A duet, in a collection by Granier about 1777, caught my eye at La Bibliothèque nationale de France. The book includes arrangements for flutes or violins, but one number from La Colonie by Sacchini sounds like a grand finale for hunting horns and Graniers arrangement can be played on two hand horns as if it were written for them. The story of Sacchini and La Colonie contains one hundred times more drama and intrigue than the trumped up story about Mozart and Salieri, yet Sacchinis true story seems destined forever to take second place to the name of Mozart. If that be the case, then, at least, it should be a close second. Sacchini died of a broken heart because La Colonie was a failure. One of his important friends delivered such a moving eulogie at his funeral that all of Paris took notice, his opera was revived and it became one of the biggest successes in all of opera history. By 1775 when the opera premiered, horns had become emancipated from any obligatory connection to the hunt. It is a big disappointment to note that the horns play such a minor role in the finale. If the finale were unabashedly rewritten to give the horns a starring role using open notes on the loud passages and Graniers stopped notes on the soft passages, Sacchini would beam down on us from his cloud.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 19:53:06 +0000
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