Anneke Scott on Vienna horns and Rudolf Bibl

Here's my latest addition to the ever increasing collection of fortnightly videos as part of my #CornoNotCorona project. You can watch the performance of this week's piece (Rudolf Bibl's "Schwermuth") here    • Anneke Scott performs Rudolf Bibl's "...  

This week I’ve dug out my Vienna horn. This one is made by Andreas Jungwirth who also made one of my natural horns. My understanding is the background to this particular horn is a collaboration between Andreas, the Vienna horn player Wolfgang Tomböck and other horn players from the Vienna Philharmonic plus research into the instruments by the legendary makers Leopold Ulhmann, Anton Demal and the Wiener Produktivegnossenschaft.

I’ve noticed that sometimes people refer to Viennese made horns with rotary valves as Vienna horns. For example the I’ve seen people describe instruments similar to my two rotary valved Uhlmann instruments as “Vienna horns” or Wienerhorns. However I’ve always taken this name to be specifically for the horns made with the special valve system I associate with these instruments - I think part of the confusion sometimes comes when these Viennese made rotary horns are operated with a long spindle - i.e. at first glance it could be the special Vienna horn valve.

Leopold Uhlmann started to produce horns with this type of valve, known as the pumpenvalve, in the 1840s. It’s a design that is closer to the piston valve in some ways than the rotary valved instruments we often associate with Austria. Basically these long rods push a set of double pistons out thus redirecting the air. There’s a lot of theories about the particular characteristics of the Vienna horn, they’re often thought of as being closer to the natural horn, probably because they’re normally crooked into F (it is possible to get them in other crooks) and they’re associated with a particular timbre, often dark and smooth. The valve action feels slower than on other designs, plus I often find these instruments can feel a bit resistant, which may be explained by the angles that the valves shift the air.

Berlioz referred to the horn as “a noble and melancholy instrument” and the piece I choose this week is entitled Schwermuth, or melancholy. It’s a piece which you can find in another album published by William Melton and edition ebenos and it comes from a set of four pieces by 19th century Viennese composer Rudolf Bibl. [You can find this album and lots of other goodies here: https://www.ebenos-shop.de/epages/813...] Bibl was organist at the Stephansdom and this piece, published c.1888, is for horn and either harmonium or piano.

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