Hob |
Genre |
Key |
Instruments |
7e:1 |
Concerto |
Eb |
Keyed Trumpet, 2 Flutes, 2 Oboes, 2 Bassoons, 2 Horns, 2 Trumpets, Timpani & Strings |
Do you like to let your mind wander to relive certain points in time, sometimes major game-changers, other times just minor points of little interest to others? What historian doesn't, really? Surely this is why most of us got into the history game, I have to believe. And so;
On 28 March, 1800 I went to the Burg(theater). I don't go often, but yesterday I saw a poster for this Akademie with Anton Weidinger, and since I am one of that vanishing breed who loves trumpet music, I wanted to see what this "organized trumpet" of his is all about. And besides the trumpet concerto, there are two symphonies on the programme by Doctor Haydn, one of them is said to be new, although I haven't heard of him writing any orchestral music lately, so this should be a treat!
What times they lived in, those Viennese music lovers! From our vantage point, and strictly in terms of music (who wanted to deal with Napoleon?), it was the best of times. Mozart's music, also on this programme, was beginning to find its rightful place in the world, Haydn was still alive and producing outstanding new music on a regular basis, and that young fellow from Bonn, the new King of the Keyboard, was becoming known for more than that. In fact, just five days from now, on 2 April, sitting in this same seat, one would be able to see the première of his First Symphony! What our 1800 music lover sensed, but didn't know, was that the concerto for Klappentrompete was destined to actually be Haydn's very last standalone piece of orchestral music, and it had been written four years previous, in 1796. Of the two symphonies, as we will see later, one of them was from the first six London symphonies, while the other one, the 'new' one, was from the second six, just released in 1799, hence new to Vienna.
That first symphony was excellent, even though I had heard it a few times before. Good, here's Weidinger. I'm surprised to see the full band still there, that's unusual for a concerto. Nice ritornello, OK, here we go… hmmm, that's just some standard trumpet stuff, fanfares…. Now the next… well, any good trumpeter can play this. Maybe it isn't so special…. Whoa! How did he do that?
For the many people who really liked great trumpet music, we are at a watershed time in its history. The trumpeter had, for centuries, been part of a guild of extremely highly trained musicians, specializing in arcane procedures and techniques, only working for the highest ranks in Church and State. The 'trumpet' had been widespread for millennia, virtually every civilization had a form of it, going back at least as far as the pair which were discovered in King Tut's tomb. There were many design changes over the centuries, but when we think of a natural trumpet today, it is a bent tube with a bell and mouthpiece, no holes, no slides, no valves or keys. And they didn't show up until the 16th century, which is when 'Baroque' trumpeting really took off. And the next 200-plus years were its heyday.
It took the rise of 'Classic' music to herald the end of this age. Since the trumpeter pursued his craft through using his lips to produce harmonic and partial harmonic tones and couldn't play a chromatic scale to save his life, the Classical choice to make trumpets part of the texture of the orchestra forced many limits on the composer. We have seen Haydn, and all Viennese composers, using trumpets (and timpani) mainly in just one way, as added ornamentation in symphonies in C, in what became known as 'Viennese Festive C major' works. But when we look at the instrumentation of any or all symphonies before the turn of the century, trumpets simply do not figure into the equation. Yet the color and quality of the sound produced, and the many capabilities of good players, were highly desirable. Back in 1787, when I was writing about Symphony #88, we looked at the complications brought about for Haydn when he was trying to work with trumpets in either C or D in a symphony in G. He wanted the trumpet sound, at least in that movement, and he moved a lot of barriers to get it, but even there, it was just in a small part of the symphony. Something needed to be done.
