Sonorous - Music for Two Horns

Sonorous - Music for Two Horns 1 Tomasso Antonio Vitali: Chaconne for violin and basso continuo 2 Johann Sebastian Bach: Fughetta à 2 for harpsichord BWV 961 3 Johann Sebastian Bach: Allemande from the 2nd Partita for solo violin BWV 1004 4 Johann Sebastian Bach: Andante from the 2nd Sonata for solo violin BWV 1003 5 Johann Sebastian Bach: Chaconne from the 2nd Partita for solo violin BWV 1004 6 Georg Philipp Telemann: 1. Fantasie for solo violin TWV 40:14 7 Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber: Sonata XVI: Passaglia for solo violin (from the Mistery Sonatas) 8 Henri Vieuxtemps: Capriccio Hommage à Paganini for viola, op. 55 SONOROUS Every notation is, in itself, the transcription of an abstract idea (Ferruccio Busoni). A score does not retain the absolute truth about a musical work, it rather serves as a starting point for its various possible realisations. The first arrangement of a piece of music occurs when the composer writes the ideas down on paper. Moreover, every performance is in itself also an arrangement in a wider sense, a collaboration between instrument, player and score which transports the music from the paper to the ears of the listener and thus transforms its substance while trying to keep its essence intact. The great pianist, composer and arranger Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji said that a good arrangment expounds, enlarges and amplifies matter and thought that has been left [...] to discover and reveal. What I find exciting about this is that it opens the possibility to engage in a dialogue on equal terms with the composer, where I can get to know the composers music and tools, explore whatever meaning they have to me and pass this meaning on to the performers. It is a task that requires subtlety, refinement, imagination and authenticity and an important challenge as a composer. When Saar Berger and Rune Brodahl asked me to arrange the Chaconne for them, I immediately thought about some questions Bach and his contemporaries had to deal with three hundred years ago: in order to be able to write complex harmonies and rich polyphonic counterpoints for one single melodic instrument, they transformed the diagonal playing techniques of the lute and adapted them to the violin and its family among others. The technical limitations of the instruments were not a hurdle to overcome, but a source of musical creativity which was used to shape compositional ideas and their final realisation. The instrument-medium began to be used as an active component of the musical process rather than a mere neutral tool to translate a score into sound. Having two horns at hand, I decided to apply the same strategy: I would break, unfold and share all hidden voices, chords and arpeggios between the two horns, remaining faithful to the original but incorporating another set of instrumental possibilities. In thoroughly polyphonic pieces like Bachs Chaconne or the Andante from the 2nd Sonata, the two horns melt and intertwine, jumping among three or four different voices and sometimes creating the illusion of a third horn which is not there in reality. In some cases, passages which could never be played by a horn alone (for example the long arpeggio chorals in Bachs Chaconne) are transformed into genuinely new horn textures unimaginable for the violin. In other cases, like Telemanns Fantasie 1, Bachs Allemande from the 2nd Partita, Bibers Passacaglia and Vitalis Chaconne, both horns take over one single melodic line, amplifying it and building its own harmony out of the resonance of some of the notes, as if they were playing in a large hall or a church. As a result, harmonic and melodic relations only potentially present in the original come to the surface, revealing perspectives of listening that were not possible before. Nevertheless, the most significant matter was to keep the essence of the original works and at the same time go beyond a mere transcription. As a violin player, the intimacy of this solo pieces has influenced my musical thought enormously: they involve a way of making and understanding music that is not present in chamber or orchestral compositions. In the 18th century, this kind of music was meant be played at home for personal entertainment, in private concerts for a small audience or sometimes in churches. That influences the degree of compositional detail and refinement and the kind of inner virtuosity they require from the performer (one could hardly imagine more different conditions from the ones where music for brass instruments developed from: choral, symphonic, extrovert, often related to open-air events and big audiences). For this reason I had to think of a way of bringing this intimacy to the horn duo, making both performers not only play together, but interact as if they were one only instrument. In these arrangements, whenever there is a dialogue, it is not a rhetoric one that creates a tension to keep the musical interest; it is rather an internal one, where the two horns become the shadow of each other, smoothly recreating an illusion of polyphony while playing big leaps and quick figures, and moreover integrating the sound colour, dynamic range and long expressive phrasing of the horn in a kind of music which sometimes requires lightness and flexibility. Saar and Runes interpretation does not only manage that, but also develops new ways of sound that enrich the expressive possibilities of the horn in a very personal way, opening a field which takes the music of Bach, Telemann, Vieuxtemps, Vitali and Biber far beyond the classical repertoire and deep into contemporary performance practice. DIEGO RAMOS RODRÍGUEZ