QotD

We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmony which you have not, of quarter-sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep, likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp; we make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their originalare entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which, set to the ear, do further the hearing greatly; we have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and, as it were,tossing it; and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice, differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have all means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances.

- Sir Francis Bacon, THE NEW ATLANTIS (1624)

Mozart - Horn duos

I recently discovered Mozart's horn duos and I love them; no. 4 and 6 in particular are great. The duos are written for a high and a low horn, whatever those are, but they fit well on trumpet and mellophone (Bb and Eb); so my transcriptions will also work for two saxes. I just finished the sixth (menuetto), might put up some of them in the next week. Others transcribed them before; someone is selling a two-trumpet transcription book on ebay.

Unfortunately, I could not find any commercial recording for these - unlike Bach's Inventions, for which there are at least a dozen recordings out there. I have to guess at the tempos from the titles (larghetto - must be sort of slow) and my technical limitations (the 16th-note run - can only play it so fast). I also wish I could hear the articulation and phrasing...

P.S. I stand corrected: the duos are available as a part of Marriner and AoSMitF's Wind Divertimienti recordings. They are truly beautiful, the horns almost sound like a piano. Here they are: mediafire.