Program Notes:
A-Hunting We Will Go

• Handel: Concerto for Two Hunting Horns in F (from "Water Music")
  
• C.P.E. Bach: Symphony in C major
  
• Leopold Mozart: Concerto for Two Hunting Horns in E-flat
  
• Handel: Concerto grosso in G major (op. 6, no. 1)
  
• Telemann: Overture in F for two horns and strings
  

In Europe around 1700, the horn suddenly burst onto the musical scene. Almost overnight, this newly fashionable instrument was being heard in instrumental music and in opera. Previously, the horn was only known as an outdoor signal instrument for the favorite sport of the nobility, the hunt. Designed in a large brass circle, the hunting horn (Italian: corno da caccia; French: trompe de chasse; German: Jagdhorn or Waldhorn) conveniently fit over the shoulder of a huntsman on horseback. Blasts from the horn were used to excite and encourage the hounds. Primitive fanfares using just three or four low notes of the horn were played at the beginning and at the end of the hunt.

The hunt was the privilege of royalty, and the size and splendor of the hunting entourage came to be the yardstick by which a nobleman and his wealth were measured. The horn's transition from outdoor signal instrument to the musical stage happened very rapidly. At Versailles, the most prestigious and emulated court in Europe, the hunt was especially popular. Following his visit to Versailles as part of the Grand Tour, the young nobleman Count Franz Anton von Sporck, is credited with importing the horn from France to the German-speaking countries. For the next century, Bohemia and Saxony would send forth horn players to all the important courts of Europe. The Germans were the first to champion the use of the horn in music and established its place as a refined and elegant instrument of the orchestra. In the concert hall, the horns were played much more softly than when used outdoors, enabling the performers to play an entire scale one octave above the original low fanfare notes. Complete melodies could now be performed by the horn.

The original horns imported by Count Sporck were in the key of C, the same overall length as the trumpets of that time. So, not surprisingly, the first people to play this horn were the trumpet players, especially since they were the only brass players at court. The horn from France was viewed as a new type of trumpet. They were played as the trumpet was, that is, "open" without the hand in the bell. The only difference was that the horns were round and had deep, funnel-shaped mouthpieces. This new type of trumpet was called, logically enough, tromba da caccia (Italian — hunting trumpet — Handel), tromba selvatica (Italian — trumpet of the woods — Telemann), tromba piccola (Italian — small trumpet — Telemann - Note: trumpets of the day were large — 3 feet long) and even just tromba (Italian — trumpet — J. S. Bach — 2nd Brandenburg Concerto).

Later in the century, from 1725 to 1750 approximately, the horn became a distinct and separate instrument from the trumpet. The nomenclature became standardized to "corno" or "horn" and by now there were players who played only the horn. By mid-century tastes and styles were shifting away from the thin, clear sounds of the Baroque and towards the fuller, darker sounds of the Rococco and Classical periods. The horn developed a larger bell and an increased length. At this point, something unusual began to happen. Around 1750, Anton Hampel, the second horn player in the Dresden Court Orchestra, pioneered a new technique using the hand in the bell to create a scale in the horn's lower octave. Soloists emerged from this new second horn school and performed all over Europe demonstrating this new device. Giovanni Punto (J. V. Stich), the prized student of Hampel, is one such example. Within the traditional pairs of horns, players began to specialize even further in their roles, that is, the first horn claiming the high notes as his territory, and the second horn specializing in and extending the low register. In this time, one finds single solo concerti written for the "First Horn" or for the "Second Horn" as the schism widened. Leopold Mozart labeled his two-horn concerto, heard today, for the "First Horn" and for the "Second Horn."

Around 1811, valves were invented and a full chromatic scale was possible. Valves were universally adopted by horn and trumpet players alike. The second horn players left their hands in their bells, not for the purpose of producing chromatic notes, but for the beauty of the sound. They specialized in the lower or alto register. Today's horn players are direct descendents of these second horn specialists. As did their colleagues performing on the high Baroque trumpet, the first horn players became extinct. In order to perform the high parts found in Baroque music, around 1950, piccolo trumpets were invented and around 1980 piccolo horns followed.

Our modern instrument, the corno da caccia or piccolo horn, was recently invented in Germany. They are something truly new in the field of classical music! Developed in today's atmosphere of authenticity and historical correctness, these instruments are played "open," that is, without the hand in the bell, just as they were played in the 18th century. The resulting authentic sound is pure Baroque, clear and ringing, and not muffled by the 19th century practice of placing the hand in the bell.

Handel: Concerto for Two Hunting Horns in F (from "Water Music")

This concerto was written in 1722 and is a reworking of the two most engaging movements of the Handel Water Music Suite of 1717. Transposed up to F from the original D, Handel changed the harmonies to make them more interesting and complex, adding suspensions and dissonances, resulting in a vastly superior composition. The middle movement was newly composed by Handel for the concerto.

