Posted by Klaus on December 19, 2002 at 23:20:02:
In Reply to: Romantic posted by Tito on December 19, 2002 at 20:02:28:
(This is a long posting, that the revered tuba and Finale professor Jon B. of the Western Nome university, should not let himself get offended by reading):
There have been reports on Mahler having made a version of Beethoven 9 with tuba and other additions in the orchestration. I seem to remember, that a (the?) Detroit orchestra did that version a couple of years ago.
The romantics had the idea, that they could instrumentate the Vienna classic masterpieces better, that could the masters themselves.
One of the first documented samples is that of Wagner writing an ending to one of Gluck's overtures that developed into the opening of the first act of that opera, the name of which eludes me right now.
I read that score about 40 years ago to see if it would be of interest for the orchestra I was in then (on the 1st horn part). That overture did not match that orchestra. Yet I learned a very interesting lesson of what one might call the integrity of the young Wagner as a musicologist and composer with a respect for his by then long gone colleague:
Wagner had added winds to all that major part of the overture that Gluck had written. Exactly at the point, where Wagner's ending started, he simplified his orchestration. The auxiliary winds still should play, but they were only used as extras on the parts played by the winds, that Gluck originally set the score for. Thereby Wagner served Gluck in two ways: that overture could enter the concert hall repertory, where it would be played more than in the opera house. And this could happen as well in a version, that was true to Gluck's in every way smaller orchestra (by omission of the extra winds), as in the larger envision of the orchestral sound, that Wagner became a major torchbearer for.
I have read scores since my fairly young years. In the sixties I was very astonished by several recordings of Beethoven 5. During the development of the first movement, where some horn motifs are modulated into keys, that the natural horns could not reach, Beethoven let the bassoons take over these motifs.
However, what hit my ears was the horns playing these modulated motifs. "Beethoven would have done so, had he had valve horn" was the reasoning.
I do not agree: Beethoven, and Mozart, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Schubert, von Weber, Mendelssohn, and the other greats, had a marvellous grip on the options available in the most often very specific orchestras, that they wrote for.
If one analyses the KV. 447 for horn and orchestra, one can see, that Mozart very often limited the even so fast primo violin parts to a choice of notes, that belonged to the extended range of the soloist, the natural horn. Thereby introducing the method of composing for a certain "grid" of selected notes. A method also used in more modern ages.
Beethoven wanted a certain mood into the last movement of his violin concerto. The main theme is fully modelled on a duet for two natural horns.
We can have all the ideas, that we might want to about what some certain composer would have done, if this or that instrument had been available in his own era. But these instruments were not there, so the best composers took the instruments of their time to the outer limits of their abilities.
The same happens today!
This is not a lecture about not modifying the instrumentation of older music, when it serves a special purpose:
Through all ages of wind and brass bands, until the advent of good recording mediae, such bands have been major factors in distributing to the popular knowledge everything that happened in the concert halls and the operas of the metropolises.
One of the best pieces to demonstrate the potentials of the euph and of the contrabass tuba was written a decade or so before the valves for brass instruments were invented. Nothing to be revealed until I have written that arrangement myself.
Klaus