At 12:46 PM -0400 11/5/10, Raymond Horton wrote:
I asked a knowledgeable horn-playing friend about your later question (which
composers started writing for F horn all the time), and he promised me a
copy if an interesting article on Brahms horn writing, so I should have more
to add. I'll just say that I have been told that, even though Brahms wrote
parts that were playable on natural horn, he probably never heard tham
played on natural horn in his lifetime. He also wrote a book of etudes for
valved horn!
And we've also had a dissenting opinion a little later in the day.
My take (based on no research whatever!):
The composers who wrote for natural horns were awfully clever in what
they could get out of their horn players. Especially Mozart, perhaps
because his buddies in Mannheim demonstrated what they could do with
their hands, but even in using just the normal open notes Mozart was
much more demanding than, say, Beethoven.
And since both composers and players in the 'tween generation when
valve horns were beginning to appear were used to thinking that way,
I suspect that they BOTH might have thought of the valves as a way to
instantly change from a horn in one key to a horn in another without
taking the time to change crooks--which the valves actually DO do, if
you stop to think about it! Which could explain the reference to the
music of--was it Wagner?--where the key of the horn changes
continuously through the music. New technology, but an older way of
thinking about how the instrument can and should be used.
There is ALWAYS an older generation that fails to see why they should
have to learn anything new. And there is ALWAYS a younger generation
that accepts the new as a given.
Not Dvorak - he wrote in keys just as Brahms, [Dvorak
6th = Horn 1, 2 (in D, F, E), 3, 4 (in E, Bb, D)] if more chromatically.
Yes, AND his horn parts are all playable by natural (hand) horns in
those keys. Which would cause me to ask about the horn players in
Bohemia at that time, and what kind of instruments they were playing.
John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[email protected])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
"We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition
of jazz musicians.
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