piccolo...as some tunes are easier (or written in concert pitch on their parts) to play on a C instrument, and some feature piccolo trumpet (in all or part of a piece/arrangement). Some also bring a combination E-flat/D trumpet but (ONLY in my experience) those tend to be the 2nd/3rd-4th-5th-call jackass trumpet players.

tuba:
No one cares which tuba you bring, and they don't even particularly care whether your tuba sounds "dark", "bright", "tubby", or whatever.
If a tuba plays "pretty good", that's what others expect. If a tuba player actually plays about as well as the other four musicians (as well as actually playing on pitch and in time) they are considered to be "extraordinary". Though inroads have been made and games have been stepped up, this - even after all of the Harvey Phillips banner-waving - is still the general expectation. This paragraph sounds like a "downer", but the actual purpose is to encourage you to just do your best (which will continue to be better), don't overthink, and have a good time.

[bort2.0]

Joe, that seems to be the case all around. If you play tuba and are pretty decent, then it's as if you are some kind of hero.

Play on time, big low register, and in tune, and you're a rock star.

Big secret -- listen to recordings of the pieces, and then try to sound like that. Act like you know how it's supposed to sound. It works wonders.

[bloke]

In another life, I toured (high school band rooms - throughout Mississippi and neighboring states) with the faculty members brass quintet at Ole Miss.

Our first tune (usually) was a peppy Percy Granger band piece in E-flat major, "Shepherds, Hey".
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KgI3Sn2U6s )

Whenever we arrived at a band room before the band students arrived, I would look through the wall-o'-sousaphones, find one that was playable, pull it down, and use it on that tune. I just wanted the stooundts to know that their instruments (and even their so-called "marching instruments" - as the internet has turned kids into the same equipment geeks as the rest of us) were capable of playing most anything.

[Heavy_Metal]

I’d be thinking a couple of trumpets plus a tuba plus a trombone or a euphonium but nothing is cast in stone. Matt Kingston has lots of quintet and quartet arrangements - there’s some flexibility in which instrument plays which part- and IIRC Moravian music is for small groups in churches.
https://www.mattkingston.com/

Also try Dorm 40 Music, here:

https://www.dorm40music.com/index.asp

One of their arrangers, Craig Garner, was on the old board- not sure if he's on this one. He and his partner, Mike Zavoski, do excellent arrangements.

[bone-a-phone]

Musescore is a great resource for odd chamber groups. Quartets are easier to arrange for if you're doing your own arrangements. Much more brass quintet music is published, but with Musescoref you can draw on quartets for brass, strings, clarinet, sax, recorders, voice, etc, and make key/voicing edits easily. Plus the amount of available music becomes much larger. So don't write off quartet just because of the lack of printed music for your instrumentation.