Stopped Notes on the Horn: Some Aesthetic Considerations1
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ROGAN 53 STOPPED NOTES ON THE HORN: SOME AESTHETIC CONSIDERATIONS1 William Rogan newnew musical era was usheredushered in with a patent issued in PrussiaPrussia on AprilApril 12, 1818 for a brass instrumentinstrument valve.valve.2 Initially a means of quickly changing the basic pitch A of a natural brass instrument,instrument, HeinrichHeinrich Stölzel’sStölzel’s and FriedrichFriedrich Blühmel’sBlühmel’s inventioninvention provided for the easier playing of diffi cult stopped notes, but as the valve represented more than a mechanical improvement of the natural horn, it was not universally acclaimed in professional circles.3 Essentially, the valve created a completely new instrument that had considerable effect on the idiomatic use of the horn, on instrumentation, aesthetics, and overall on the increasing degree of chromaticism in orchestral and operatic music in the eighteenth century. Not without cause, even advocates of the new valved horn recommended viewing the innovation as simply a means of augmenting handhorn stopping technique, and one did not have to wait long for the sometimes infl ammatory articles to appear in critical literature, concerning the use of chromatic horns in works originally conceived for the natural horn.4 To the present day, the dispute over “authenticity” of valved horns in place of natural instruments remains unresolved among advocates and opponents of historical performance practice. In one respect the dispute seems unnecessary, as obviously intentional stopped effects on the natural horn are easily produced on the valved instrument as well. What then was the underlying reason for the initial antipathy towards the valved horn? It was not, as one might assume, the supposed unreliability of the mechanism itself, such as leaking or sticking valves, even if existing examples of early attempts do indeed exhibit certain technical imperfections. And even if one fi nds the occasional article in contempo- rary journals complaining of imperfections of the device or noting improvements in valve construction, the nucleus of the problem is aesthetic rather than mechanical. Signifi cantly, the instrumental music of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries idealized the sound of the human voice. In 1792, Georg Sulzer maintained that: Of all instruments with which one can enthusiastically create tones, the human throat is without any doubt the noblest. For this reason, one can consider it a basic principle, that those instruments are superior which are most capable of imitating all the tonal nuances of song as produced by the human voice.5 In his Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst, dating fromfrom 1784 though not published until 1806, Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart emphasizes Sulzer’s premise: The human voice is quite naturally the purepure tonal sound [Urton], and all other voice parts in the world are merely distant echoes of this divine elemen- 54 HISTORIC BRASS SOCIETY JOURNAL tal voice [Urstimme]. The human thrthroatoat is the fi rst, purpurest,est, most splendid instrument in creation.6 The recurrent discourse concerning the instrumental “vocal ideal” alerts us to an aesthetic difference of opinion between innovators experimenting with the technical play- ing possibilities of the instruments and traditionalists wishing to defi ne limits of this new virtuosity. And signifi cantly, the controversy concerning the valved horn is also anchored here. Unknowingly, Johann Friedrich Reichardt had already anticipated the dissension over the valved instrument at the end of the eighteenth century: The invention of such artifi cial instruments, on which one can, through the convenient and multifarious employment of the fi ngers, more easily play and produce various modulations and embellishments as with the voice, soon distanced instrumental music still further from the vocal. Instead of expres- sion, of signifi cance, there was simply affectation: easily mastered diffi culties, which were in themselves worthless, inspired admiration, and the common man, already insincere perhaps to the same degree, gladly spread wide jaws, nose, and ears at the new wonderful sounding hocus-pocus.7 For Beethoven’s composition teacher, Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, the idiomatic dialect of the horn remains unequivocally inseparable from vocal music: The horn should sing; here lies its most beautiful, singular, truly magical strength. The tones have to unfold completely, only gradually, just as with the human voice, with the most delicate nuances, in a true portamento di voce ….8 In his horn method, presumably published in 1810, Joseph Fröhlich recommended that “Whoever therefore should want to accomplish anything at all on this instrument [the horn] should simply study the school of singing,”9 and in his Vollständige theoretisch-praktische Musikschule of the same yearyear he continues: The most exquisite tool of expression for the social communication of joy- ful as well as sorrowful feelings which a most generous nature has