Music For Horns

Faure’s Requiem in D minor op.48 is best known for its Pie Jesu, a movement that has been arranged for almost every combination of instrument imaginable. The present publication is an arrangement of a different part, the Libera me. Anybody who has ever played a Martinet arrangement knows its strength: faithful transcription, good knowledge of the possibilities of the horn, good use of the range, popular with the audiences. Then there is that one weakness: the arrangements are more often than not in a key different from the original. In this case, the original is in a quite convenient F major, Martinet’s version however in E flat major. This puts the range between F and bb2, which admittedly is easier to handle than G – c3, but Eb – ab2 would have been even more manageable.

Transposition issues aside, you can’t really go wrong with a Martinet arrangement, and this one is no exception.