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Horn of plenty
I was fascinated by The Magnificent Seven (April), in which Ben Goldscheider chose seven works he admires for French horn. Reading it reminded me of a particular work for horn and orchestra that I heard broadcast many years ago, finding it haunting and profound. I have longed to hear it again. It is Actaeon by Richard Rodney Bennett. Unfortunately, this work doesn’t appear to be available in any form, so a modern recording is long overdue. I wonder whether Ben Goldscheider might investigate it and, hopefully, record it?
Richard Howard, Banstead
Silent study
Steve Wright (; March) suggests that those who prefer to study, which he dubs ‘the sound of silence’. Ironically, this is the opposite of Cage’s intention. His thoughts on ‘silence’ were prompted by a visit to the totally soundproofed chamber at Harvard University which absorbs all sounds made in the room. Cage entered the chamber expecting to hear silence, but as he wrote later, he ‘heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation.’ Whether that is true or not, it is this presence of sounds in the silence that Cage wants people to engage with in . Of course, it has led to a debate on whether sounds per se constitute music. Composers from Beethoven to Rautavaara have incorporated birdsong and other sounds from the natural world into their music, while composers from Haydn to Honegger have included mechanical sounds from clocks to trains in theirs. More recently, composers such as Antheil and Delia Derbyshire have taken everyday sounds and integrated them into their music. Ultimately, we all have the facility to block out sounds both everyday and musical, leaving us free to study in the way we find most helpful.
