Playing and singing simultaneously on brass instruments

1 Introduction

The use of the human voice as a second source of sound is not as new as many people would think. The sound of a brass player playing and singing simultaneously will still surprise many audiences who connect this sound with avant-garde music.

Besides its common use in some non-European cultures, there is some evidence to indicate it already existed in the late eighteenth century. The best known example is, no doubt, the horn Concertino by C.M. von Weber Op. 45 (1806)¹:

Dauprat, author of the Horn Method (1824)², mentions this phenomenon and doubts its musical value:

Punto, who could do them (double-notes) much better than anyone who has attempted it since, himself admitted how easy and how absurd they were.

So leave curiosities for the charlatans, for they please only the mediocre and surprise only the ignorant, and are rejected by connoisseurs and true Artists.

The horn virtuoso Eugène Vivier (1817-1890) exploited this phenomenon and astonished his contemporaries by the facility with which he produced chords. This atmosphere is revealed in a long article by A. Adam³ entitled "La chose impossible":

Set yourself an insoluble problem and imagine that it is resolved: squaring the circle, aerial navigation, universal peace — the realisation of Utopia would not surprise us any more than what we heard yesterday...

A young artist... Monsieur Vivier, played on the horn (an ordinary horn without any kind of mechanism) passages in two, three and even four parts. What means did Monsieur Vivier use to produce this strange phenomenon which upsets all the laws of acoustics and physics? That is his secret and no-one can guess it...

This article was reproduced by music journals and the following month received a response⁴ entitled "Le cor de M. Vivier mis à la portée de tout le monde" by A. Martin:

You may rest assured, Monsieur Adam, that this strange phenomenon does not, as you seem to fear, upset all the laws of acoustics. Monsieur Vivier has neither discovered nor invented anything, nor is he, as you believe, the only one to know the secret which no-one can guess.

After explaining how the "trick" is done, Martin passes on his teacher's warning:

Monsieur Duvernoy advised me to spend no more time on such trivialities, which could harm one's intonation.

One should mention two etudes by J.R. Lewy⁵ (1804-1881) utilizing "les doubles sons" for the horn. As for other brass instruments, H. Berlioz⁶ writes in a letter concerning his impressions of the Stuttgart orchestra during his first visit to Germany (1842):

The trombones have fine power; the first (Herr Schrade), who, four years ago, was a member of the Vivienne concert orchestra in Paris, has true talent. He masters his instrument thoroughly, makes short work of the greatest difficulties and draws a magnificent sound from his tenor trombone; I might even say sounds since he is able, by means of a process as yet unexplained, to produce three and four notes at the same time, just like that young horn player who was the object of the attention of all the musical press in Paris recently. Schrade, during a pause in a fantasy which he played in public in Stuttgart, sounded simultaneously — to the astonishment of all — the four notes of the dominant seventh chord in the key of Bb, placed thus: F, C, A, Eb.

It is for the acousticians to explain this new phenomenon of the resonance of sounding pipes; it is for us musicians to study it well and to put it to good use if the occasion arises.

Unfortunately very little was done till the second half of this century.