English horn: description and methods of playing

In military and symphony orchestras, the so-called English horn may be present among wind musical instruments. This instrument is hardly familiar to people who rarely attend classical music concerts, opera and ballet performances. It seems that not every high music lover who considers himself a frequenter of musical performances and concerts will not immediately tell what an English horn looks like. Listening to music, not everyone is interested in the instruments themselves, especially those that are rarely solo.

An interesting fact is that The English horn, by and large, is rather difficult to call a horn for an uninitiated person: it looks more like an oboe. It is not for nothing that another common name for this wind musical instrument is the alto oboe. True, it arose on the basis of a hunting horn, but in appearance it has nothing to do with the progenitor.

There are 2 main versions of how this tool can be called correctly:

• Angelic (from the German engellisch);
• "Curved corner" (from the French anglais).

At first, this instrument had a curved shape, but now it has only one curved part - the glass that connects the body to the cane.

Due to the curvature of the glass, it is possible to hold the horn at any angle convenient for the musician. The body of the tool is a perfectly straight expanding tube with a pear-shaped socket at the end with a very narrow opening. On the body of the body there are game valves and systems of levers and keys for controlling them. The total length of the tool is 810 mm.

The English horn is arranged according to the same principle as the conservative oboe, but it is slightly longer in size and has 16 holes, while the standard oboe model has 23 holes. In addition, its distinctive feature, which does not allow confusion with any other instrument, is the presence of a pear-shaped bell.

The body of the instrument is made of a type of wood in which the fibers are straight, allowing the sound to be evenly distributed in the inner cavity of the tube. This can be, for example, beech, boxwood or rosewood. The oboe tongues are mainly made from ebony, which grows in Madagascar and some parts of Africa, and sometimes from larch. The curved tube is made of metal.

The horn consists of several parts, into which it can be disassembled and cleaned:

1. a glass with a cane;
2. upper knee with valve and key systems;
3. middle knee with valves and keys;
4. trumpet.

Inside the body there are partitions-tongues arranged at a special angle, due to which the sound of the instrument arises. Due to the increased body length (when compared with the conservative oboe), the sound of the English horn is noticeably thicker, denser, softer.

Orchestral scores rarely include the presence of two English horns. Basically, one instrument is enough even for a large symphony orchestra. In the absence of the alto oboe in the instrumental composition of the orchestra, a standard instrument plays its part. But such a replacement is not suitable for those moments in musical compositions that were written by composers specifically for the English horn, given the "oriental" flavor of its timbre. For example, it is hardly advisable to replace the alto oboe with another instrument in the following productions and individual compositions:

• Gluck's opera Orpheus and Eurydice;
• Rossini's opera Wilhelm Tell;
• Wagner's operas Lohengrina, Tannhäuser and Tristan and Isolde;
• Opera Saint-Saens "Samson and Delilah";
• Sibelius's symphonic legend "The Tuonel Swan";
• Beethoven's Trio, op. 87;
• "Adagio F major" by Mozart;
• the symphonic picture of Borodin "In Central Asia";
• Glinka's opera and ballet Ruslan and Lyudmila;
• Rodrigo's Aranjuez Concert;
• poem "Bells" by Rachmaninoff;
• compositions written especially for the English horn by composers Joseph Starzer and Michael Haydn, as well as by the performers themselves - J. Fiala, I. Maltsat and others.

Almost all of the above works contain scenes of an oriental motive, which the described musical instrument conveys in a very natural way. This is facilitated by its sound timbre.

Musicians playing the alto oboe sometimes have to play the parts of the 3rd oboe in the orchestral score. This is indicated as follows:

• "Cogpo inglese muta in Oboe";
• "Oboe 111 ° muta in Cogpo inglese" - so it is indicated if you need to return to playing the alto instrument.

The sound of the alto oboe due to the increased body length with a similar fingering to a conventional oboe by a clean fifth below the latter. The sound range of the horn is two and a half octaves, which in actual sound starts from a minor note "E" and ends with a note "B-flat" of the second octave. The part of this instrument is recorded in the treble clef, where the first - the lowest sound - is the note "B" of a small octave. That is - just a clean fifth higher than the real sound:

Sounds of short durations are more difficult to reproduce on a horn than on a standard oboe, therefore its parts are distinguished by extended sounds of a doped (connected) type. Even in solo performance, viscous, romantic durations prevail. At the same time, the range of the high register (second octave) is very rare.

In terms of playing technique and fingering, the English horn and the standard oboe completely coincide, but only the first one sounds, as indicated earlier, a clean fifth (3.5 tones) below the written one.

The timbre of the horn, like that of the classic oboe, is rich in additional overtones. A musician, holding a thin cane in his lips, can change the sound at any time, thereby achieving the effects and sounds he needs. True, the emergence of new sounds on this instrument has a somewhat protracted process. It is not for nothing that they speak of it as a "lazy-romantic" musical instrument, the sounds of which are slightly delayed from the moment the air stream is fed into the cane.

This slowness does not allow for a distinct staccato to be performed on the sounds of the low (low octave) and high (second octave) registers. But in the range of the first octave, the staccato sounds no worse than that of "nimble" wind instruments like a flute. All this, of course, should be taken into account when learning and playing the English version of the oboe.

But in the legato technique, you can play almost without restrictionsunless it is mixed with very short durations and long staccato lengths.

It is most convenient to play any of the oboe varieties in a standing position, holding the instrument at a 45-degree angle relative to the plane of the floor. In this case, the body weight should be evenly distributed between both legs. The oboe with its bell should be directly in front of the musician, opposite his straightened body.

The reed of the instrument should be immersed deep enough into the oral cavity so as not to get a scattered sound at the output. Do not blow too hard on the cane, otherwise the sound will become distorted and unpleasant.