Saint-Saëns, Camille - Morceau de concert op.94 for Horn
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835 - 1921) composed his Morceau de concert opus 94 for French horn in 1887, finishing the piano version in October and the orchestral version in November. It was first performed under the title Fantaisie – a title that was later crossed out in the score – on 7 February 1891 at the Salle Pleyel in Paris by the horn player Henri Chaussier to whom the piece is dedicated.
Saint-Saëns knew Chaussier well and had already dedicated his Romance op. 67 to him in 1882. From then on the composer and the musician maintained an occasional correspondence. Chaussier was not necessarily averse to innovations but was attached to the traditions and values represented by the hand horn: he believed that “old” music should be played as it was written, with the crooks and their differences in sound quality intended by the composers. At the time of the Romance op. 67, he was first horn player in the orchestra of Benjamin Bilse in Berlin and was having some difficulties adapting to the valve horn traditionally played in Germany. The thought of a non-transposing instrument emerged:
During a trip I made to Germany to play in M. Bilse’s orchestra, I had to learn to use a valve horn. It was an arduous task and I was often disturbed by transpositions that seemed to me absurd, because I had to conform to German practice which consists in playing all music – even old music – with the F-crook, the use of the hand in the bell having been completely abandoned in this country. The idea of a horn that would play in concert pitch often came to my mind […]. (in Notice explicative sur les nouveaux instruments en ut, Henri Chaussier, ed. Paul Dupont, Paris, 1889, Translation L.M.)
On 21 November 1886, Saint-Saëns publicly endorsed his friend’s system of non-transposing instruments in the weekly music journal Le Ménestrel:
Mr. Henri Chaussier, the horn player whose prodigious virtuosity is well known by all, told me a while ago of his reform project concerning wind instruments and the possibility of eliminating transposing instruments. I greatly encouraged him in his endeavour which corroborated my own ideas. For a long time I have considered this system a barbaric anomaly destined to disappear over time. Therefore I allow myself to draw the musical public’s attention to the accomplished reform. Mr. Chaussier’s instruments are brought back to the tonality of C and – like the piano or the violin – play in concert pitch. This is an advantage that anyone may readily understand. (in Le Ménestrel, 21 November 1886, p. 408, Translation L.M.)
This is why a commentary on the first page of the score specifies that “the horn part is written without transposition, in tenor clef, one octave above the real pitch.” Although this piece “can be performed on a chromatic horn” it is actually conceived for Chaussier’s omnitonic horn.
Constructed by François Millereau, the Chaussier horn can be played either as a natural horn, using the right hand to correct the sound in the bell, or as a valve horn. The left hand activates three Périnet valves – as usual – with an additional rotary valve for the thumb. Not much distinguishes this instrument visually from a valve horn of the same period. The main difference lies in the relation of the valves: two descending valves – the 1st down one tone and the 4th down two and a half tones – and two ascending valves – the 2nd up a half tone and the 3rd up two tones. By combining these valves one can reach most “crook tonalities” necessary for the orchestra. This instrument – nowadays kept in the collection of the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels – was rebuilt by Egger Blechblasinstrumentenbau (Basel) in collaboration with the Bern University of the Arts in the context of a research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
The idea of the Chaussier horn and the Morceau de concert written for this instrument, therefore relies on both valve and hand in bell playing, which together offer vast possibilities of tone and sound combinations (see www.hkb-interpretation.ch/projekte/cor-chaussier for additional information on this subject).
Concerning the manuscript which is often written in abbreviations, Saint-Saëns proposes an anecdotal yet interesting variant, a small change in the main theme which occurs in both the solo and the orchestral parts (above, the version cancelled by Saint-Saëns, below, the definitive version).
Claude Maury / Daniel Allenbach, 2014
Translation: Laura Moeckli
Morceau de concert op.94 for Horn
om YouTube