“Pure” Horn Quartets for Amateurs

Among recent E-mail was a request from a member of an amateur horn quartet. They have a good library of transcriptions for quartet but wanted some suggestions as to “pure” horn quartet works “for amateur adult horn players.” More specifically, works “written just for horn” and “not transcriptions of other instruments’ … literature.” This got me thinking, as much of what we play is in fact transcriptions or arrangements, and some of the original works out there get to a difficulty level that is beyond that of a good amateur group.

For me two works came right to mind, both classics written some years ago.

The more recent of the two and the better known is the Concertino for Horn Quartet by Alxeander Mitushin (1850 – 1920). The version we normally see was published by Southern back in 1968 in an edition by Christopher Leuba, and it was so far as I know first recorded in 1964 by the Chicago Symphony Horn Quartet on the LP release Horn Quartets: An Omnibus. Three things of note; it is a full, three movement work, the low range requirements are modest, and while they made the mute changes work on the recording by the magic of editing in reality you will want to just play it all open.

The older work is not so well known, the Quartet No. 3 for Horns by Bedrich Dinoys Weber (1766-1842). This is one of the very first works published for valved horn. I discussed the work in a section of my Doctoral dissertation, actually, which has the rather substantial title “The Development of Valved Horn Technique in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany: A Survey of Performers and Works Before 1850 With Respect to the use of Crooks, Right-Hand Technique, Transposition, and Valves.” My discussion of the B. D. Weber quartet comes in the section on Josef Kail.

With all the articles I have published in print and online you would think this section might have already made it into print somewhere but actually this is among a number of passages that have to date never made the jump to publication. Josef Kail (1795-1871) was according to Morley-Pegge one of the “leading protagonists of the valve horn in its early days,” a sentiment I would echo as well. Kail’s most significant contribution to early valved horn technique is a fingering chart, Scala für das chromatische Tasten-Waldhorn in F und E [Scale for the chromatic horn in F and E], published ca. 1830/31 by Marco Berra in Prague. In this brief publication this horn with Vienna valves was illustrated, and Kail’s fingerings followed.

Where this relates to this quartet is found in this quotation from my dissertation:

The horn quartets of B. D. Weber with which these fingerings were associated should also be examined, as they are among the first works written specifically for the valved horn. These quartets were published by Berra ca. 1830/31, shortly before Kail’s Scala, and contained the same illustration of a three-valved horn utilized by Kail.(1) The earliest recorded performance of these quartets was on March 11, 1831 by hornists Franz Fausek, Wenzel Permann, Josef Skaupy, and Franz Towara at the Prague Conservatory,(2) and several reviews appeared after their publication.(3) The part-writing itself is generally not far beyond the technical demands which could be expected from the natural horn.

This particular quote has three footnotes. I really got into the whole research/dissertation writing thing and for context and completeness the following are the exact footnotes with this section:

1. Cízek, part 1, 70-72.

2. Tarr, “Romantic,” part 2, 122, citing Johann Branberger, Das Konservatorium für Musik in Prag (Prague, 1911), 277, confirmed again by Tarr, ibid, 151.

3. Tarr, ibid, 201, citing Ahrens, 116, noting reviews of these quartets in Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (1831), col. 348, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (1833), col. 30, and in Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (1834), 195. A review of these quartets also appeared in Cäcilia 18 (1836), 265-67, as noted in Mark J. Fasman, Brass Bibliography (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 82.

In any event, I do enjoy this B. D. Weber quartet and have performed it several times. It is in three movements, the first a Marcia di Caccia, the second a Largo, and the third Allegro Moderato. The copy I own was published by E. C. Kerby in 1982 and was edited by Joel Blahnik.

With that I open it up to your comments and suggested of original works for horn quartet that are accessible in difficulty level for good amateur players,  I am sure there are a many works that could be recommended.