Horn 1: Bb - c3
Horn 2: g - bb2
Horn 3: a - bb2
Horn 4: F - d2
Creator's Comments
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his comic opera Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) in 1786, in the style of the prevailing Opera Buffa of the late 18th century. However, in his genius, Mozart took the Opear Buffa style a step further, adding a real 3-dimensional depth to the drama, not only in the characters as portrayed in the libretto but also to the characters as portrayed in his music. The result is a lively, amusing and beautiful masterpiece.
In his overture to the opera, Mozart sets down in a few short minutes a crisp, sparkling musical gem that not only sets the mood for the opera that follows, but has inspired symphonic music lovers for over 200 years.
Performance Notes
The Marriage of Figaro, or Le nozze di Figaro (in the original version), is a comic opera composed in 1786 with a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte. The plot is a continuation of The Barber of Seville, with the Count Almaviva, now advanced in age and married, trying to get on to Figaro’s young soon-to-be wife, Susanna. To add to that, about everybody else in the court has their own little intrigues and longings, and by the end of the day (the whole opera is about just one day) the inevitable resolution of all conflicts ensures.
Kerry Turner should be a familiar name to any horn ensemble. A member of the world-famous American Horn Quartet, but also prolific composer and arranger, his works have been performed throughout the world.
This is an arrangement for four horns, transposed up a semitone into the key of E flat major (but written for horn in F). The resulting two flats and associated fingerings are very familiar to horn players (many in fact can read equally well in E flat and F). The original key of D major on the other hand would have required serious finger disentangling with all the 23 positions (C sharp and G sharp). The transposition doesn’t
affect the range much, and Turner does well at keeping it within pedal F and top B flat. And there is one more advantage this key has: as the dominant of E flat (B flat in horn pitch) is B flat (F), and since usually all notes down to F under the stave are written in treble clef, Turner can keep a large portion of the 2nd and 4th parts in treble clef (which makes reading those fast passages just that little bit easier).
How does one reduce a work by Mozart to four parts? Well, harmony of the Western classical period is basically four-part anyways, so it really is “only” a matter of distributing the voices well. There are several implications when having only four players for four parts though: very little rest (and indeed that is very much the case here), very few possibilities to change the sound colour (circumvented here by distributing the parts among the voices, thus changing the individual colours of the phrases, however not much between sections), and, despite the original four-part harmony, no chance to reproduce everything that is going on in the score. That said, this work can (and should) be taken as a reference on how to arrange pieces from the classical period for horn quartet.
The distribution of the music between the first three horns is almost equal, with a bit more material in the first and third parts. The fourth horn has the bass line, and that is by no means the easy part in this arrangement. It is all so well done though, that there is nothing that seems even remotely unplayable. Case in point: all the fast bits (like the beginning theme) land on the beat of the next bar, thus avoiding the panicky feeling one has when the phrase doesn’t lead anywhere. If everything else goes wrong, at least that final note on the first beat of the next bar will be right. Also, it is very difficult to keep playing fast quavers (eight notes) or semi-quavers (sixteenth notes) evenly until the very end of the bar, but not have the downbeat on the next bar to land on.
There is no point in going on and on. This is a perfect example of how to arrange Western classical works for horn quartet.