Mozart employed the trombone with fine effect in Sarastro’s solo in the “Magic Flute”; Schubert showed his genius for instrumentation by the manner in which he used them in the introduction to his C major symphony, as well as in the first movement of that symphony, in which a theme is given out by three trombones in unison; and another familiar example of good scoring for trombones is in the introduction to the third act of “Lohengrin.” In the Death Prophecy scene in the second act of “Die Walküre,” a trumpet melody is supported by the four trombones, another instance of Wagner’s sense of homogeneity in sound, since trumpets and trombones belong to the same family. In fact, throughout the “Ring,” as Strauss points out, Wagner wrote for his trombones in four parts, adding the bass trombone in order to differentiate wholly between 193 it and the tuba, which latter he used with the horns, with which it is properly grouped.
Wagner has a tremendous tuba recitative in a “Faust Overture,” and in the Funeral March in the “Götterdämmerung” he introduces tenor tubas in order, again, to differentiate between the tone color of tubas and trombones and not to be obliged to employ trombones in this particular scene, the general tone color of the tuba being far more sombre than that of the trombone.
Richard Strauss’s Tribute to the Horn.
To mention tubas and trombones before the horns is very much like putting the cart before the horse, but I have reserved the horns for the last of the brass on account of the great tribute which Richard Strauss has paid them. In the early orchestras one rarely found more than two horns. Beethoven used four in the Ninth Symphony, and now it is not at all unusual to find eight.
“Of all instruments,” says Richard Strauss, “the horn is perhaps the one that best can be joined with other groups. To substantiate this in all its numerous phases, I should be obliged to quote the entire ‘Meistersinger’ score. For I do not think I exaggerate when I maintain that the greatly developed technique of the valve horn has made it possible that a score which, with the addition of a third trumpet, a harp and a tuba, employs the same instruments as Beethoven used in his Fifth Symphony, has become with every bar something entirely different, something wholly new and unheard of.
“Surely the two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets and two bassoons of Mozart have been exhausted by Wagner in every direction of their technical possibilities and plastically combined with an almost weird perception of all their tone secrets; the string quintet, through the most refined divisions into parts, and with added brilliance through the employment of the harp, produces innumerable new tone effects, and by superb polyphony is brought to a height and warmth of emotional expression such as never before was dreamed of; trumpet and trombones are made to express every phase of solemn or humorous characterization—but the main thing is the tireless participation of the horn, now for the melody, now for filling out, now as bass. The ‘Meistersinger’ score is the horn’s hymn of praise. Through the introduction and perfection of the valve horn the greatest improvement in the technique of scoring, since Berlioz’s day, has been made possible.
“To illustrate exhaustively this Protean character of the horn, I should like (again!) to go through the scores of the great magician, bar by bar, beginning with ‘Rheingold.’
“Whether it rings through the primeval German forest with the sunny exuberance of Siegfried’s youthful heart and joy of living; whether in Liszt’s ‘Mazeppa’ it dies out in the last hoarse gasp of the Cossack prince nigh unto death in the vast desert of the steppes; whether it conjures the childlike longing of Siegfried for the mother he never has known; whether it hovers over the gently undulating sea which is to bring Isolde’s gladdening form to the dying Tristan, or nods Hans Sachs’ thanks to the faithful ’Prentice; whether in 195 Erik’s dream it causes in a few hollow accents the North Sea to break on the lonely coast; bestows upon the apples of Freia the gift of eternal youth; pokes fun at the curtain-heroes (‘Meistersinger,’ Act III); plies the cudgels on Beckmesser with the jealous David and his comrades, and is the real instigator of the riot; or sings in veiled notes of the wounds of Tristan—always the horn, in its place and to be relied on, responds, unique in its manifold meanings and its brilliant significance.”
Famous horn passages in the works of other composers are in the trio of the Scherzo in the “Eroica Symphony”; in the second movement of Schubert’s C major symphony, the passage of which Schumann said that the notes of the horns just before the return of the principal subject were like the voice of an angel; in the opening of Weber’s “Freischütz” overture; in the introduction to Michaela’s romance in “Carmen”; and in the opening theme of the slow movement of Tschaikowsky’s Fifth Symphony, which is the perfection of a melodic phrase for solo horn.