Britten's Serenade

[Wimblees@aol.com]

In a message dated 98-01-31 13:18:26 EST, you write:

>Tom, you wrote
>
>Today, I heard, for the first time in a long time, a CD of Benjamin
>Britten's "Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings" (recorded 1944). Dennis
>Brain plays some amazing french horn solos wherin some notes sound
>incredibly out of tune. There is one note that could easily be 50 cents
>flat. But the effect is tremendous: the intonation of every note seems
>to have been chosen for a particular purpose rather than simply being
>"out of tune". I would describe it, from my ET perspective, as knowing
>the rules of equal temperament and knowing when to break them.
>
>You are correct in that the notes sound "out of tune."  (I am a horn
>player..)  That piece requests that the horn player do the opening passage
>on the "open" horn, that is without valves.  Thus the horn is playing the
>notes on the natural harmonic overtones of the horn's fundamental.  The
>higher the overtone, the more the variation from what we would consider the
>"normal" tuning.  Particularly the 7ths, the 11ths, and their octaves.
>  This is the way that Britten wanted it to sound.
>
>Ed
>Ed Carwithen
>Oregon


Britten's Serenade is an incredibly haunting piece of litarature for horn,
tenor and strings. My wife (a soprano) and I (a French horn player), performed
this piece for our graduate recital in college, with my dad playing the string
part on piano. 

Willem Blees
St. Louis