The Other Mozarts

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Friday was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birthday. He's 256 now. In conjunction with his birthday two bloggers, one at Operavore and one at Thoughts on a Train, wrote about two members of the family, Wolfgang's sister, familiarly known as Nannerl, and his mother, Anna Maria Pertl Mozart, who are mostly in the background when we think about Wolfgang's life and work.

According to most sources on Mozart, Nannerl, his older sister, was possibly as talented as he. Certainly she was a gifted performer, touring all over Europe with her brother and father when the two were children. However, as they got older, Wolfgang continued to soar as a musical genius, while Nannerl fades from view. What happened? Fred Plotkin, author of the blog post Nannerl Mozart: Born Too Soon, quotes from the Grove Dictionary of Music that "from 1769 onwards she was no longer permitted to show her artistic talent on travels with her brother, as she had reached a marriageable age.” So Nannerl married and disappeared from view.

Now, however, there is a new movie, Mozart's Sister, and at least five novels about Nannerl, three of which are titled Mozart's Sister. All are fiction based on some facts. The most recent is Mozart's Last Aria, in which Nannerl tried to solve the mystery of Mozart's death after not having seen him for many years.

Maria Anna (Nannerl) Mozart

We know from the family letters that Nannerl did compose music, though none was performed under her name and all of it is now lost. Though close to her brother in childhood, once he married Constanze, the siblings became distant. Both Nannerl and Leopold, their father, disapproved of Constanze. Nannerl also married and had three children. Later in life she taught music in or near Salzburg, and became friendly with Constanze and Constanze's second husband.

The Mozart's mother, Anna Maria Pertl Mozart, is an even more shadowy person. She accompanied the family on the early tours, but stayed at home with Nannerl when Leopold decided to take only Wolfgang. She went with Wolfgang on a trip to Paris and became sick and died there. Now she, too, has a novel about her life. Dick Strawser's blog post, A Novel about Mozart's Mother, recommends the novel, Stitches in the Air by Liane Ellison Norman, and discusses the little that is known about Mozart's mother. Her father was a musician, and the family was quite poor, in part because her father died when she was four. She married Leopold Mozart and had seven children, only two of whom survived. There are a few clues in letters from Leopold and Wolfgang that she had some musical education and perhaps even composed music.

Anna Maria Pertl Mozart, mother of Wolfgang and Nannerl

There is another shadowy Mozart who I have become interested in recently. Franz Xaver Mozart was the youngest son of Wolfgang and Constanze and another musician. Only two of the children born to Constanze survived infancy. Karl Thomas was the elder of the two children. Both boys were talented musically and studied music. Karl eventually gave up music as a profession and went into government service in Milan. Franz Xaver played both violin and piano, like his father. He began writing music when he was quite young, like his father, and gave a recital of his compositions when he was 13 years old.  In addition to using his given name, he also went by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (sohn). Quite a few of his compositions survive, including a trio for flute and two horns, 6 Piccoli Pezzi, which my daughter performed while studying in Vienna last year. I was interested in the  unusual instrumentation and in learning a piece by the son of Mozart. So, with the help of friends I was able to get a copy of the music. We hope to perform it later this year. 

Franz Xaver Mozart

It must have been terribly difficult to work as a performer and composer in the shadow of his father. Franz Xaver is said to have been introverted and self-deprecating, the opposite of his famous father. Yet he made the choice to work in music, composing and playing piano and violin. There don't seem to be any novels about Franz Xaver yet, though he does appear in some of the novels about Nannerl.

Such an interesting family. We are endlessly fascinated with the genius -- popping up in the midst of generations of competent musicians. I recommend the two blog posts -- they are very interesting.

Schubertiade 2012!

It's time for the Schubertiade again! Pianoforte Chicago will present this year's celebration on Saturday, January 28 in the Fine Arts Building, 410 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago. It starts at 3:00, with performances running simultaneously in three or four performance spaces, and concludes at 9:00 with a Schubert sing-along.

This year I will be playing horn quartets with three friends, Nancy Orbison, Melody Velleuer, and Jennifer Souder. The organizers of the Schuberitade allow transcriptions and arrangements of Schubert, and so we will be performing "Holy, Holy, Holy," originally a choral piece, arranged for horns by Nancy Orbison; Marche Militaire, a piano solo; and Five Quartets arranged by Verne Reynolds. This last piece came from a set of six quartets, for which we chose five. Unfortunately, the publisher didn't include any information about where these pieces came from. I had guessed that they were originally choral pieces, in part because they are in four parts with somewhat distinct ranges. In addition, Schubert wrote a lot of choral music. I contacted Peter Kurau, horn professor at the Eastman School of Music and a former student of Verne Reynolds, to see if he had any information. His guess is that these were string quartets, though he passed the query along to one of the librarians at Eastman's Sibley Library, where the Verne Reynolds archive is kept. We haven't heard anything back yet. However, in this arrangement the pieces sound like they were always meant for four horns.

