Hans ought to be online now with his Munich experiences not being too old, but then there are so many other knowledge pools available on this fine board.
DRTV1 just finished a direct transmission from our Royal Theatre of Händels Julius Caesar with Andreas Scholl singing the lead. The orchestra was Concerto Copenhagen, which plays replicas of original instruments. I spotted a small schizzo in the bass section, where a double bass appeared to have steel strings, and another section member played a fretted violone. I seem to remember, that Hans at some point reported about a high horn job, actually a duet supporting the singers, towards the end, where he used a single descant horn. As far as I remember an Alexander in F (mine ditto is in G). I also seem to remember Hans telling the key of that section to be Bb. When the two natural horns of Concerto Copenhagen exploded their artistry in the most wonderful way in the said section, I bent over in pure awe. However being the cynic my genes tell me to be, I pulled one of my recorders out of the basket standing next to my chair and found that the key actually appeared to be Bb. I don't haul out a horn this late in the night, as I live in a condo. This made me think of a standing discussion on the recorder list (I taught brasses as well as recorders for a living). I never accepted A=415 instruments, as they narrowed down the real life applicability of my students. If they could get church jobs, these all were in A=440. And even if I don't have totally perfect pitch, instruments tuned to A=415 tend to sound dull in my ears. All this typed noise just to ask: is the said horn passages of the said opera actually written in Bb? If so, I will salute Concerto Copenhagen (CoCo among friends) for playing in modern pitch. And as I have worked with baroque music as well as statistics, I tend to find B natural horns very unlikely to happen in the Händel repertory (even if playing 2nd in Brahms 2.2 is a marvellous experience). Klaus _______________________________________________ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
