A Curious Anomaly from Verdi’s “Don Carlo”

Feb 25, 2022

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Recently on our Horn Matters’ social media accounts, we uploaded a meme related to the perils of horn transposition. It features characters from an old American television show called “The Time Tunnel.”

Meme on transposition — Click for a larger view.

Introducing Don Carlo

Related to this meme (and the upcoming Principal Horn audition at the Metropolitan Opera) is one of the most interesting transposition-related excerpts that I have encountered in my professional experience, the Prelude to Act II of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera, Don Carlo.

Don Carlo stands out within Verdi’s works for several reasons:

it originally included a ballet
the original libretto is in French, not Italian
the atmosphere and plot of the opera are dark and serious
the total running time (not including intermissions) is about 4 hours

Together in unison, but apart in key

The Act II prelude starts with an unaccompanied horn quartet. In the version I have performed (and in the video below) the first act was cut, and so the show opened with this quartet.

It starts out as a unison melody. In the score and parts it looks like this:

It is written for four horns in four different keys:

Horn I in D
Horn II in B (natural) basso
Horn III in E
Horn IV in A (basso, as is the tradition in Italian opera for Horn in A)

A workaround for old tech?

So this begs the question, why did Verdi orchestrate the quartet this way?

The simple answer might be this: he was playing it safe. Don Carlo premiered in 1867 at the Paris Opera and the French horn players, who were historically very late in adapting to valved horns, may have been using natural horns.

From “The Persistence of the Natural Horn in the Romantic Period” we have this to consider:

Valves of high quality, similar to those still in use today, came fairly early in the existence of the chromatic horn. However, the very earliest valves, and some of later invention, were of dubious reliability or had adverse effects upon the tone of the instrument. Consequently the new invention was not greeted with universal acclaim.

The extremity of views on the acceptability of the new development is shown in its full absurdity in France. Dauprat, horn professor at the Paris Conservatoire in 1816 and sole professor from 1817, was open minded. The description of his post required him to teach natural horn but he was sufficiently interested in the new instrument to write a supplement for the two-valved horn to his Méthode de Cor Alto et Cor Basse, though it seems not to have been published. Moreover, it was during his time at the Conservatoire, in 1833, that his pupil, Meifred, became professor of the valve-horn class.

Meifred held his last class in 1863, and no successor was appointed to him on his retirement in 1864. Both Gallay, Dauprat’s successor in 1842, and Mohr, who succeeded Gallay on the latter’s death in 1864, were conservatives who wrote hand- horn tutors. Consequently the valve-horn class was not reinstated until 1897, after Brémond, who had been appointed in succession to Mohr, obtained permission from the Principal of the Conservatoire, Ambroise Thomas. Meanwhile, the chromatic horn had become triumphant in orchestras throughout Europe.

So while the technology for valved horns was well-known in Europe at the time of Don Carlo and its premiere, it was not openly accepted by French horn players until many years later.

Let’s get chromatique

Of particular interest in this excerpt from Don Carlo is the 19th measure, where the unison melody becomes a descending chromatic line:

chromatic passage from Don Carlos

Up close in the orchestra pit, this chromatic line may have sounded a bit odd on natural horns. Some players would have been using a closed hand for certain notes, while others would have been using open harmonics – all at the same time.

But, out in the opera hall, it would have most likely been heard as an evenly blended and uniform line. One cannot help but wonder: did Verdi consult with a horn player to come up with this concept, or did he just figure it out on his own?

In either case, it is a brilliant solution for what (in theory at least) was a complex problem.

The Metropolitan Opera will be staging Verdi’s Don Carlos (in French) next month, and it can be seen in cinemas on March 26. See this link for more information – bit.ly/32iIykq.