12
Several years ago I happened to pick up a recording by the German oboist Georg Meerwein,1 including, among other things, an unusual sonata for English horn and piano by one Carlo Yvon. What piqued my interest was that the composer was Italian; the work was written during the nineteenth century and was a full-blown sonata, not, as in the case of Donizetti, Paganini, and Rossini, a loosely-constructed suonata or "sound piece"; and that it was for English horn, an instrument not overly blessed with riches from the Romantic period.
$2700 later we added an English horn to the family, but the annals of oboe literature failed to produce either a publisher or information about the sonata's composer, Carlo Yvon. just who was this masked man of the English horn?
Carlo Yvon was born in the northern Italian city of Milan on April 29, 1798, five months to the day after the birth of Gaetano Donizetti in nearby Bergamo. In 1808 the ten-year-old Yvon began his formal musical training at the new Milan Conservatory, established just the year before by Napoleonic decree. Since the school was patterned after the Paris Conservatory, we may assume that there Yvon studied the rudiments of music, solfeggio, and perhaps counterpoint in addition to his oboe lessons with Giuseppe Buccinelli, a bassoon virtuoso. He also no doubt played in the Conservatory orchestra under the direction of violinist Alessandro Rolla (1757-1841), Paganini's teacher.2 Yvon remained at the Conservatory until sometime in 1817, and around his twentieth birthday he was appointed principal oboist at La Scala, a post he retained until his death on December 23, 1854.3
During his thirty-six year career, Yvon participated in the premieres of many significant bel canto operas: Bellini's Il pirata (1827), La sonnambula and Norma (both in 183 1); Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia (1833) and Maria Stuarda (1835); possibly Rossini's La gazza ladra (May 31, 1817); several works by Meyerbeer; and, between 1839 and 1854, five of the young Giuseppe Verdi's early works. We can assume that other operas by popular contemporary composers premiered elsewhere ultimately found their way to La Scala's repertoire as well, and that Yvon, as solo oboe, played a starring role in the orchestra pit. We do not know if he played solo English horn there as well, but he certainly would have been well acquainted with the lyrical and dramatic potential of this instrument, demonstrated by major solos in Rossini's Guillaume Tell (although written for Paris in 1829) and especially Bellini's Il pirata, in which Yvon certainly must have participated.
Apparently an oboe position was finally created at the Milan Conservatory, for in 1828 Yvon was appointed maestro of his instrument.4 This may have been part of a general expansion, for two years earlier Gaetano Piantanida (17681835), whom Yvon knew as one of the Conservatory's first piano teachers, saw the expansion of his teaching load to include composition, as well as the harmony and theory he had taught during Yvon's own student days.5
Now let us digress a moment into Milan's political and cultural background. Austria had ruled the northern province of Lombardy since 1708, but during the previous two centuries this region had managed to produce many skilled violin makers, and saw the development of the sonata dating back to 16 10. Under Austrian rule Milan's focus in the early eighteenth century began to shift more toward opera buffa. But with its close political aesthetic ties to Vienna, Milan and its ducal court remained an important center of instrumental music in the eighteenth century as the southern Italian provinces gravitated more and more toward operatic dominance. Giovanni Battista Sammartini (1701-1775), younger brother of the oboist Giuseppe Sammartini (1695-1750), spent most of his life there and became known as the leader of the Milanese symphonic school;6 the operatic reformer Christoph Willibald von Gluck (1714-1787) studied with Sammartini, and in 1754 J.C. Bach was brought to Milan by his patron, Count Agostino Litta. Along with this orchestral activity we can assume the corresponding development of instrumental chamber music, for in 1758 an Accademia Filarmonica was established, and its members, most of whom were noblemen, were each required to compose a sonata or an overture every year.
Maria Theresa's government continued to encourage Milan's cultural and musical development, and even Mozart made several visits there in the 1770s to present his operas. Then in 1778 the new Teatro alla Scala opened (but with a Salierli opera!). From this point La Scala was the city's social and cultural arbiter.
