So will orchestral players wear ear defenders soon?

I think there is plenty variation between loud and soft passages, but the loud passages have reached unimaginable levels, and orchestras play plenty of loud music.

Shostakovitch symphonies and Richard Strauss tone poems could make anyone deaf, when played loudly by a huge orchestra.

American orchestras sometimes use perspex acoustic shields for the folk sitting in front of the brass sections. Sometimes the brass have oversized music stands to achieve a similar effect. I've no idea if they are effective or just an ass-covering exercise. Whether hearing loss in orchestral musicians is a real occupational hazard is still somewhat unknown. Part of the problem is that freelancing musicians tend to keep quiet about any medical problems they many have. Older players lose their hearing, but so do people who have been nowhere near the blunt end of a trombone.



duncan

Whether hearing loss in orchestral musicians is a real occupational hazard is still somewhat unknown.

Not only known and understood, but understood for over half a century in England.

I could elaborate but needless to say the doctors who diagnosed hearing loss in orchestral player who played in front of the brass sections well enough understood the effects of daily being faced with sound pressure levels not short of the damaging levels once found in factories and industrial sites, before a more informed attitude informed what was acceptable in the work-place.

One might hope that the terrible volumes of sound produced by broad-bore style brass instruments might actually become a thing of the past because of this health and safety issue, and a return to the quieter and correct for almost all music older style narrow bore brass might come about ...

ATB fom George

Kill the brass players!

The brass down here don't behave that way.

Dear Mike,

I don't propose anything so drastic as bumping off the brass section! Just a return to the old narrow bore brass that did not cause deafness problems for the players sitting in front of them.

In the UK these old narrow instruments were the norm till the 1960s, but the demands of conductors [people like Toscanini and Karajan, amongst the Europeans, and the general demands from US based conductors visiting us] led to an adoption of the broad-bore instruments prevalent in the US, and in a different form in Germany if not Austria.

One of my best friends is very old bass player who retired almost twenty years ago from one of top London orchestras - completely deaf in one ear from the trombones - and so diagnosed. Naturally he managed perfectly well with one ear, but some were less fortunate. The loss of hearing in two ears is significant unless the name is Beethoven!

I actually think that broad bore brass is a great pity.

So after a period of warning [of the abolition of broad bore brass] then perhaps we could institute a cull of those not prepared to see the error of their ways and persisting in using them!



ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:

I could elaborate

I'm all ears...

Science rather than anecdote please.

I sit behind the orchestra and do see some shields used in front of the brass at times. I remember military brass band at West Point when I was a kid. I'd plug my ears when they got too loud, got a stern look from dad. But that bass drum thumping my chest was a thrill.

g

quote:

Originally posted by djc:

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:

I could elaborate

I'm all ears...

Science rather than anecdote please.

The Open University will do as an example then.

Open the link and you will see that the subject is now under accademic investigation:

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mo...e/view.php?id=285780

ATB from George