We played this program last Saturday at Art Wauk in Waukegan, Illinois. This was a fairly casual performance for people on a gallery walk, though it was a pretty cold night for strolling from gallery to gallery. The string quartet that played right before us stayed to hear our performance, so Nancy asked them if they recognized the Reynolds arrangement as a string quartet. None of them did.

We'll be presenting our program at 3:30 in Curtis Hall, on the 10th floor of the Fine Arts Building. My friend, tenor Henry Pleas, will be singing quartets with Salon at 5:00 in Studio 801, and my clarinetist friend, Howard Green, will be playing an arrangement of the "Arpeggione" Sonata with pianist Bill Crowle at 7:00 in Curtis Hall. The arpeggione is a mostly extinct instrument sometimes described as a bowed guitar or something similar to a bass viola da gamba. The sonata has been arranged for modern instruments, such as cello and, of course, clarinet. There are many other interesting performances on the schedule as well, including a cello version of the "Arppeggione."

If you decide to attend the horn quartet performance, please say hello afterwards. And if you know anything about the mysterious horn quartets arranged by Verne Reynolds, be sure to let me know!

Sherlock Holmes

I have been a Sherlock Holmes fan since I was a kid and I discovered the stories. I loved the logic that was always a surprise and always led to solving the case. I wondered about the mysterious Mr. Holmes.

I still like the stories, which I have read again and again. I enjoy the Basil Rathbone movies, and I especially liked the series on PBS with Jeremy Brett as Holmes. I thought Brett captured the Holmes that Conan Doyle had created, and the opening theme was Saint-Saens' evocative Danse Macabre.

Holmes has appeared in many novels written by authors other than Conan Doyle. I am a fan of the series of historical novels by Carole Nelson Douglas that star Irene Adler, the only woman to ever outwit Sherlock Holmes. Irene and her husband elude pursuers, who believe they have died in a train crash. Irene then goes on to investigate and solve mysteries, with her friend Nell Huxleigh acting as her Dr. Watson. I also like a new series for kids, Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars, in which the boys of the Baker Street Irregulars take a leading role. I also like the TV series House, which based the title character on Holmes.

I did not rush out to see the new movie series starring Robert Downey, Jr. as Holmes. It sounded like this Sherlock Holmes was a major deviation from the traditional versions, in particular being much more action-oriented. I still have not seen the first movie, but I was lured into seeing the second movie, A Game of Shadows, by a blog post on NPR's site titled Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure in Good Music. The author, Anastasia Tsioulcas, writes that classical music has a major and important role in the film, in particular the Schubert song "The Trout," and Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. And so I went to the movie with my son, already a fan, and my husband. As a movie, it started pretty slow, but turned into an entertaining action-packed tale. There are many references to the original Conan Doyle story. This Sherlock Holmes has very little in common with Arthur Conan Doyle's creation, however, Robert Downey, Jr. portrays an interesting character, more goofy and physical than the original. I was hoping for a bigger role for the music, but it is important to the plot and the score is very nice. 


Would I go to the next Robert Downey, Jr. Sherlock Holmes movie? Maybe. In any case, long live Sherlock Holmes, in all his incarnations!

Vienna!

When you order coffee in a cafe in Vienna, it comes in a china cup on a small silver platter, along with a small glass of water. The water is to counteract the dehydration the coffee causes. During our week in Vienna, we drank quite a few cups of melange, coffee with foamy steamed milk. It's a much different experience than getting a latte at Starbucks!

We were in Vienna Thanksgiving week visiting our daughter Jamie, who is now finishing up a semester abroad, studying music in this very musical city. Our trip was filled with music, as well as great food and drink (including lots of coffee), and some art and shopping.

We arrived on Sunday. Jamie had bought tickets for all of us to a concert of the Concertgebouw Orchestra that evening at the Musikverein, so after checking in and changing into nicer clothes, we went off to have some strudel before the concert.The Musikverein is a beautiful hall. It is like stepping into the 18th century, with ornate gold decorations everywhere. It is a rectangular, or shoebox hall, and almost none of the seats is covered by higher floors. We sat on the second level, right above the orchestra. Unfortunately, we could only see half the orchestra and none of the horns, but the sound was incredible.   Quite a few musicians call it the best hall in the world. The program included a Saint-Saens Piano Concerto performed by Pierre Laurent Aimee and the Petrouchka Suite by Stravinsky. It was a great concert. The Concertgebouw is wonderful, it was musical and exciting. Another very cool thing about concerts at the Musikverein, and the opera house as well, we discovered, is that they have small meals available at intermission. Since we hadn't eaten dinner (only strudel!) we bought a couple of small, elegant sandwiches and drinks.