After his French victories, Napoleon was crowned King of Italy (at La Scala) in 1805. His regime subsequently established the Milan Conservatory, whose principal mission was to train musicians for La Scala. But Austria once again resumed its control in 1815. Despite the dominance of bel canto opera throughout Europe, as in Milan, the first decades of the nineteenth century saw Beethoven's final development of the classical sonata and its dissemination by his many imitators, such as Czerny, Hummel, Weber, and many others until it became a North German form by the middle of the nineteenth century. In Milan there was an enclave of occupying nobility culturally anxious to keep up with the Joneses back in Vienna, and feeding this activity were the professors at the Milan Conservatory, who, if they emulated their Parisian counterparts, participated in chamber music concerts for small groups of enthusiasts.7
Like the string quartet, the eighteenth-century sonata was primarily intended for home consumption. Although occasionally performed in public, works of this genre were most often written for amateurs or as a means of establishing a young composer or performer's reputation; and then, once this goal was accomplished, as teaching material (especially in the case of the keyboard instruments).8 But just as Beethoven was bringing the Classical sonata to such exalted heights in the wake of the piano's technical ascendancy, music for wind instruments and piano in the first decades of the nineteenth century virtually ignored this form and turned, especially in Italy, to the ubiquitous rondos, concertinos, airs varies, potpourris, fantasies, and a host of works based on operatic themes, such as G. Tamplini's Melodie dell'Opera: I Lombardi alla prima Crociata, di Verdi', "transcribed with variations for Oboe and Pianoforte, " published by Ricordi sometime between 1844 and 1851.9
Although Donizetti wrote a charming suonata for oboe and piano early in his life, around 1819, this work is not a true sonata in the formal sense, and was not published until recently.10 A search of Hofmeister's Handbook of Music Literature, although admittedly of a German bias, yields a significant number of Italian publications for wind instruments and piano for the years prior to 1852, but there are no sonatas whatsoever listed for oboe, or especially for English horn. Thus the appearance of Carlo Yvon's Sonata for English Horn and Piano around 1840 is quite remarkable.
Like many of his oboe-playing contemporaries (Henri Brod, Josef Sellner, Franz Wilhelm Ferling, Auguste-Gustave Vogt, A.M.R. Barret), Carlo Yvon rounded out his performing and teaching activities by composing for his instrument. Yvon's published works include a Capriccio for Three Oboes, newly available in a modern edition by Georg Meerwein through Mans- sler Verlag; two Duets for Two Oboes, now published by Universal Edition, edited by Han de Vries; Six Studies for Oboe and Piano,- and the Sonata for English Horn and Piano. 11 The English Horn Sonata was published around 1840 by Ricordi, official publisher to the Milan Conservatory since 1811. It was "composed and dedicated" to a Count C. Sola, as inscribed on the original edition's florid title page. Unfortunately I have found no clues to the identity of this Count Sola- was he an amateur oboist, perhaps, or one of Milan's cultural cognescenti in whose home Yvon might have performed? At any rate, it seems likely that the Sonata, judging by its virtuosic writing, was intended for someone of considerable ability. Of course the composer may have written it for his own use or as an examination piece for his students, but it is significant that, in 1839, Yvon's former fellow student and friend Giovanni Daelli (d. 1860) was appointed to the second oboe desk at La Scala. Yvon had dedicated his G Major oboe duet, published in1838, to his friend, so it is not outside the realm of possibility that he would have honored Daelli's new position with a custom-made virtuoso work, especially since English horn solos are frequently written into the second oboe part of operatic works.
Yvon's English Horn Sonata currently exists in two versions: an ozalid reprint of the original edition available through McGinnis and Marx, and an excellent new edition by Georg Meerwein published by Hanssler Verlag of Neuhausen Stuttgart. In his preface Meerwein states that his version is based on a copy of the original edition from the archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. As was the case with the first edition, the Hansler publication also contains a solo part for viola, and Meerwein has supplied a B-flat clarinet transcription as well. (This practice is not as odd as it might seem, for even Beethoven authorized the publication of a cello transcription of his Horn [Sona]ta Op. 17. After all, it was to the composer's and the publisher's mutual benefit if' more copies were sold.)
The Yvon work is a true sonata, in three movements, combining bet canto and early Romantic virtuosic idioms with Germanic formal development. Apparently the composer had some knowledge of the current state of piano writing, for both instruments share the spotlight, and the piano has some breathtaking technical passages which certainly heighten the piece's appeal. The first movement opens with a brief introduction marked Largo. With its ominous succession of minor chords and descending bass line in octaves in the left hand of the piano, it is clear that what we have here is a dramatic curtain-raiser straight from the operatic stage. The seeming tonal instability of this section, achieved through the use of an F minor triad in second inversion, heightens the sense of arrival in the Allegro agitato that follows. The English horn and piano enter together with broken F minor triads, punctuated by a flourish of piano figuration in the best Romantic keyboard tradition.
After this "second introduction," Yvon introduces the movement's principal theme, also in F minor, and which is contrastingly lyrical: a smooth, flowing melody in the English horn supported by legato broken chords in the piano.
This is followed by a secondary theme in A-flat, after which the composer develops his materials in a modified sonata- allegro form.
From an Italian opera oboist one might expect to find in this work an English horn solo with subordinate piano accompaniment, but this is not the case. In the first movement it is already evident that the two instruments function both independently and together as an ensemble, indicating Yvon's apparent knowledge of the Viennese sonata tradition. The piano part in this movement demands an agile technique, with arpeggios and runs reminiscent of Czerny's concert works. The English horn is given a chance to play contrasting bravura and lyrical roles, and is given plenty of chances to breathe (Yvon was no dummy). But to make life interesting the composer has added a few piquant technical passages.