bestowed upon all humans is the voice. … The true rules of interpretation for every instrument into which the artist can breathe spirit are therefore none other than those for the voice (only with consideration for the specifi c character- istics of each [instrument]), and the greatest praise which one can ascribe to a master of any instrument is when one tells him that “all that is lacking is the words to his singing.”10 ROGAN 55 The importance of this aesthetic ideal of the human voice to the instrumental music of the Classical era is clear. However, what one can easily overlook in respect to Fröhlich’s above cited quotation is the phrase “only with consideration for the specifi c characteristics of each [instrument].” Although he actually wants to point out here the dangers inherent in an increasing and unbridled virtuosity, he has unconsciously addressed the essential premise of the valved horn controversy. The characteristic changes in timbre resulting from the varied degrees of stopping, contrasting with the open, non-stopped notes of the natural horn, represented an idiom specifi c to the natural horn, the absence of which was seen as a great loss by opponents of the new, valved instrument. The uniform qual- ity of the open, non-stopped notes of the valved horn was greeted on the one hand as a technical improvement to playing the natural horn; yet on the other hand it was lamented as an atypical neutralization of the hand-stopping idiom. Interestingly, the altercation surrounding the introduction of additional keys to the contemporary Boehm fl ute had a similar origin. Advocates of the established transverse fl ute and the natural horn criticized the mechanical innovations for their absence of vocal shadings, which were characteristic of the earlier forms of both instruments. The roots of the parallel rejection are to be found not in mechanics, but in aesthetics.11 The change of tone color created by closing the hand in the bell of the horn was not considered an unfortunate “last resource” by the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth- century audience; it was not a regrettable alternative to an as of yet non-existent invention, the valve;12 on the contrary, the stopping technique was a horn idiom rich in extra-musical associations with the hunt, the forest, and Romanticism in general. In an article by Carl Gottlieb Reissiger in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung fromfrom 1837—a time when valvedvalved horns were becoming increasingly popular—the author begs to know “what do we have from the numerous valves and keys lately invented? They spoil and distort the natural, characteristic tone and lead us to the point where we soon shall have no more than yellow and red, with which we shall not be able to properly color and tint.”13 In an essay that appeared in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in 1843 under the heading “Bericht über Berlioz’ musikalische Reise,” the anonymous author (Berlioz) perceives the danger of a distorted tonal picture resulting not from the type of instrument played, but rather from the manner of playing: It is foolishness to think that the effect of stopped notes, which are sometimes quite characteristic and required by the composer’s idea, should be lost on the valved horn, as one can produce these notes by inserting the hand into the bell just as well on the valved horn as on the ordinary natural horn. That is, to put the blame on the instrument for that which is the player’s fault, when he does not do this.14 A similar view is represented in an article dated 1878, entitled “Das Blech in der Musik,” which appeared in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung. At a point in time when—in Ger- man-speaking countries, at least—one can speak of the established integration of valved 56 HISTORIC BRASS SOCIETY JOURNAL horns in the orchestra, the anonymous author refers to the advantages offered by the valved horn, not in terms of the avoidance of stopped notes, but primarily in the possibilities created by quicker changes of the fundamental pitch or key of the instrument, analogous to crook changes on the natural horn. He writes: The most basic advantage to the use of the valved instrument is that the composer is now no longer compelled to have the horns and trumpets rest or change crooks in modulations to distant keys. The character of the instrument can thus remain fully intact; one need not hear at all that valves are being used.15 In his Lehrbuch der Instrumentation (Leipzig, 1889), Salamon Jadassohn recommends to the fl edgling composer that he ensure that the idiomatic dialect of the natural horn is preserved: The pupil should always remember that a valved horn is nothing more or less than a natural horn, which, in addition to its original pitch, is capable of being pitched in six other keys. Fast diatonic or chromatic passages will never have a good effect, although they are possible on the valved horn; they are not suitable to the nature of the instrument.16 In 1898, as Richard Strauss was completing his Ein Heldenleben and three years after the premiere of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony no.