Re: Dennis Brain's horn [was: Period vs Modern instruments?]

Ken Moore wrote:

> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Peter T. Daniels
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
> >How could you possibly know what he "intended," especially since he was
> >working intensively on the work with no less than Dennis (note spelling)
> >Brain himself? (Unfortunately the only picture of him in Mitchell's
> >*Pictures from a Life* is a studio portrait, with valve horn.) If he
> >"forces" the player to use a different instrument for the bookends, is
> >it mere coincidence that only the notes playable on a natural instrument
> >are used in the passages?
>
> No, but not because the notes are playable only on an instrument without
> valves.  What he wanted was the natural tuning, especially of the 7th,
> 11th and (probably) 13th* "harmonics".  These notes are there on every
> horn, and at the tuning he wanted if you can make it the length of a
> horn in F (see an earlier post).
>
> *  What he actually got was the 14th, because that's what Brain played
> for the notated A, and what all players in the British tradition have
> played since.  Britten was there, knew the difference, and didn't mind,
> according to Pears.  You can hear the 13th on a fairly recent recording
> by a Czech player.

This is an extremely interesting observation, and a point I had not
previously noticed. I just put on two recordings in succession (Frank Llloyd
and Michael Thompson's), and the note in question is clearly being lipped
down (with some considerable effort) from the 14th partial--which by rights
ought to be the octave above the seventh, notated as B-flat in the score,
but sounding almost a quarter-tone flatter (the "septimal seventh"). If
Britten had wanted to be sure of the 13th partial, however, he might have
notated A-flat instead of A-natural, since that is slightly closer (in
12-equal) to the 13th partial, though extremely sharp of it, and the next
lower partial is the G. In a just-intoned schema, however, the (notated) A,
tuned relative to C and/or E, is so much lower than in 12-equal that the
13th partial is much closer to it than to A-flat.

Can you point me a little more precisely to this Czech recording? I would
very much like to hear it.

--
Jerry Kohl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"Légpárnás hajóm tele van angolnákkal."