The Zeitgeist
I am sorry to admit, and especially in the pages of this august journal, that I have an addiction, an addiction that in the interests of public aural safety I feel I should also share it with you. I am addicted to unusual instruments. This is not a euphemism, but rather a rough approximation of my condition.
What are unusual instruments, I hear you ask (or perhaps that’s my Wagner-induced tinnitus)? How do you get addicted to them? Do you perhaps wake up in alleyways clasping a Curtal in one hand, a Shawm in the other with a Tromba Marina lying discarded at your feet? The decline into this addiction follows the same course as many other addictions.
I found suddenly that the Beethoven String Quartets no longer did it for me, that a Bach Keyboard Partita could not lift the spirits as it used it to and that Mahler or Wagner no longer thrilled me as before. Like a man possessed I searched in ever more obscure realms to find my high. And then I stumbled on a Consort of Racketts. And I was hooked. Since then I have been stumbling upon ever-stranger instruments and groupings of instruments.
I have also recently acquired Naumann’s Quintet for String Quartet and Glass Harmonica, an instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin that was popular in the 1780s that is the mechanised equivalent of running your finger round the top of a wine glass. My latest quest is to find Beethoven Equali for Four Trombones or a recording of Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata played on an actual arpeggione.
Many of you are probably wondering why I have not sought help from whatever help group has come up with an acronym to deal with my addiction. Well, to be honest I quite enjoy it, but I am also writing this with a serious purpose in mind. I want all of you in my probably miniscule readership to go out and by a CD featuring unusual instruments. Do not be afraid.
At worse you might laugh, and at best you will see not only that you appreciate the standard repertoire so much more, but that there can also be a lighter side to classical music (without involving Russell Watson or Gilbert & Sullivan in any way). I am going off to find something into which to stick a large Baryton, and I sincerely hope that some of you may just join me.
20th Apr 2006