The orchestra and orchestral music — Reading Companion

o’s_ grand air in Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” as is shown on the following page.

The three trombones, as in this example, usually play three-note chords, except when required to play in unison. The tuba fills out the harmony by doubling the bass part in the lower octave, or forming a four-part chord with the three trombones. There are tubas in several keys, but it is customary to write for the instrument without making any transposition. There is a fine tuba solo, in unison with the double-basses, at the opening of Wagner’s “Eine Faust” overture, and frequent examples of harmony for three trombones and tuba are to be found in the works of the Bayreuth master. In writing for the full brass choir alone a composer has the choice of several methods. He may give the melody to a trumpet or cornet, and use the other instruments for the harmony, or he may let a horn (or two horns in unison) take the melody. If he desires much force, he may give the melody to a trumpet and double it with a trombone. The natural method, however, is to let a trumpet, which is a good soprano voice, sing the air, while the other trumpet and three of the horns take the middle voices, the fourth horn and first and second trombones the lower middle voices, the third trombone and tuba the bass. Similar methods are employed where the brass joins with the rest of the orchestra in the thunder of a tutti fortissimo. The reader will find a most admirable example of this style of writing in the climax of the prelude to “Lohengrin.”

It should be noted that the brass choir offers certain possibilities of color both within itself and in combination with other instruments. Three trumpets are capable of independent harmony, as are four horns, and three trombones. Again, owing to the deep range of the horn, trumpets and horns may form a separate choir, or either trumpets or horns may be united with trombones. The entire brass band may be used with the wood, the strings being silent, or with the strings and without wood. Part of the brass may be used with part of the wood, as in the opening of the “Tannhäuser” overture, where two clarinets, two horns, and two bassoons produce a complete and satisfying harmony. Weird and bizarre effects can be produced by combinations of contrasting tones. Perhaps there is no better example than this remarkable use of flutes and trombones in Berlioz’s “Requiem”:

These notes had never been written for trombones before, and the composer, whose knowledge of the capacities of instruments has never been excelled, wrote in the margin of the score: “These notes are in the instruments and the players must get them out.”

As I have already noted, the operatic composers, in their search after dramatic effects, invented many of the instrumental combinations afterward adopted by the composers of purely orchestral music. The scores of Mozart and Gluck, for instance, are rich in passages which make use of the harmony of trombones, and the reader who wishes to study such effects in their early form should note the accompaniment to the words of the _Commendatore_ in the cemetery scene of “Don Giovanni,” to the solo and chorus, “Dieu puissant,” Act I., scene 3, of Gluck’s “Alceste,” the air “Divinités du styx” in the same work, and the chorus “Vengeons et la nature,” Act II., scene 4, of “Iphigenie en Tauride.”

All that the moderns can do with trombone harmonies they learned from Gluck, and by applying his use of dispersed chords to the whole brass choir they have produced new and noble orchestral colors. Where did Wagner learn such things as this, if not from Mozart and Gluck?