That fame is not always an indication of quality music — and, conversely, that obscurity is no proof of the opposite — can be seen in the following works by the hornist Carl Oestreich.
Carl Wilhelm Eduard Oestreich was born on April 18, 1800, in Spremberg, a small town in the Niederlausitz, then part of Saxony. He was the oldest son of Johann Carl Gottfried Oestreich, a town musician in Spremberg. Little is known of his youth, except that he received his early musical education from members of the Royal Court Orchestra in Dresden, possibly including August and Louis Haase. In 1830 Oestreich dedicated a published set of horn trios to his "venerated friends," the Haase brothers.
Oestreich moved to Frankfurt in 1820. This is corroborated by an autograph title page to a set of parts for "Andante con Variazioni" for horn and orchestra, signed "C. Oestreich; Frankfurt a/M 1820." In the city's Aufgebotsbuch of 1822–1825, Oestreich registered his intent to marry Johanna Christina Emilie Pezold on August 1, 1824, and is described in that document as a member of the local Theatre Orchestra. He married on October 12, 1824, in Spremberg. Surviving Frankfurt Theatre almanacs indicate that Oestreich was a member of the horn section (second horn) until 1832, when he was pensioned due to illness or disability. He remained on a pension until his death in 1840.
Oestreich's music for his own instrument remained unpublished, with the exception of a set of twelve trios for three horns published by Dunst in Frankfurt around 1830. The great majority of Oestreich's solo horn works are for "second" horn. Many of the great virtuosi were second-horn players — Punto, Carl Thürrschmidt, and Dauprat, for example — and it is evident that Oestreich, too, was naturally a second-horn player. All but one of the works for solo horn lie in the second-horn range; only the "Thema con Variazioni" is written for "corno primo."
The newly edited works for three and four horns are held at the Frankfurt Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek. The horn quartets (Sign. Mus Hs 793) and the horn trios (Mus Hs 791 & 792) show Oestreich's evident knowledge of the horn and his interest in experimentation. A reviewer for the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung stated that these trios would be easier to perform on the new valve horn, which was being introduced almost everywhere at the time. Although the new valve instruments were superior in chromatic capability, they lacked in colour and tone. The so-called disadvantage of stopped tones — the muted, veiled sound produced by hand-stopping — was often turned to advantage by some composers. Minor-key passages become more plastic and sensitive, and stopped tones, though strident and aggressive in forte, never overpower the orchestra. Schumann, and especially Brahms, therefore continued to love the natural horn, and dismissed the valve horn as a "Blechgeige" ("tin violin").
