[Harp-L] Beethoven, shoved fists, and bent notes



Diatonic instruments have a long history in classical music, with ramifications that don't jibe with the modern preoccupation with every note having the same tonal quality.

Until about 1850, French horns and trumpets were diatonic instruments. After they became chromatic, some listeners commented that hearing Beethoven's 3rd with chromatic horns was like running your fingers over velvet with the plush nap scraped off (Cecil Forsyth, Orchestration, 1914, P. 118).

Sound familiar? Harmonica players nowadays talk about the richness of diatonic tone vs. the evenness of chromatic tone.

But the comparison runs deeper, and it reflects on the whole bent-notes-in-melodies conversation.

Like the diatonic harmonica, diatonic horns and trumpets have missing notes in the lower part of their range. Actually, in the first three octaves, with some neighboring notes a full octave apart. You can't play even a diatonic scale on those instruments until you're up into the third octave.

Bending notes on French horn - or at least their version of it - was accomplished by shoving the player's fist into the bell of the horn. This changed the pitch of the note but also changed its tone, making it kind of muffled sounding.

Did the gods of classical music such as Beethoven and Schubert recoil in horror at the inconsistent tone color of musicians fisting their horns? Some did, while others wrote especially for the unique qualities of these notes. Along with the velvet came variety!

My takeaway from this is that you can be musical with varying tone color. If you play a melody where some of the notes are bent, then you can make good music with them if you:

1) Play them in tune.
2) Play them with as good a tonal quality as they can produce, whatever that quality might be.
3) Phrase and articulate so those notes sound like part of a melody that is phrased well.

In listening back to my Adeste Fideles recordings, I can say that I did pretty well on 2). I wince at the moments when I didn't do well on 1). But I'm more concerned about not doing as much as I could on 3). But then I devoted one evening to the project in an area where I don't usually concentrate. I found that I learned a lot doing it though.


Winslow Yerxa
zzzzz 



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