The Concertgebouw horn section!

Every morning we would take the U-Bahn from our hotel to Karlsplatz and come up by the Opera House. At the bottom of the stairs before you exit up to the street is the Opera Toilet, which plays the Blue Danube 24 hours a day.

Vienna's Naschmarkt

Monday we did some normal tourist things, like visiting the Albertina art museum and the naschmarkt, an outdoor market of mostly food. There are lots of falafels in Vienna, especially at the naschmarkt. There are also all kinds of fruits and vegetables that we don't have in Illinois. I saw fruits that I had only seen in China, such as dragon fruit, called pitahaya here.   That evening, Jamie and her friends Ross and Ryan took us via the U-Bahn to the 16th District to have dinner at a Turkish restaurant. Dinner was delicious and the conversation interesting, about music, living in Vienna, learning German, and future plans. All three-- Jamie, Ryan and Ross -- are students at Indiana University and all of them have their own blogs about their experiences in Vienna. You can find them at http://jamieinwien.blogspot.com/, http://rosswertjes.wordpress.com/, and http://diefstudiesabroad.wordpress.com/.

On Tuesday we were able to attend part of a Vienna Philharmonic rehearsal at the Concert House. It is not as beautiful as the Musikverein (or the Opera House) but was still an attractive building with sweeping staircases and lots of red velvet. The piece they were rehearsing was the premiere of a work for percussion soloist and orchestra. We were all sorry not hear something more familiar, but the soloist was really impressive.

Concert House

Did I mention that the entire week it was really cold in Vienna? We were outside for a significant part of every day, walking to get places and visiting outdoor markets. The Viennese walk everywhere and even with lots of beer, wine, schnitzel and pastries we saw almost no overweight people. We stopped at an Adventmarkt near the Opera House on Tuesday evening and the three of us ate delicious pancakes filled with chocolate and banana while browsing the stalls. 

At the Adventmarkt

Later that evening we stopped by Jamie's apartment and then went to dinner up the street at a vegan pub. I was very excited to have seitan schnitzel! I also had the smoothest beer I have ever tasted -- a dunkle, which is a dark beer. Later in the week I ordered another dunkle, an Ottakringer, which was also very good but not a smooth and almost sweet as the one this night. The pub itself was a small dark establishment decorated with old radios.

Wednesday was filled with exciting musical events. We visited the Stephansdom, an amazing Gothic church. It's the church where Wolfgang Mozart married Constanze.

Inside Stephansdom

Jamie went off to do some school-related thing, and we agreed to meet her at noon at the Opera House so we could meet her horn teacher and sit in on her lesson. We got there before her and went inside to sit in a small alcove. While we were sitting there and talking to each other, a tall, white-haired man came out from the backstage area and stopped to put on his gloves and scarf. Hearing us talk, he said, "Americans! I thought you were the usual autograph hounds who wait here." After we told him why we were there, he explained that he is a pianist with the Opera and has been living in Europe for 40 years. A very interesting person.

After Jamie and her teacher, Wolfgang Vlatar, met us, Wolfgang took us on a brief backstage tour of the hall. We went into the orchestra pit and looked out at the hall and up onto the stage. It is another absolutely beautiful building. We continued on to the horn locker room, where Jamie usually had her lessons. Viennese horn players all play a different kind of horn than horn players everywhere else play. It is called, logically enough, a Vienna horn, or Wiener horn. Here is Wolfgang's horn:

Jamie played her regular double horn while in Vienna, though she had a chance to try Wolfgang's, as did I! At the end of her lesson, he asked if I had ever played one (no) and would I like to (yes!). It is smaller than a standard double horn and is a single F horn, with the double piston valves you can see in the photo. It is not easy to play! Jamie said, "Play Heldenleben, it's so easy on this horn." Yikes! Not only hadn't I played in a week or so, but I hadn't played Heldenleben in years, and I'm playing in front of a member of the Vienna Philharmonic!

Opening of Ein Heldenleben, 1st horn

It was interesting. The horn doesn't respond the way a double horn does and Heldenleben is not easy on either horn. Wolfgang is an outstanding teacher; Jamie is so lucky to have had this opportunity. He is very musical, hears everything, and engaged with Jamie in a laid-back conversational manner, suggesting ideas, asking her to think about her choices.

After the lesson, Wolfgang took us to one of his favorite restaurants, Drei Hackers. Jamie, Dean and Wolfgang had schnitzel, while I had a vegetarian entree that Wolfgang said was typically Viennese. Here it is. It is spinach, potatoes and egg. You can also see the schnitzel!

