Getting beyond his station in life?
Arthur Butterworth
I feel very diffident
about all this; you see I am not one
of the great aristocrats of orchestral
life; not a string player, or even a
wood-wind player, and certainly not
from the truly acknowledged great lineage
of horn players. How can I possibly
justify having the outrageous audacity,
the very presumption, to write for a
court circular addressed to the very
royals of music? I began life as a lowly
brass player; hardly daring to admit
that I was only a trumpeter. But come
to think of it, maybe at one time –
long, long ago - oh! such a long time
ago; way back in baroque times, my instrument
had an honourable pedigree; we trumpeters
were the consort of kings and princes;
we strutted on battle fields, the close
associates of great warriors, we were
at the centre of ceremony, everybody
looked up to us; we were mollycoddled
in high places: cathedrals, palaces,
our brazen, haughty voices were heard
everywhere; we were the pampered favourites
at any kind of court music-making. Bach
certainly knew how to treat us well
- we even appeared at the very top of
his scores. But I suppose some other
wind players began to think we were
a bit too arrogant, and thought we ought
to be taken down a down a peg or two.
Eventually, and most sadly and undeservedly
our heroic golden voices dropped out
of fashion, and lesser people - like
Mozart, for example - seemed not to
like us in the way that Georg Frederik
and Johann Sebastian knew how to respect
and treat us. Suddenly - or almost -
the "new look" - or should
one say "new sound" - in music
came along: all this rococo stuff: Haydn
symphonies, Mozart piano concertos;
tame sort of stuff really, hardly anything
for the real king of music: the trumpet,
who had been disgracefully usurped by
this suave, un-prepossessing guy whose
pedigree had merely been one of a hunt
follower, a whipper-in, a mere muffled
noise-maker in the hunting field instead
of a heroic leader on the battle-field.
But that of course has ever been the
stuff of history: a genuine aristocrat
being usurped and then having to go
underground for centuries and live as
if he were merely a peasant with no
ancestry; a hand-to-mouth existence,
playing just a few isolated tonic and
dominant notes in the chord now and
again.
However, we gradually
learn from our betters, so to speak,
and who knows, if we behave properly;
don’t make coarse noises, don’t get
too high and mighty - as perhaps we
once used to show off in all those Bach
cantatas, the B minor Mass, Christmas
Oratorio and such like - and learn to
be genteel and know our place, perhaps
we might somehow be invited in on occasion.
After all one supposes we do have a
few of the same genes as horn players
- we are all of the same brass material
- so perhaps all is not lost.
Some forty years ago,
after having spent long dissolute years
blowing - hardly call it "playing"
could you? - the trumpet in first class
professional orchestras I came across
an ancient Raoux horn and bought it
for twenty-five pounds. It was originally
a natural horn of course, but had a
detachable set of piston valves built
around 1910 by Hawkes & Son.
What made me so presumptuous
as to acquire this refined instrument?
Did I have notions above my station?
- thinking that just because I had been
able to blow a mere trumpet I should
have the authority and ability to actually
play and tame this most elegant and
venerable instrument? It has been quite
a journey of discovery over a period
of years, and on one occasion I managed
- somehow - to play - well, at least
make some of the right notes - in a
summer music school evening performance
of the Brahms Horn Trio. The organisers
somehow got the idea that I was a REAL
horn player instead being a mere trumpet
lackey; so they put me down to play
the Brahms. I suppose this must have
gone to my head, for now, some many
years later I have come to see the light
of many of the finer points of the horn,
and, since being retired have some reasonable
leisure to devote to studying and playing,
in a modest way, this most satisfying
of instruments.
I will never of course,
nor would it be feasible to expect at
my advanced age to play the horn properly;
but it has given me as a musician, and
especially as a composer and often in
earlier years an orchestral conductor,
a serious and more profound insight
into the whole nature of the horn and
its music. I have always realised, of
course, that the true nature of the
horn, despite all the modern ramifications
since it first acquired valves of some
system or other, has ever lain in its
natural state. Brahms was not wrong
in having so long virtually resisted
the valve horn. No matter that this
modern instrument, from Wagner onwards,
has been capable of all that late nineteenth
and twentieth century composers have
demanded of it; there is still a feeling
that its true nature lies in what can
fundamentally be played on the natural
instrument, whether that be in F, D,
Eb, C, Bb basso or whatever other crook
has been called for - such as Db in
Wagner, or H in Brahms. There is a subtlety
and individuality about each crook and
composers of the past must surely have
been acutely aware of these niceties.
In recent weeks I have
- with the encouragement of my great
friend and mentor, Dr David Miles -
begun to explore the secrets and rewards
of playing the natural horn. Like most
other musicians in the 20th
century I had long assumed that this
- like baroque trumpet playing - was
something of a lost art. But in both
cases this is not so. In all spheres
of present-day instrumental music, we
are coming to re-explore the techniques
and ideals of earlier music and begin
to realise that such earlier techniques
are by no means lost.
I find it most rewarding
to spend time exploring the secrets
of the horn, much in the same way that
I have in recent years become more familiar
with the viola. No longer are other
instruments merely personally unfamiliar
things whose technique, when on the
rostrum or when writing for them, are
instruments I only expected others to
play at my behest.
Arthur Butterworth
October 2006
For membership of the British Horn
Society, please contact Charities Aid
Foundation, Membership Services 96206,
Kings Hill, West Malling, Kent ME19
4TA
www.british-horn.org