The answer was obvious, but the solution was less so. Since many (all?) other wind instruments had become chromatic, or at least approached it, by the use of holes and extra tubes (crooks), it was apparent the trumpet could do the same, the question was how to do it without killing the brilliance of the sound. There were many tries at it. As early as Purcell's time there was a 'slide trumpet' which functioned along the lines of a trombone. While this might seem today like an evolutionary dead end, in fact it was very popular in its time (1400-1900) not least because a musician didn't have to be a member of the Trumpet Guild to play one, and also because many of the basic problems of intonation were solved. City Watchmen and others who were in positions which didn't automatically require Guild membership played these trumpets because they worked very well indeed.
Our old friend Charles Burney may have provided the impetus for the next step in slide trumpet history when he wrote a review of the 1784 Handel Festival performance in London:
Perhaps the main reason for development of the (1779) Slide Trumpet was the scathing review of the Messiah Concert given in 1784. Music historian Charles Burney criticized eminent trumpeter James Sarjant for his performance of "The Trumpet Shall Sound", saying: "the 4th and 6th of the key on these instruments, being naturally so much out of tune that no player can make them perfect, should never be used…" and that, "every time he was obliged to dwell upon G, the fourth of D, displeasure appeared in every countenance". *
* The Waits Website (Trumpet Essays)
The result of this natural trumpet debacle was a breath of new life for the slide trumpet, which gained a wonderful new device; a clock-spring sort of mechanism which automatically returned the slide(s) to the closed position and provided tension against the player's hand which increased precision. The resulting instrument, along with the natural trumpet, continued to be used in opera houses and other public venues throughout the 19th century. But all of this was in England. Europe itself wasn't having it.
The desire of Classic composers, exemplified by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven but including all the Viennese and those who emulated them, was to have trumpets available in the orchestra no matter the key the work was written in. They could be major contributors to filling in the orchestral texture, but also their skill in playing clarion style hadn't just left them, there were many superb trumpeters still working, and still in training. In the mid-1750's, the 'stop trumpet' was developed, played much like the natural horn in that the hand was used to 'stop' and adjust the tone to allow chromatics. As with the horn, though, the stopped notes didn't have the purity and clarity of the natural notes of the harmonic series, so this was a 'stopgap' at best.
There are likely to be a great number of evolutionary dead ends, but finally we run into something that points the way forward. Circa 1756, Ferdinand Kölbel put keys on a horn. It worked although it was too difficult and expensive to manufacture. But it paved the way and others followed close behind. Altenburg reported seeing one in Weimar circa 1770, and Christoph Friedrich Nessmann, developed a version of the keyed trumpet in the 1790's that he dubbed the Inventionstrompete. And there are mentions of a variety of different variations on the idea, but none before Weidinger achieved success.
Weidinger was born in Vienna, 9 June 1767 and died there 20 September 1852. He was a student of the court trumpeter of Vienna, Peter Neuhold. Based upon his early release from apprenticeship and his accompanying letter, Weidinger was apparently a pupil of considerable talent. In his letter of release from apprenticeship, Neuhold stated "Through good conduct and his own diligence he reduced his period of apprenticeship and became so skilled that he can give full satisfaction, not only in military service in the field, but also at great courts, wherever they may be". Only a very small percentage of apprentices ever got early matriculation, it was a rare and impressive feat that would have required him "to perform the main military signals (playing style called principale in the low registers) and show aptitude in the high or clarino register". Weidinger got tired of blowing military signals fairly quickly. In 1792, he resigned permanently from the military and was employed at the Marinelli Theater in Vienna. His relationship with Haydn is clouded in mystery. The more you read and research it, the more confusing and contradictory it all becomes. For example, Landon's source (Richard Heuberger4) says that Haydn was a witness at the wedding of Weidinger's daughter on 6 February 1797. But Aaron Moore1 tells us that "Weidinger and Haydn were close friends. This is based upon the fact that Haydn was an official witness when Weidinger was married on February 6, 1797", which he got from a more modern source, Reine Dahlqvist2. I very much doubt that Weidinger married his daughter, in 1797 or any other time. As a result, the only trustworthy source, who provides all the documentation you can ask for is, as so often, Michael Lorenz.5 He tells us, with full documentation, that "Six children of the court trumpeter Anton Weidinger, for whom Haydn in 1796 wrote his trumpet concerto, Hob.VIIe:1, were godchildren of Haydn."
