#heckelphone

[abbieshores]

Writing Skills Task #359

Writing Skills Task #359

Writing Skills Task 359

To read more about this writing task and others, see this article

TASK 359 The Oboe

There is now a small word amount goal as our writing becomes more complete.

WORD COUNT 100 OR MORE

We REALLY hope you will share what you put with us here, in the comments. We would love to read it.

Have fun

View On WordPress

[thepessimisticclarinetist]

Here’s the 2nd half of the Trio!

Valerius Ensemble performs Paul Hindemith’s Trio for Viola, Heckelphone, and Piano, Op. 47: II. Poutpourri.

Thanks so much to Valerius Ensemble for this definitive performance. I’ve seen too many performances that use Hindemith’s recommended substitute, tenor saxophone, and it never comes close to the original effect intended.

I felt the need to share this because honestly, too much of the excitement and hype over the Heckelphone seems to be more about its textbook obscurity and colorful name, instead of its actual merits as an instrument.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the Heckelphone will even approach anything close to being commonplace. It’s a shame, but that’s reality for you :(

[thepessimisticclarinetist]

So I’ve been browsing around for the Heckelphone, and I finally found the definitive performance of probably the most well-known chamber piece written for this weird but wonderful instrument.

Valerius Ensemble performs Paul Hindemith’s Trio for Viola, Heckelphone, and Piano, Op. 47: I. Solo - Arioso - Duet.

Just listen to that gorgeous, full-bodied, nasal low sound!

[oboeangst]

Anyone got a spare $33,000?

[nonstandardrepertoire]

The Heckelphone: An Appreciation

The year is 1904. The place is Germany. Late Romanticism is in its last, decadent, maximalist bloom: The year before, Richard Strauss premiered his Sinfonia Domestica in Berlin; Gustav Mahler has recently completed his monumental fifth symphony, and is hard at work on his sixth. 

The western symphony orchestra, which had started its life as a medium-sized consort of mostly strings and a few winds, has blossomed to immense proportions: Four of every woodwind was not uncommon, nor were sections of eight or more horns (compare Mozart's two) and an entire battery of percussion in the back. Not only are there more clarinets and flutes, but they come in more varieties as well: The piccolo, the alto flute, the smaller clarinets in D and Eb, the bass clarinet down at the bottom, the whole saxophone family from the squeaking sopranino to the gutteral bass. Many orchestrators have started calling for a complete family for each of the woodwinds, so that they can write for any color in any range. This is all very well for clarinets, saxophones, and flutes, but oboes are still sadly limited in this department, having only the english horn for a (slight) lower extension. (Bassoons also didn't have much in the way of an extended family, but the Romantics didn't seem to care much about the bassoon. Whatever. Over it.)

Enter Wilhelm Heckel and his latest creation, the heckelphone.

The heckelphone sounds an octave below the garden-variety oboe, and was an instant hit with Richard Strauss, who wrote significant parts for it in Salome, Elektra, and several other works. Percy Grainger also delighted in the newfangled thing and wrote a glorious part for it in Over the Hills and Far Away, a delightful romp for concert band. It seemed that Wilhelm Heckel had a hit.

At this point, some of you may be thinking "But wait, hang on, I have never heard of this instrument in my life! Safari doesn't even recognize it as a real word!". The more intrepid of you, having searched and found an image such as this, may be even more sure that such a thing doesn't crop up on the regular.

You would be correct. Since 1904, the Heckel company has produced around 150 total heckelphones, only about 100 of which still exist. After the initial flurry of works, the instrument more or less dropped off the face of the musical landscape until the late twentieth century, when a few modern composers started writing an occasional chamber work or orchestral part.

Why is this? The short answer is World War One. It is well beyond the scope of this post to explore the full ramifications of the Great War on the trajectory of Western Concert Music, but suffice it to say that the collective trauma of the devastation led to a sharp backlash in music against the (as the post-WWI composers saw it) bloated, over-indulgent excesses of the pre-war German and Austrian musical and cultural elite. 

One of the results was musical Neoclassicism, a movement that sought to go back, in some way, to the sparseness and transparency of Mozart-era (roughly*) composition. Chamber music soared, orchestras shrank. There was, rather suddenly, no longer a demand for the kitchen sink in every piece. Having had barely a decade to become established, the heckelphone didn't stand a chance.

The instrument itself didn't help. Being a bass oboe, it uses oboe fingerings, but the reed and mouth setup are most similar to a bassoon's, meaning that players already fluent with the fingerings would struggle to play beautifully and in tune, and players who could play beautiful long tones would stumble on even simple runs. The hautbois baryton produced by Lorée in 1889 uses an oboe-like mouth setup with an oboe-like fingering system and bore, but the instrument has other issues and never enjoyed even the slight popularity that the heckelphone did. (IMO, its tone is too covered and quiet; it doesn't have the reedy, throaty richness that makes the heckelphone such a delight.)

(This, incidentally, explains my earlier comments on The Planets. English composers of the early twentieth century used the term "bass oboe" indiscriminately to refer to both the heckelphone and hautbois baryton, with the result that it's often unclear which they meant; many of them may not even have known — or cared about — the difference.)

I have been deeply saddened by this ever since I had the unforgettable opportunity to actually play a heckelphone in concert with the Yale Concert Band my sophomore year. (Yes, we have a heckelphone. It's a long story. . . ) The instrument makes a sound like nothing else on Earth, and it is a sound I love deeply and wish I could write for regularly. It doesn't fully capture the glory of the thing live, but you can get a sense of its zesty timbre in this recording of the Paul Hindemith trio for viola, heckelphone, and piano. Like-minded double-reed-enthusiast composers have started to prod a bit of a comeback in recent years, but there's a long way to go until it becomes a common instrument.

So if you're ever at a performance of Salome and you hear something uncanny wafting up from the orchestra pit, take a moment to crane your neck and look for what's making it.

It might be a heckelphone.

                                               *As with all one-sentence summaries of entire musical movements, this one is necessarily incomplete and over-simplified. The Neoclassicists are a diverse and fascinating bunch, well worth entire posts in their own right, but the full details of their means and ends is not relevant to the current thread, and so for now we will, regrettably, leave them aside.

[symphonicallyspeaking]

Visit Original Link

Romances, op. 94 Arthur Grossman, Heckelphone and Lisa Bergman, piano

[galaxies-of-apple-trees]

"The heckelphone is a double reed instrument of the oboe family, but with a wider bore and hence a heavier and more penetrating tone."

From the Heckelphone wikipedia page.

Sexy.

[worldofpollux]

A drawing I did, called The Heckelphonist.  Heck yeah, heckelphones!  A more obscure instrument, but worthy of attention.