01 July 2008 Last Updated on 31 October 2011 Written by Ken Shifrin

Chapter 5: Dvorak

Page 6 of 6

Footnotes

  1. The author wishes to express his immense gratitude to Dr Marketta Hallová, Director of the Dvořák Museum, Prague, and Dr Jarmil Burghauser for their invaluable assistance. I am particularly indebted to Dr Burghauser for the translations he kindly provided.
  2. Annie O. Warburton, Score Reading, Form and History, London, 1959, p. 36. Although some scholars may consider Warburton's work to have been superseded, to the best of my knowledge, her assertion about the composition of Dvořák's trombone section has never been challenged in print; moreover, her view is still being propagated today by leading orchestral trombonists.
  3. Jiří Kratochvíl, De(jiny A Literatur Dechových Nástroju*, Prague, 1992, p. 68. Trans. Dr Suzanna Petraškova.
  4. Ralph Sauer, 'The Alto Trombone in the Symphony Orchestra', ITA Journal , 7 (July 1984), p. 41.
  5. Ron Barron, personal correspondence with the author, 20.3.95.
  6. Milt Stevens, personal correspondence with the author, 1.3.95.
  7. According to Dr Marketta Hallová (personal interview, 8.5.96) and Dr Holoček, Archivist, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra (personal correspondence, 20.5.96), only the trombone parts to Symphony No.9 are extant, held in the New York Philharmonic Archives.
  8. According to Otakar Šourek, Dvořák was unable to persuade his German publisher Simrock to use his proper name, Antonín, rather than Anton, on the title pages of his works. Otakar Šourek, 'Dvořák', in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians 5th edition, London, 1954, p. 834. N.B. The New Grove is not as specific with regard to this point.
  9. According to Jarmil Burghauser, personal correspondence with the author, 30.4.96.
  10. Jan Branberger, Konservatoř hudby v Praze, Pame(tní spis k stoletému jubileu založení ústavu, Nákladem Konservatoře, Prague, 1911, pp. 71-72.
  11. Kail likened the sound of the slide trombone to a herd of elephants (Bohuslav Čížek, 'Josef Kail (1795-1871), Forgotten Brass Instrument Innovator', part 2, Brass Bulletin. 73 (1991), p. 28.
  12. According to Burghauser, Kail merely adapted Stözel's invention. Personal correspondence, 10.5.96.
  13. Čížek, op. cit., p. 28.
  14. Branberger, op. cit., p. 38.
  15. Čížek, op. cit., pp. 27-8, citing Václáv František, Slavou I, Prague, 1862, pp. 97-98.
  16. Čížek, op. cit., p. 27, citing Branberger, op. cit., pp. 71-2.
  17. Jaroslav Ušák, 'Odde(lení zest'u* na pražské Konservatoři' ('The Brass Instruments Department of the Prague Conservatoire of Music'), in 150 let pražské Konservatoře (150 years of the Prague Conservatoire), Prague, 1961, p. 157.
  18. Branberger, op. cit., p. 73.
  19. Ušák, op. cit., p. 160.
  20. Ibid. Although Hejda maintans that Smita's Concertino for Trombone and Orchestra in Eb Major (1899) was written for a slide trombone (personal interview, Prague 22.11.96), given the non-idiomatic nature of the part for a slide trombone, the frequent omission of natural 'break' slurs in favour of step-wise slurs, the even greater technical demands than those in concerti written for Queisser or in solos composed by Arthur Pryor, the relatively nascent stage of slide pedagogy in Prague at the time, and Smita's background as a valve player, the author is led to question this assertion.
  21. In 1901, Dvořák was appointed Professor of Composition, Instrumentation and Musical Form at the Prague Conservatoire. Šourek, op. cit., p. 834.
  22. According to Miloslav Hejda, personal interview, Prague 22.11.96. According to Jaroslav Kummer, Professor of Trombone, Janáček Academy of Music, until 1906 only valve trombone was taught in Moravia. Personal interview, Olomouc, 9.11.98.
  23. Ušák, op. cit., p. 160, citing Hoffmeister's obituary speech for Hilmer in 1930. Ušák singles out for mention – probably due to its being so unusual – the fact that Hilmer 'originally played an alto trombone' (ibid.).
  24. Source: Hejda, personal correspondence, op. cit.
  25. Bohuslav Čížek, 'Josef Kail (1795-1871), Forgotten Brass Instrument Innovator' part 1, Brass Bulletin 73 (1991), p. 70. Citing Branberger, op. cit., p. 38.
  26. Jaroslav Tachovsky, personal correspondence with the author, 13.6.96.
  27. Personal correspondence, 10.5.96.
  28. Personal correspondence, 5.2.97.