As for the concerto itself, the question which immediately occurred to me was "why four years between composition and performance?". The consensus reply seems to be "because it's really difficult". While one wouldn't think so, having only dealt with modern, piston-valve trumpets, or better yet, Eb cornets made to play in higher registers, it must be kept in mind that the keyed trumpet didn't work quite the same way, and there were still notes which needed to be massaged with embouchure (shaping of the lips) in order to be clean and on pitch. The reports from 1800 through 1820, when the valve trumpet arrived on the scene, all speak about certain tonal imperfections, especially on notes which require the keys to be used. Unlike with modern trumpets, one only depresses one key at a time, not a combination of keys. And like a natural trumpet, there are certain 'open' notes which are not exactly perfect. Weidinger worked all this out, but it took a while.
First movement - Allegro in Eb
No doubt, Weidinger was readily available to Haydn during the composition process to be able to show what he could and couldn't do. I have mentioned before how Haydn took care of his hornists by breaking up the really hard and exertive sections in order to give their lips a rest. Even though Weidinger was a superb professional in a business in which strength and endurance were paramount, he still followed this practice in this concerto. Haydn keeps technically difficult passages short, separating them with rests and allowing Weidinger time to reset his instrument and prepare for the next passage. Not to mention, he was Haydn; humor was integral to his work. Humor is evident right away in the first movement. The first three notes by the trumpet are a single, interrupting, loud, low concert Eb. The next two statements are basic fanfares which could have come straight from any Baroque Era trumpet concerto. Those first three trumpet blasts stand in direct contrast to the next section. The first full phrase for the solo trumpet reveals a low register scale passage which would have been impossible on the natural trumpet. Until this point, our mythical auditor above would have been fooled, as he was, into wondering what the big deal was. Later on in the movement, Haydn writes a descending chromatic line in half notes with a relatively sparse accompaniment, yet another display of the unique capabilities of the new instrument.
Second movement - Andante (Ab)
My favorite movement in this work is the lyrical Andante. When one considers an analysis of this movement in particular, a great deal of emphasis is placed on some factually extraordinary things, like the sounding db and cb, for example, notes which had probably never been intentionally played on a trumpet before.
It is worth noting that A-flat is the pre-dominant in the key of E-flat, the significance being that A-flat is the highly problematic eleventh partial of the harmonic series with E-flat being the fundamental. In the harmonic series the eleventh partial is a tritone above the tonic. Due to the limitations of natural trumpet, it would have been impossible to write a movement in the pre-dominant to the fundamental of the horn. The keyed trumpet can effectively navigate this tonality, as is evidenced in the second movement.1 (Aaron Moore)
Certainly, the feature of a modulatory passage from Ab major to Cb major in which the trumpet is a full participant had to be mind-blowing for the audience. These parts are only playable on a chromatic trumpet. But I am not so much of a technician as the writer above; I am rather more enamored of the virtual musical poetry which Haydn wrote here. And I grew up in the heyday of Swing and Jazz trumpeting, so chromaticism on a trumpet is no big surprise to me. I can only imagine what concert-goers who had only ever heard fanfares and the like must have thought and felt about this emulation of a voice singing a song.
Third movement - Finale: Allegro (Eb)
As you would expect in 1796, the finale is a Sonata-Rondo, so typical of late period Haydn. As we always hope to see in a concerto, the trumpet introduces all of the material at one point or another. During the ritornellos, the trumpet repeats pieces of the themes, sometimes in different, remote keys, and punctuates the orchestral sections with little fanfares, octave leaps and a cadenza. It is truly a brilliant tour-de-force display of the potential of the trumpet and a demonstration for the aware in the audience that the future was now.
If we took a rare excursion into the future, we would see the roller-coaster this work took after that fateful night. Weidinger went on to play it in concert for most of the rest of his life. His son learned to play the keyed trumpet when he was as young as twelve years, and they toured together. In 1803, J. Nepomuk Hummel, who we last saw performing a Haydn keyboard trio on the stage in London, added another concerto to Weidinger's arsenal, this one in E Major. In many ways it shows off the instrument even more than Haydn's did, despite the fact that Hummel borrowed many structural and tonal features from Haydn. It is clear that Weidinger's quest for improvement in both the instrument and his playing of it had gained much success between 1796 and 1803. Where Haydn had been quite careful to limit the playing of keyed notes in succession, Hummel made no distinction between keyed and open. And where Haydn allowed the trumpet to take part in one (huge) modulatory passage in the slow movement, Hummel put him in there for any and all of it. I think it is distinctly possible that if Haydn had made his concerto this difficult, Weidinger may have given up altogether!
Still, with all this promotion, the keyed trumpet just never hit it big, at least for orchestral work, which was the target, after all. After the première of the Hummel concerto at the Esterházy castle on New Year's Day 1804, Weidinger spent the rest of his life trying to find additional performance opportunities, with only modest success. It wasn't until 1818, when the valve trumpet was finally arrived at, that the trumpet fulfilled the vision of earlier players and composers. Meantime, Haydn's (and Hummel's) concertos faded into complete obscurity. A trumpet and piano arrangement survived and was used through the 19th century as a teaching aid.
We have seen in the past how Haydn's concertos, in particular, have been rescued from total oblivion because one copy survived. The two cello concertos and then the horn concerto both lived this dream. And on the list of good fortune, we can add to them this trumpet concerto. One, and only one, handwritten (by Haydn) copy exists in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. Photocopies of it allowed for the first performance in England in modern times to occur. This was by Ernest Hall, in a BBC broadcast, presumably with an iteration of the BBC Orchestra. This broadcast of 30 March 1932, as part of a programme celebrating the bicentenary of Haydn's birth, was the single beginning of a whole new appreciation of Haydn and his music. It was followed up in 1938 by another BBC performance by George Eskdale which became the first commercially released recording.
It is said, and probably rightly, that this work is the single most popular work Haydn ever wrote. Would you have thought so? Its status as a one-of-a-kind work (a late Haydn concerto), as well as first-of-its-kind (concerto for chromatic trumpet), make for that combination of characters which gives it timeless appeal. Not to mention, it is an outstandingly lovely representation of Haydn's greatest creative period, that narrow window in a career when ideas are still abundant, and the means to express them are so ingrained as to not even need thinking of. I don't want to dwell at length on the 20th century, I already had to live through half of it, but there is more to the development of the popularity of this great work than just an appreciation of its status as the first of its kind. If you are interested, and you could well be, I recommend you download a copy of Brian Moore's essay6 which has a step-by-step review of the entire process of getting from Ernest Hall in 1932 to Crispian Steele-Perkins in 2005. The evolution of 'music appreciation' during that span is an amazing journey in instruments, playing techniques, arranging from scores and recordings.
Next time, we will look at the last four Keyboard Trios. Once again, Haydn will be looking into the 19th century, never back at the fading 18th!
Thanks for reading!
Further Reading:
1 Aaron Moore, 2014 - Scholarly Program Notes (on Trumpet music from Torelli to Artunian)
2 Reine Dahlqvist, The Keyed Trumpet and It's Greatest Virtuoso, Anton Weidinger (1975)
3 Michael Thomas Roeder, A History of the Concerto (1994)
4 Richard Heuberger, Biographical Sketch of Anton Weidinger (1907)
5 Michael Lorenz, Six more unknown godchildren of Joseph Haydn (2015)
6 Brian Moore, Haydn's Trumpet Concerto in the Twentieth Century (2005)