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As noted earlier in this series, it is very interesting to me to look back and see how several of the articles in my first issue of The Horn Call really caught my interest. One of those certainly was the article by David G. Elliott on “The Brahms Horn Trio and Hand Horn Idiom.”
The Brahms Horn Trio should need little introduction for many readers. The 1979 article on the work by Elliott is one that I later analyzed and picked apart in my Doctoral studies when working on my dissertation and it held up well. To give readers today a taste, the article opens,
The Johannes Brahms Trio in E-flat Major for Piano, Violin, and Horn, Opus 40 was completed in the summer of 1865. From 1862 to 1872 Brahms spent his summer months with Clara Schumann and her friends in the Black Forest at Lichtenthal in Baden-Baden. Each morning after coffee he would go for a long walk in the surrounding woods. In this beautiful setting he received inspiration for the composition of the Trio. Albert Dietrich, a close friend of Brahms and a student of Robert Schumann, relates that Brahms once showed him the place “on the wooded heights among the fir trees” where the theme of the first movement came to him.
The death of his mother on February 1, 1865 was probably a major factor in Brahms’s writing of the Trio. The choice of instrumentation is a souvenir of his life at home in that it includes three of the four instruments that he studied as a child. Only the cello is not included.
The article goes on and covers many more detailed points on his use of the natural horn in this work with quotations and musical examples. Many years later, at the IHS Kalamazoo event, I presented a session where a question came up from the audience that related to the Brahms trio. Recalling this article I spotted David Elliott at the back of the room and was able to defer to his expert opinion to answer the question.
For more on the Brahms trio we at Horn Matters are happy to host the DMA paper by Joshua Garrett, “Brahms’ Horn Trio: Background and Analysis for Performers.” It is one of the towering masterworks of our repertoire and one every serious hornist should know.
A quick note on the video too, even if you know the work it is worth seeing as you get a clear view of the actual recording setup used, it is a something few actually will ever see live.
When we return to this series the topic will be a report on the results of an IHS Horn Improvement Survey.