  29. Personal interview, Prague, 22.11.96. Carl Wesecky, an Austrian who had studied at the Wiener Conservatorium and who became the principal trombonist of the Prague German Estates Theatre Orchestra around 1895, was an accomplished slide as well as valve trombonist. However, he left Prague in 1898 to take up the position of bass trombonist with the Vienna Philharmonic (correspondence with Gerhard Zechmeister, 29.1.98). A photograph of the Czech Philharmonic taken in 1908 on the occasion of the first performance of Mahler's Seventh Symphony clearly shows at least one player holding a slide trombone (Gustav Mahler, Facsimile Edition of the Seventh Symphony, Amsterdam: Rosbeek, 1995, p. 41). Yet an indication that the valve trombone was still used in the first part of the twentieth century in Prague is given by the fact that the Czech Philharmonic trombonists were asked by Janáček in 1928 to perform his Capriccio on valve trombones (Burghauser, personal interview, 20.11.96). Bohemia was not the only place in which the valve trombone was still relied upon in the early twentieth century. In 1924 Falla was compelled to conduct Pulcinella, a work resplendent with trombone glissandi, with a valve trombonist 'because only valve trombones [were] available in Seville' (letter from Falla to Stravinsky, 2.1.1921, cited in Robert Craft (ed.), Stravinsky, Selected Correspondence, London, 1984, p. 163), a practice Stravinsky approved. 'You can perform Pulcinella with a valve trombone' (ibid., p. 164).
  30. For example, in Symphony No. 4 and No. 5. The role dictated for the trombone by orchestral repertoire of this period usually 'entailed executing block chordal work, rhythmic interjection and counterpoint and – where thematic material was presented – in a generally detached, marcato style' (Simon Baines, The Evolution of Orchestral Brass in the Last Hundred Years: Organology, Trends in Performance Practice, and their Effect, PhD dissertation, Keele University, 1996, p. 11). So much so that in 1910 W. H. Stone wrote that 'the quiet smooth legato method... is almost a lost art' (W. H. Stone, 'The Trombone', Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, London, 1910, vol. v, p. 164). Sir Henry Wood wrote that in the same year Elgar 'was delighted with the beautiful legato these instruments [i.e. valve trombones] produced in the Finale of his Symphony No. 2'. Sir Henry Wood, My Life of Music, first edition, London, 1946, p. 250.
  31. Čížek, part i op. cit., p. 75.
  32. Burghauser, personal correspondence, 10.5.96.
  33. J.H. Zimmermann, Musik Instrument Katalog, Leipzig, 1899, p. 114.
  34. Personal interview with Čížek and Szturc, Prague, 26.6.96.
  35. Personal interview, Prague, 20.11.96. Heidrun Eichler, Curator of the Markneukirchen Museum, in whose workshop in Saxony was produced one of the earliest tenor/bass valve trombones in the mid-nineteenth century (Heyde, op. cit., p. 240) – also had no knowledge of an alto valve-trombone in trompetten form used in Bohemia (personal interview, Markneukirchen 19.11.96).
  36. Source: Čížek, part i, op. cit, p. 75.
  37. Courtesy of Čížek.
  38. Zimmermann, op. cit., pp. 112-17.
  39. František Bartoš, 'Preface', Bartoš (ed.) to Antonín Dvořák: Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Complete Edition, Prague, 1961, p. xvii. Trans. Dr J. Fiala.
  40. According to Tachovsky (op. cit.) the Symphony's first trombone part has always been played on tenor trombone in Prague.
  41. Courtesy of Dr. Hallová, Dvořák Museum, Prague.
  42. For example, from page 187 of the autograph (bar 166 of the fourth movement) to the end of the Symphony, Dvořák inadvertently uses an alto clef sign for the second trombone, although he continues to write as if in tenor clef.
  43. František Bartoš, 'Preface', Bartoš (ed.) to Antonín Dvořák: Symphony No. 2 in Bb Major (op. 4), Complete Edition, Prague, 1959, pp. xiv-xv. Trans. R. Finlayson-Samsour.
  44. Ibid., p. xv.
  45. 'Editor's notes', ibid., no page number.
  46. The trombone clef notation that Dvořák employed, as well as his concept of first trombone range, may have been influenced by his early study of Mendelssohn's works. Jarmil Burghauser, personal correspondence, 30.4.96.
  47. Burghauser, personal correspondence, 10.5.96.
  48. Ibid.
  49. Premièred in Prague in 1880, this is apparently the first work in the standard repertoire in which a tenor trombonist is required to play as high as d''. Dvořák demanded this note in only two other instances: the Finale of Symphony No. 6 in D Major, and his First Symphony.
  50. Burghauser, personal correspondence, 10.5.96. In the Finale of his First Symphony Dvořák writes the first two trombone parts on a single stave in alto clef. See also Chapter 1, nn. 106, 147; Chapter 2, n. 117.
  51. Ibid.
  52. Consequently, in some publications of Dvořák's works in which the engraver has copied the trombone parts without changing the composer's clefs, both the first and the second trombone appear in alto clef. In the Preface to the critical edition of Symphony No. 5 in F Major the editor states that: 'Simrock's proof-reader, Robert Keller's... editorial changes affect the autograph, insofar as... the second trombone, which in the autograph has its own stave in tenor clef... is inscribed in the stave for first trombone (in alto clef)'. František Bartoš, 'Preface' to Antonín Dvořák, Symphony Five in F Major, Complete Edition, Prague, 1960, p. xvii. With the help of data collected by Otakar Šourek. Trans. George Theimer.
  53. Lothar Niefend, Simrock archivist, personal correspondence with the author, 16.4.96.
  54. Burghauser, personal correspondence, 28.4.96.
  55. Or 'tromboni [and] bass tromboni'.
  56. See Chapter 1, nn. 148, 149.

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