C.P.E. Bach: Symphony in C major H. 659 (W. 182/3)

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was the second son of Johann Sebastian Bach, one of four who themselves became composers, and in my view, the greatest of Sebastian's progeny in this respect. To quote Allan Badley, "Emanuel Bach possessed one of the most original musical minds of the [eighteenth] century." His music is often profoundly moving in ways that that of his more facilely gifted half-brother Johann Christian is (usually) not. This has less to do, perhaps, with inherent genius than with environment: Emanuel was steeped in the music of his father and exemplified the empfindsamer Stil (sentimental style) that was favored in northern Germany — he was active in Berlin and Hamburg — whereas Christian's music is more reflective of the newer trends he encountered in Italy and promulgated in England. (We'll speak more of Christian Bach in the note for next month's concert.)

The six symphonies for strings listed in the Wotquenne catalogue of C.P.E. Bach's works as Wq.182 were written in 1773 (Emanuel also wrote his autobiography in that year). This group of symphonies was commissioned by a music-loving aristocrat who would later have a tremendous influence on Mozart: the Baron Gottfried van Swieten. It was van Swieten who in the 1780s would introduce Mozart to the music of Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach, which was to have a major effect on Mozart's thinking. (He also commissioned Mozart to reorchestrate four large-scale vocal works of Handel, including Messiah.) The baron was the Austrian ambassador to the court of Frederick the Great from 1771 to 1777, where C.P.E. Bach had served the flute-playing Prussian monarch from 1738 to 1766, after which he moved on to become music director at Hamburg. Although modest in scale, the six symphonies, Wq.182, contain much beautiful and striking music and exemplify Emanuel's characteristic sudden shifts in key, dynamics, and mood. Note especially the abrupt break that seems to cut short the first movement, leading directly into the anguished cries of the Adagio, which is mostly mournful in tone. A light, dance-like Allegretto, not without its own moments of introspection, brings the splendid little symphony to a close.

Leopold Mozart: Concerto for Two Hunting Horns in E-flat

This concerto by Wolfgang's father is written in the style of the time, that is, two distinct soloistic parts, the "Corno Primo" and "Corno Secundo." The players take their turns demonstrating their virtuosity in their separate registers. Incidentally, Leopold also wrote a Sinfonia da Caccia using barking hounds, live gunshots and, of course, horns! He was a famous violin teacher and author of the famous text Violinschule (1756). The string writing in today's concerto for two horns is very advanced and virtuosic for its time.

Handel: Concerto grosso in G major (op. 6, no. 1)

Again, we give the horns, as it were, a breather, as we turn once more to music for strings alone. Amazingly, Handel wrote all twelve of the concerti published as his Opus 6 in the two months of September and October of 1739. Donald Burrows writes, "it is doubtful whether any other baroque composer wrote so many concertos over such a short period." These pieces were written in a form — if not a style — reminiscent of the much admired Italian composer Arcangelo Corelli, whose own Opus 6 was a seminal set of Concerti Grossi published in 1714. Unlike the more contemporary concerti of a composer like Vivaldi, which were almost always in three movements, Handel's Opus 6 pieces follow Corelli's model of being in several movements. The First Concerto, of five movements, was finished on September 29th, just two weeks after Handel composed his Ode for Saint Cecilia's Day. The opening section (A tempo giusto) begins with a stately phrase, followed by a nod to Corelli by the soloists. This leads to a sprightly Allegro. The third movement is a plaintive Adagio in the minor, and the last two are both marked Allegro, the first of which makes some fugal motions. If this Concerto stimulates you to hear the rest of Opus 6, there are many fine recordings: Neville Marriner and the late Iona Brown both recorded complete sets with the Academy of St-Martin-in-the-Fields, and some other fine versions are with the English Concert under Trevor Pinnock and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which performs without conductor. I might particularly recommend a 3-CD set on the L'Oiseau Lyre label with Boston's own Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra under its former music director Christopher Hogwood. It was from the excellent notes by Donald Burrows that I took the quote above.

Telemann: Overture in F for two horns and strings

Telemann was perhaps the most famous and respected musician of his time. A friend of Handel and Bach (he was godfather to Bach's second son, Carl Philipp Emanuel), he is credited with organizing the first public concerts in Germany. Before then, of course, concerts were the private entertainment of the nobility. One of the most prolific composers of all time, beautiful music flowed from his pen with great ease. He was especially astute in recognizing the distinctive characteristics of each instrument and wrote some of the best baroque horn music. As you will hear in the first movement of this piece, directly after the stately introduction, he has a great gift for capturing the spirit of hunting music. Hunting songs and music were almost always in triple meter and, as legend has it, to imitate the long-short (quarternote - eighthnote) clip-clop of the horses' hooves.

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