Post by Diane Merkel on Jan 28, 2008 12:24:48 GMT -6
Trumpeter Steve Charpie of the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra found Vinatieri's music at the National Music Museum in Vermillion, S.D., and couldn't believe that "nobody had ever done anything with it."
Charpie's been passionate about playing music since he was 5, and one of his activities has been putting together groups that play old music on historic brass instruments. He was doing a concert at the museum when he made his discovery.
For him, the old manuscripts were like buried treasure. He asked for copies, brought them home and got to work on his computer. It took him several years, but finally he was able to reconstitute Vinatieri's charts so that his group could play them.
"I almost went blind reading the manuscript," he said in an interview last week. "And there were no scores, only parts."
Charpie explained that the score, which is what the conductor uses, contains the parts for each instrument. But all he had were the individual parts, which he had to type into the computer, correct and then, reversing the usual process, use to create the complete score.
When he had finished, he and his group recorded a CD of the music, and for the recording, the museum loaned him Vinatieri's actual cornet that it had on display.
Article: www.presstelegram.com/ci_8071154
