The immense variety of coloring to be obtained from the wood is due largely to its power of producing independent harmony. Owing to the large register of the clarinets, they can be used as either soprano or low contralto instruments, while the wide scale of the bassoons permits them to be treated as basses, barytones, or tenors. It thus becomes possible to write in full and euphonious four-part harmony for two flutes and two clarinets, two oboes and two clarinets, two flutes and two bassoons, two oboes and two bassoons, or two clarinets and two bassoons. Each of these combinations differs in color from the others. If now a bass clarinet be added, it becomes possible to give it the fundamental bass and to use the bassoons for middle voices. The addition of an English horn gives further possibilities. If the number of flutes, clarinets, and bassoons be increased to three of each, the composer has still more combinations. And when it is recollected that every one of these wind-instruments can be used as a solo voice, the range of variety becomes wider yet. But the reader must also bear in mind that the addition of horns and strings still further alters the tonal colors. In short, the wood-wind provides the most useful means of giving variety of color to an orchestral score, and all modern writing abounds in ingenious, surprising, and expressive effects made with the wood choir. Yet when the thunder of an orchestral tutti is required, there is no better way to write for wood than that of Beethoven’s symphonies.
I have said nothing yet in this chapter about the piccolo and the contra-fagotto. The piccolo is a much misused instrument, but it is capable of admirable effects, as may be seen in the storm in Beethoven’s “Pastoral” symphony, the magic-fire music in “Die Walküre,” or the “Dance of the Automatons” in Delibes’s “Sylvia” ballet. The double-bassoon, or contra-fagotto, allows the composer to carry the bass of his wood-wind choir an octave lower than the compass of the bassoon. The instrument is coarse in tone and not capable of performing rapid passages, but it has its value, as is shown by its employment in the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or Brahms’s “Chorale St. Anthony” variations. A double-bass clarinet has been invented by a New York musician. I have not heard this instrument, but am told by competent judges that it is of high value. It carries the bass an octave lower than the bass clarinet, and is capable of great agility and of the finest gradations of tone. Richard Strauss, Weingartner, and other German musicians have promised to introduce it in future scores, and I dare say it will become a fixture in the orchestra. The great value of the clarinet color to the orchestra cannot be overestimated, and any increase in its range and intensity will surely be welcomed by composers.
IX
The Brass and the “Battery”
The brass choir may be dismissed with comparative brevity, because methods of writing for it have changed on lines similar to those followed by the wood. In the early scores one finds that the trumpets were the most noticeable members of the brass, but in later music the horns are far and away the most important. It is possible to get almost any amount of richness, solidity, and variety of color out of an orchestra composed of the wood-wind, four horns, and strings; but if two trumpets and three trombones be substituted for the horns, the ingenuity of the composer will be severely taxed to prevent his work from sounding coarse in forte passages. One reason for this is that, when played moderato, horns blend perfectly with either wood or strings, and when played forte they become brassy in tone and can be made to give a good imitation of trombones. Let the reader note, when he again hears the prelude to the third act of “Lohengrin,” that the brass theme is played the first time by the horns, which sound like trombones robbed of their roughness. The second time the theme is heard the trombones enter and the tone at once becomes brassy. In fact, it may be said at once that the brassy quality of brass instruments comes out fully only when the tone is forced. When it sings moderato the brass choir is capable of the most beautiful effects of rich, organ-like sonority. One has only to recall as a perfect example of this the prayer in the first act of “Lohengrin,” one of the most effective of all modern pieces of writing for brass. When however, immense sonority is required, the fortissimo of the brass choir is the composer’s heavy gun.
The treatment of the trumpet parts in the works of Bach and Handel will be found to differ greatly from the modern manner of writing for them. In the first place, the instruments employed by those composers must have had mouth-pieces of a different kind from those of to-day, or else the players knew some things which ours do not. Both Bach and Handel wrote passages for the trumpet so high that contemporaneous musicians cannot perform them. But that is a fact of less importance to the reader of the present book than the general principle of the scoring. The old composers, then, wrote for trumpets in pairs and made them do a great deal of their work in octaves, except in some of the earliest scores, in which three trumpets were sometimes employed. Even Monteverde wrote for one clarino (a small trumpet), three trombe (the ordinary trumpet), and four tromboni. Handel used three trumpets in the “Dettingen Te Deum,” and Bach in the “Lobe den Herrn.”
Haydn used the trumpets, horns, and drums in the primitive style. The parts were written either in octaves or in sixths—occasionally in thirds—and on tonic and dominant chords, worked with the drums chiefly to enforce the tutti. Passages such as the following abound in Haydn’s symphonies:
It seems hardly possible to contrive a more hollow plan of writing than that which gives to five instruments only three notes of a chord (though the horn parts actually sound an octave lower), yet it is a method which survived till Beethoven’s time, and, so far as the trumpets go, even the mighty Ludwig made no improvement upon it. Mozart’s scores show a very slight advance upon Haydn’s. He more frequently gives three notes of the chord to the brass instruments, but he uses them in the same general way. Of course, these old composers were much restricted by the mechanical limitations of their instruments. They had the old keyless horns and trumpets, and not having the whole scale at their command, they had to write with much restraint. In the horn parts they were further compelled to remember that certain notes could be produced only in the “stopped” form, that is, by the use of one hand inserted in the bell of the instrument. These stopped notes differed wholly in quality from the open tones. This trouble lasted until the F valve horn was perfected within the present century. Before that, however, composers had begun to endeavor to give more variety to the horn parts. Weber and Beethoven both made admirable use of this, the most noble and expressive of the brass instruments, and the scores of Rossini also contain some excellent specimens of horn writing. Rossini, indeed, who was the son of a horn-player, may be said to have introduced a new style of writing for the instrument, treating it with great brilliancy as a florid solo singer. But the substantial principles of horn writing, as practised in the modern orchestra, began with Mozart, who used the instrument with much skill, especially in those scores which do not call for trumpets. Beethoven made more exacting demands upon the instrument, and there is no more effective horn passage in existence than the famous trio of the scherzo in the “Eroica” symphony. The passage is too long for quotation here, but is, of course, familiar to every music-lover. As an example of perfect writing for a solo horn nothing in symphonic music is better than the opening of the slow movement of Tschaikowsky’s fifth symphony.
The methods of employing horns are so numerous that it is not practicable to recount all of them. It may be said, however, that in small scores, which call for wood-wind, two horns and strings, these instruments are often used to form chords with either the wind or the strings. Two horns and two bassoons make very effective harmony; in fact, when the four instruments are played moderato it is almost impossible to distinguish the bassoons from the horns. The latter also blend excellently with clarinets or the low tones of flutes. In writing for four horns some composers give the two upper notes of the chord to the first and second and the two lower to the third and fourth, while others dovetail the parts by giving the first and third notes to the first and second horns. Of course, either method is subject to variation, as in a passage like this: