This article was for many years posted as part of a longer article on Horn Articles Online. A version of these materials was also published in my article “Brahms and the Orchestral Horn,” The Horn Call 52, No. 1 (October, 2021), 47-51.
Brahms studied the hand horn as a youth (along with cello and piano), and the horn was one of the instruments that his father Johann Jakob Brahms (1806-72) performed upon professionally as well. With this background, his clear understanding of the natural horn must be a part of why Johannes Brahms composed for the instrument as late as he did.
It is widely known that the Trio, Op. 40 for horn, violin, and piano of Brahms is one of the last and greatest chamber works written for the natural horn. Brahms was quite specific about wanting his Trio performed on the natural horn instead of the valved horn. A very clear source is a letter dated December 7, 1865, to his friend Albert Dietrich, director of the orchestra at Oldenburg, on possible works to perform at a concert during a proposed visit.
For a quartet evening I can with good conscience recommend my Horn trio, and your horn player would do me a great favor if he would do like the Carlsruhe man and practice the French [i.e., natural] horn for some weeks before-hand, so as to be able to play it on that. [9]
Brahms knew he was at this point asking for something unusual, as he asks for the hornist to practice the natural horn “for some weeks before-hand, so as to be able to play it on that.” In other words, he expected that the player did not normally use the natural horn at that time but that the player would be familiar with it from his training in the period and that this really was the sound Brahms wanted in his conception of the work.
In a letter to Richard Heuberger Brahms also stated the following in regard to performing the Trio on the hand horn: “If the performer is not obliged by the stopped notes to play softly, the piano and violin are not obliged to adapt themselves to him and the tone is rough from the beginning.” [10] In this passage Brahms gets at an important advantage of the natural horn in this work–it is “naturally” softer. The main advantage of the natural horn is however the tonal color and the resulting shadings of tonal color heard automatically with the natural horn. The following is an example:
Brahms, Trio, Op. 40, mvt. I
For Brahms I believe that this use of the natural horn was at least in part to create a nostalgic mood, retrospective, one looking toward the past and into memories. It is this very element that makes performances on the natural horn of this work perhaps a little problematic for an audience today. Brahms grew up with the natural horn and saw the instrument replaced by the valved horn during his lifetime, as did basically all of the musicians working everywhere outside of France in 1865, as the valved horn only came into wide use after 1850. Audiences today, in contrast, know basically only the valved horn and the concept of the beauty of variations of tonal color on the natural horn is lost on most listeners [11].
The Trio is important in relation to the orchestral horn writing of Brahms in that it clearly points out where he was coming from. Brahms knew the natural horn and wanted it to be performed in his works.
Interested in his orchestral works? Continue to this article.
NOTES:
9. Henry S. Drinker, The Chamber Music of Johannes Brahms (Philadelphia: Elkan-Vogel, 1932), 112. Another translation of the key phrase of this quote confirms the intent for the work to be performed on the natural horn, reading “Your horn player will do me a great favour if, like the Karlsruhe man, he practices the natural horn for some weeks beforehand and plays it on that” (Albert Dietrich and J. V. Widman, translated Dora E. Hecht, Recollections of Johannes Brahms [London: Seeley, 1899], 48, cited in John Humphries, The Early Horn: A Practical Guide [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000], 101).
10. Drinker, 111-112.
11. The work is also considerably more difficult on the natural horn than on the valved horn–I would estimate that it is towards 50% more difficult to perform on the natural horn, depending on your comfort level with the instrument. As a horn player interested in historic performance practices I have worked on the Trio the way Brahms intended, on the natural horn, hitting the work very hard between the fall and spring semesters just a few years back in preparation for a February performance. I would have enjoyed performing the Trio in recital on the natural horn, but once we got into the rehearsals I opted to instead to use the valved horn. The balance and color of the work was certainly different on the natural horn but I personally am comfortable with presenting a historically informed performance on the valved horn, creating as much of the color and retrospective mood of the natural horn as possible without actually using a hand horn. And after working hard on the work on natural horn it was suddenly very easy to play on the valved horn.
