Hence, Bach did little toward developing the combining powers of the wood-wind. As one writer has excellently said: “He preferred to employ wind-instruments for the purpose of enlarging his original design, rather than that of strengthening or decorating it. When he added a flute or an oboe to his score, he loved not only to make it obbligato, but to write it in such wise that it should form a new real part. Hence, even in his regularly constructed arias, the voice is scarcely so much accompanied by the various instruments employed as made to sing in concert with them, the score containing as many real parts as there are solo voices or instruments introduced into it.” Dr. Parry, in his “Evolution of the Art of Music,” in speaking of the difference between instrumentation of this kind and that of a later date, says: “In the instrumentation of the great masters of the earlier generation, the tone-qualities seem to be divided from one another by innate repulsion; but in the harmonic style they seem to melt into one another insensibly, and to become part of a composite mass of harmony whose shades are constantly shifting and varying.”
Handel’s wood-wind is employed with greater variety than Bach’s. This was to be expected of a composer who, in the first place, was in closer touch with the public, and hence more likely to recognize and yield to the demand for effects. In the second place, Handel, not being secluded as Bach was, stood more forward in the march of musical evolution. He was an opera-writer, and this brought him into immediate contact with the harmonic style as practised by the Italian opera-writers. He learned from some of them, too, the use of grandiose mass effects. The application of these ideas to his instrumentation produced results far different from any conceived by the introspective and historically solitary genius of the great Bach. Handel used a larger orchestra than Bach, yet did many things in the same way. For example, he often wrote for his instruments in the polyphonic style, but in the accompaniments to his great choruses he wrote for several oboes in unison with the violins and a body of bassoons in unison with the basses. At other times he treated his wood-wind parts as figured ornamentation of the more simple string parts, and again he employed the strings and wind alternately, as modern composers do so frequently. Flutes he rarely used except as solo instruments, as in the “Sweet Bird” aria, and clarinets he did not have. But the idea of using some of the wind-instruments, as horns and trumpets, in pairs, had come into existence in Handel’s time, and it was not long before this plan was applied also to the wood-wind.
Its employment naturally began with the recognition of the inability of the wood-wind to play such intricate passages as strings could, and also of their power to sustain the long notes of supporting chords. These features of wood-wind writing existed even in the scores of Scarlatti and Lulli, but it was not until the harmonic style began to be clearly distinguished from the polyphonic in orchestral works that they became generally recognized. In the scores of Emmanuel Bach, the son of Sebastian, we begin to find wood-wind treated in the pure classic style. The chords, to be sure, are very thin, and the composer shows a “’prentice hand” at the dovetailing of his wind parts together so as to make a firm structure, but the skeleton of the modern form is there.
Haydn’s scoring shows a curious combination of Handelian ideas with later developments. The Handelian plan of strengthening string parts with wind parts in unison seems to have taken some hold of Haydn, for he rarely writes unsupported wood-wind passages in his symphonies. He keeps his first violins singing the melody most of the time, and gets variety by doubling them, now with flutes, now with oboes, again with bassoons. A wind solo is very rare. He shows similar weakness in writing for the wood-wind in its internal relations. His clarinet parts usually double those of the oboes or the flutes. There is a great deal of octave writing, and he seldom gets more than three real parts in his wood-wind. It is only because he so constantly employs the string quartet that his symphonic scores do not sound thin. For example, in a passage for wood-wind and strings near the beginning of the familiar symphony in D, the first flute, except in one chord, doubles the second violin at the octave above, while the second flute supports the principal notes of the melody, played by the first violins, at the octave below. The oboes in unison double the violas at the upper octave. The two clarinets in unison double the first flute an octave below. The bassoons and basses play in unison. Toward the end of the last movement there is a passage in which the wind plays sustained chords, and in this the wood is treated in a more open style of harmony. Haydn learned much from Mozart, however, and in the “Creation” and “Seasons,” his writing for wood-wind shows much greater freedom, and a decidedly more definite attempt to get at the tonal characteristics of the instruments.
HAYDN.
There can be no question that Mozart’s orchestration shows a large improvement on Haydn’s, and it is, perhaps, easier for the amateur to discern this in his treatment of the wood-wind than anywhere else. Passages contrasting the whole wood choir with the strings are more numerous, and the combinations of wood with strings show more definite attempts to put new tints upon the symphonic canvas. One finds, for instance, in the G minor symphony the flute tone contrasted with the oboe, combinations of flute and oboe contrasted with bassoon, combinations of flutes, bassoon, and strings, and other effects which give life and variety to the instrumental coloring.
Nevertheless, a conventional manner of treating the wood-wind found its way into general use, and it prevailed until the romanticists, in reaching out for new forms and manners of expression, revolutionized the system of scoring. The old-fashioned way was to employ the four pairs of wood-wind instruments always in thirds and sixths. The flutes almost always took the melody and the next interval below it. The oboes either doubled the flutes in the octave below, or the first oboe doubled the second flute, and the second oboe took the next lower degree of the chord. The clarinets filled in the middle voices, and the bassoons played the bass, most frequently in octaves. The harmony was close, and the texture of this instrumentation was always solid, and, it must be admitted, at times muddy. This manner of writing is found in all Beethoven’s earlier works. For example, here is the opening of the first symphony, the horns and strings (pizzicati) also appearing in the score:
