TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
9th Biennial Conference on Baroque Music
ABSTRACT
Bach’s Horn Parts: Alternatives to Nodal Vents and Hand Stopping
J. Drew Stephen
Music written for the horn by Bach and his contemporaries presents a particular
problem for performers today. While the writing is generally restricted
to the harmonic series, some notes (11th, 13th and 14th harmonics) need
adjusting to play them in tune, and composers occasionally wrote others
which lie outside the harmonic series (usually a half step below).
To obtain these notes, modern performers generally rely on two techniques:
nodal vents (holes drilled in the instrument) or the hand in the bell to
lower the pitch. But neither of these solutions is without controversy:
the earliest known use of nodal vents dates from long after the period
in question, and there is no evidence that hand-stopping techniques were
known to performers in Bach’s time.
This paper presents two alternatives to these techniques: (1)
bending the pitch of notes with the embouchure, and (2) a more flexible
approach to tuning. Because modern instruments and mouthpieces tend
to ‘centre’ pitches, the ability to bend notes is neither a necessary skill
for today’s performer, nor one that is practiced. But period instruments
and mouthpieces allow for greater flexibility of pitch, and an eighteenth-century
musician certainly learned to bend notes as a matter of course. Likewise,
our definition of ‘in tune’ is quite narrow, whereas there are many instances
where the ‘natural’ (i.e. sharp) 11th harmonic would have been appropriate
in an eighteenth-century context. Justification for using these techniques
will be drawn from contemporary treatises and the music itself; the ideas
will be illustrated through live demonstrations on the Baroque horn.
Last updated on 22 March 2000 by Yo
Tomita