Arban's first characteristic study

[AlexS]

I was teaching a lesson on this and the student pointed out something that I either never noticed, or was covered by a teacher of mine so long ago that I forgot it. Did somebody forget to cancel out the F# in bar 22 in both the Goldman/Smith/ Gordon edition and the Alessi/ Bowman edition of the Arban? Every recording From Tom Hooten to Misa Mead to Paul Mayes has the second arpeggio as Bb major, when according to the sheet music it should be augmented. I've tried it both ways and the augmented version certainly has a charm and a little spice to it, but is a little jarring after hearing it major for so long. They both are dominant chords resolving to the Eb major on the next bar followed by an unambiguous Bb to Eb. The older Goldman Version on Imslp as the F# cancelled out. I'm conflicted and would like more opinions.

Thanks for the help,

Alex S

[John Morgan]

I was teaching a lesson on this and the student pointed out something that I either never noticed, or was covered by a teacher of mine so long ago that I forgot it. Did somebody forget to cancel out the F# in bar 22 in both the Goldman/Smith/ Gordon edition and the Alessi/ Bowman edition of the Arban? Every recording From Tom Hooten to Misa Mead to Paul Mayes has the second arpeggio as Bb major, when according to the sheet music it should be augmented. I've tried it both ways and the augmented version certainly has a charm and a little spice to it, but is a little jarring after hearing it major for so long. They both are dominant chords resolving to the Eb major on the next bar followed by an unambiguous Bb to Eb. The older Goldman Version on Imslp as the F# cancelled out. I'm conflicted and would like more opinions.

Thanks for the help,

Alex S

Alex - I have three Arbans books. All bass clef. The Bowman/Alessi version has it "wrong", that is, both of the E's in the second half of that measure are still E naturals because the natural was not cancelled out. My other two books have it really screwy, they have in bass clef lingo starting with the first four notes, F, E natural, F, E flat.... So, that is wrong, but it makes the following two E's in the measure E flats, which is as it should be.

I talked with my band director who is a trumpet player/teacher, and his trumpet Arban book (older than dirt) has the second lower F as an F natural, so therefore the following F would be natural, also. Since the Arban book was written for trumpet/cornet to begin with, I would go with that version.

I think I always played that bass clef E as an E flat for the second and third occurrences in that measure.

[davewerden]

My edition of the book has it correct (treble clef, photo below). Also, the IMSLP site has a very old edition (usually a good thing) and it agrees with mine, and with the way most people play it, with the sharp cancelled out. Photo of that part of the page below.

[adrian_quince]

Arban is fond (possibly overly so) of chromatic lower neighbor tones while he doesn't use augmented chords much at all. Also, I really can't see him blurring chord quality lines by mixing a #5 and a b7 in the same chord. That would be a pretty progressive sound for the early 1860s. So, my musical sense has always been that the Bb chord in question is a plain old dominant 7 chord (Bb-D-F-Ab).