TromboneChat

I'm going to guess that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had something to do with the Blazevich "Trombone School" being published with text in Russian... and German!

The copy on IMSLP is just a scanned PDF so it has defied easy translation, but now that Google can translate mere images of text, i tried it.... for the first three pages.

Each translation has its pluses and minuses. I was mostly interested in his explanation of the pp<fff>pp exercise and its permutations.

"leave dad behind" is a surprise.

Russian pg 1


German pg 1


Russian pg 2


German pg 2


Russian pg 3


German pg 3

Maybe I'm completely missing some sarcasm in your first sentence, but IMSLP has the publishing date 14 years before the Molotov-Rippentrop Pact. Publishing in both German and Russian was actually a fairly common practice historically, largely because there's a long history of cultural exchange and overlap. Many if not most famous 19th and early 20th century Russian composers have major German influences, and the same is true of the rest of the arts. Kind of like how today Brits and Americans tend to see French culture as especially refined or sophisticated, that's how many Russians saw German culture in the 18th and 19th centuries. It's the same reason that English and French speaking countries tend to prefer CC tubas in orchestras while German and Russian speaking countries tend to prefer BBb.

cmccain wrote: Wed Jun 04, 2025 12:53 pm Maybe I'm completely missing some sarcasm in your first sentence, but IMSLP has the publishing date 14 years before the Molotov-Rippentrop Pact...

Ouch! Imagine my embarrassment.

I'm afraid this information leaves not much left to admire about the diplomatic efforts of Messrs. Molotov and Ribbentrop.