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As a student I don’t recall anyone saying anything other than Shostakovich 5 in reference to the famous symphony and the famous horn excerpts — but as a teacher I began at some point to hear people call it “Shosty 5.”
Then in a recent horn studio discussion there was a question, how to spell that? Is it Shosty 5 — or the slightly edgier Shostie 5?
Wanting answers, it was time for a quick Twitter survey (where all the cool horn players are). In that I learned that more than half of horn players (that follow me and took the survey…) call it Shosty 5.
But the comments were also very interesting. Apparently in the U.K. Shost 5 is the most common (which is how I write it out in lesson notes and such), still others prefer the shorter version of Sosh 5, and then in Japan I was told it is often referred to as Tako-5.
In any case, I think Shosty 5 is a very American English thing, and very American. We have nicknames for all kinds of things and people, but those don’t always translate out in other places. Also it doesn’t make it any easier to play well, but maybe the nickname makes it a bit more fun to play as well.
