Klarinet Archive - Posting 000870.txt from 2002/04

From: MVinquist@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Dennis Brain and the Hosepipe
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 21:36:13 -0400

Leila Loaban says: >>I heard a wonderful recording of the great French horn
player, Dennis Brain, playing some late Baroque or early classical piece on a
garden hose, to which he'd attached a French horn mouthpiece. He used to
play a coiled garden hose in the fashion of a natural horn, as a recital
encore. It sounded like hell, for the record, but the amusement factor more
than made up for the sour
notes!<<

Welcome back Leila! (And hi, Shad -- or are you allergic to being called a
fish?)

The piece Dennis Brain played is the last movement of Leopold Mozart's
Concerto for Posthorn [or Alphorn]. Leopold deliberately used a
non-orchestral instrument and expected it to be out of tune.

The Hosepipe was a length of garden hose maybe 12 feet long, which Brain
coiled over his shoulder. He stuck a modern horn mouthpiece in one end and a
funnel in the other.

The recording was made at the First Hoffnung Astronautical Music Festival,
which was for several years the closing concert of the Edinburgh Music
Festival. It's a very funny record, with things like the March from the
Tchaikovsky 6th played by a recorder ensemble with tambourine. There were
only three festivals before Hoffnung died, and they've all been reissued --
essential stuff, as are Hoffnung's musical cartoons.

Ken Shaw

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