High horns live

Our annual Christmas baroque concert at King Charles on Saturday 3rd December, at 7:00pm is what Steven Devine, the concert's director, describes as "a rare chance to hear high horns live". 

Book here: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/mkctw/bach-for-christmas/e-zajdjk

Note: this concert is likely to sell out of tickets at the advance price. However, a further 50 tickets will still be available on the door at full price (£22.50).

Bach's Mass in F Major and his first Brandenberg Concerto are two of the fairly unusual works to feature natural horns - that is, valveless and therefore restricted to the notes of the harmonic series in the key in which they are set up.

Steven writes:

Bach’s “Lutheran” Mass in F (BWV 233) consists of just the first two sections of the Mass ordinary (i.e. the Kyrie and the Gloria). This is one of four such compositions which date from the late 1730’s and was probably assembled from earlier composition – the Kyrie of the F major mass has its origins in a cantata movement dating from around 1708. These compositions share stylistic similarities with the earlier mass movements (Kyrie and Gloria) that were composed around 1733 and incorporated into the 1749 B Minor Mass (BWV 232). There is a contrast between old-style polyphony with instrumental doubling, for example the Kyrie, with thrillingly virtuosic style concitato writing for voices and instruments – for example the opening movement of the Gloria. 

The role of the natural horns also reflects a contrast – in the Kyrie they play a plainchant-like melody against the counterpoint of the voices and instruments, though this actual melody has not been identified. However, in the Gloria, they are released from this and play some of the most uplifting writing for the instruments ever written. 

The concerted nature of the horn writing is mirrored by the use of those instruments in the first of Bach’s six Brandenburg Concerti. As is well documented, Bach assembled the collection from earlier works as a portfolio of his instrumental compositions to impress the Margrave of Brandenburg. From the pristine nature of the surviving score (and the fact that Bach didn’t ever work for the Margrave) it seems that the collection didn’t have its intended effect. However it is now regared as one of the landmark compositional collections of Western music. 

The first concerto of the set, like the other five, showcases groups of instruments: in this case the horns, the oboe band (three oboes and bassoon) and the string team led from the Violin piccolo – a smaller instrument tuned a minor third higher (top string is G, then C, F and B flat). The technical demands placed on all the instruments show how accomplished Bach’s original musicians were (probably at the court in Dresden?) and push the demands of the instruments of the time to their limits. 

Vivaldi’s instrumental writing is equally enlightened in his concerto for violin RV 270 Il Riposo. He calls for all the strings to be muted (placing a small wooden clip or similar on the bridge in order to dampen the vibrations and hence the sound) and instructs the harpsichord continuo to remain tacet (silent) throughout. The soft-edge sound this creates is a perfect backdrop for Vivaldi’s writing of a high solo violin against frequent pedal notes. It seems to have been a favoured composition of Vivaldi’s as he returned to it a number of years later and appended the title “per il Santissimo Natale (for Holy Christmas)”.