Carlo Yvon's Sonata is worth buying and performing for the second movement alone. In this florid aria, patterned after those of Bellini and Donizetti, and the English hornist finally gets a chance to display his poetic gifts in full force (as well as his control in the high register) and to claim his share of the applause that the soprano usually monopolizes in the opera house.13 The movement opens in unabashedly bet canto style: after a short, almost improvisatory introduction by the piano, the English horn enters with a simple melody, partnered by a discreet piano accompaniment. As the aria unfolds, it gains momentum through ornamentation - with florid interpolated diatonic scales, passages in thirds, and poignant reaching octaves.
At one particularly pregnant moment in the second statement of this theme (ornamented even more lavishly than the initial essay), the English horn emits a leap of a minor 14th (El to D-flat3).
But the piano does not have to settle for second billing. The movement's "B" section contains a sensational virtuoso interlude for the heretofore subjugated subordinate. Words fall to adequately describe the impact of this brilliant keyboard cascade, a pianistic flight of fancy sounding very much like a cross between the styles of two prominent pianist-composers of Yvon's day, Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) and Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837).
Although not specifically designated as such in the original edition, the F Major finale is an example of the infamous nineteenth-century rondo brillante. In a loosely -constructed series of episodes designed to cheerily show off both performers' abilities, the English horn player finally breaks the bonds of lugubrious legato for good with some razzle-dazzle passage work. The pianist also gets a chance to scale the heights of bravura as well, as the English hornist takes a well-deserved rest (thirty-three measures' worth, in fact). Particularly characteristic is a section with a run in the pianist's left hand, joined by one in the right in contrary motion, followed by a two-hand arpeggio going the opposite direction.
After chasing snippets of the rondo theme around with both instruments in several keys and in the process effecting some jarring but effective modulations, the composer pulls out all the stops with a perpetual-motion coda marked Presto. This begs to be played as loud and fast as possible (but with a brief time out for a final rallentando farewell to the rondo theme), crashing away to a breathless ending. Applause, applause!
Aside from its aesthetic charms, Carlo Yvon's Sonata for English Horn and Piano is significant in several respects. It appears to be the unique example of a nineteenth-century English horn sonata, and it indicates a more active instrumental chamber music tradition in Italy during this period than music historians had previously realized. To the oboist and English hornist interested in his or her instrument's performing tradition, the Sonata's technical and music demands indicate that Carlo Yvon and his colleagues were musicians of considerable soph istication and ability. Most important of all, however, is that we English hornists now have a worthy new addition to our recital repertoire.
About the writer...
Carol Padgham Albrecht teaches the oboe at Park College in Kansas City, Missouri, and is program annotator for the Kansas City and Forth Worth Symphony Orchestras. She holds BA and MM degrees from North Texas University, and she has studied with Noah Knepper, Richard Henderson, Charles Veazey, and Felix Kraus (whose appointment as English horn player of the Cleveland Orchestra inspired her interest in Carlo Yvon and the English horn). She is also a "semi-regular" at the John Mack Oboe Camp.
ENDNOTES
1 . Musik fur Oboe, Englischhorn und Klavier, performed by Georg Meerwein, oboe and English horn, and Karl Bergemann, piano (MPS Records No. 168.018).
2. Guglielmo Barblan, "Milan," Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed., 10 volsa., ed. Eric Blom (New York): St. Martin's Press Inc., 1954-61) V, 753.
5. Guido Salvetti, "Piantanida, Giovanni," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 20 vols., ed. Stanley Sadie (London: MacMillan Publishers Limited, 1980) XIV, 716.
6. Giuseppe and Giovanni Battista Sammartini were among the eight children of the French oboist Alexis Saint-Martin. The "Sammartini brothers" were listed in 1720 as oboists in Milan's ducal theater orchestra. Bathia Churgin and Newell Jenkins, "Sammartini, Giovanni Battista, " The New Grove Dictionary XVI, 452.
7. Mariangela Dona, " Milan, " The New Grove Dictionary XII, 293-98.
8. William S. Newman, The Sonata in the Classical Era (New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 1972), 43-56.
9. Adolph Hofmeister, Handbuch der musikalischen Literatur (Leipzig: Friederich Hofmeister, 1852) IV, 57.
10. Gaetano Donizetti, Sonata (originally Suonata) for Oboe and Piano, ed. Raymond Meyland (Frankfurt: Henry Litolff's Verlag/C.F. Peters, 1966).
11. Universal-Handbuch der Musikliteratur aller Zeiten and Volker, 34 vols., ed. Franz Pazdirek (Vienna: Pazdirek & Co., 1904-10) XV, 603.
12. From Collegium Instrumental, Sonate f-moll fur English-horn und Klavier, by Carlo Yvon (Hanssler Edition 16.028). @ Copyright 1982 by Hanssler-Verlag, Neuhausen- Stuttgart. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
13. This situation finally may be changing, however. In recent years a particularly vociferous group of English horn aficionados has been known, in the interval between the singer's last note and the audience's first volley of applause, to proclaim its approval with "Bravo, English horn!"
14. Specified Adagio in the original edition of the English horn part.