We had a great time talking about music and musicians. We all had palatschinken, an Austrian pancake a little like a crepe, filled with apricot jam, for dessert. We kept on talking and finally ordered coffee. Dean and I had tickets for Tannhauser that evening, but Jamie did not buy a ticket for herself because she had a rehearsal at 6, when the performance started. Wolfgang offered to let her sit in the pit if she would change into all black, to fit in with the orchestra members. So after three hours we split up, Jamie going to her apartment to change, and we returning to our hotel, also to change.

It was very clear to us that the Viennese take their music seriously. Wolfgang told us there is a 12-year waiting list for subscriptions to the Vienna Philharmonic! The Staatsoper presents an opera about 363 days a year, and stages 50 to 60 different opera each year. Tannhauser, as well as the Concertgebouw, seemed to be completely sold out. At Tannhauser, when the overture began a woman behind us was still talking, pretty loudly. Six or eight other people immediately went "ssst!" to stop her. They are serious about music! The sets for Tannhauser were pretty minimal, which is possible because they mount so many opera and have so many in rotation at a time. The minimal sets were effective and maybe even highlighted the singing because you weren't distracted by elaborate backgrounds. It was a very good performance. Matthias Goerne, who we had heard at Ravinia in recital, had a leading role and was wonderful.

In the opera house, taken from our seats

Inside the opera house

After the opera, we met up with Jamie and Wolfgang again and went to the Sky Bar, at the top of a building on the Kärntner Straße. Kärntner Straße is a great street for shopping, sort of like Michigan avenue in Chicago. The Sky Bar overlooks Stephansdom, which is lit at night.

The view from the Sky Bar

A perfect day!

A highlight of Thursday was breakfast! Dean, Jamie and I hunted down a Georgian restaurant recommended by Wolfgang in the 2nd District, not too far from our hotel. We had delicious fruit and yogurt with muesli. A good portion of Thursday was spent being lost and not being able to find what we were looking for, a very tiring, frustrating experience. However, we ended with another dinner at Drei Hackers, which was a good way to end the day.

Our last musical experience of the trip was Friday morning, when Jamie had another lesson with Wolfgang. Again, we were so impressed with his musical ideas and the way he worked with Jamie. Then Jamie said good-bye and went to catch a train to go on a ski trip with her school group. Dean and I had wanted to visit the Zentralfriedhof, a cemetery where many illustrious musicians are buried. However, the streetcar system proved to be too confusing and we ended up visiting the Christkindlmarkt at the Rathaus instead. We had visited the cemetery the last time we were in Vienna, though it would have been nice to see it again. The Rathaus was entertaining, and the Christkindlmarkt was really large with lots of vendors.

The following day we flew back to Chicago. Jamie is now back in the States, but wants to go back to Vienna for more study someday. I can see why. It's a wonderful city.

The Musikverein

I knew them when...

Several years ago -- maybe eight? -- I had Kyle Jannak-Huang as a kindergarten student. Even then he and his brother were accomplished pianists. Now look!


Jannak-Huang (piano) / Mozart, Beethoven, Ravel, Stravinsky, Chopin, Liszt - InstantEncore

High School Reunion with Special Guest Hurricane Irene

In the game Two truths and a Lie, the object is to come up with implausible truths or convincing lies to befuddle your audience. Here are mine:

1. I was voted most musical in my high school class.
2. I played (horn) with the Chicago Symphony.
3. I toured with William Shatner.

And the lie is number 1! (Numbers 2 and 3 might be topics for another post.) I was not voted most musical in my high school class. I was part of an amazingly talented cohort. When I think of how many continued in music, it's remarkable. The Most Musical title went to my good friend Sue (double bass) and Jeff (trumpet, arranging and conducting, all while still in high school!).

High school reunions are meaningful and fun for some people. Others avoid them like the plague. I had never been to any of my high school reunions; I think I was a "lost classmate." However, thanks to Facebook, I was found this time around and received an invitation in June to my 40th reunion.

My first response was not to go. I didn't think high school was that much fun, and I hadn't kept in touch with more than a couple people. Then my friend Sue, one of the few I had kept up with, said she would really like to see me. So I started thinking about going. Through the new Facebook page for our class I found out what some of my former classmates had been doing. There are a number of published authors. One has won a Pulitzer. Another (the one who found me on FB) is a Grammy award winner. It was intimidating, so I thought I would stay home.

I went back and forth, but in the end I decided to go. I booked my flight and hotel and told my friends.

Several of my friends in Illinois asked if I had realized there was a hurricane heading for Connecticut when I flew off to the East Coast. Yes, I knew. I had been paying attention to the news, but I also heard plenty of New Englanders poo-pooing the forecasts, saying hurricanes almost always petered out before reaching New England. I looked at weather maps. I asked my husband. And I went.

If you've been to any high school reunion, you know what they're like: a get-together the first night (Friday) in the hotel bar, then a dinner party with DJ the next night. My reunion was also featuring a tour of the high school and a beach party on Sunday. I graduated from Greenwich High School. Greenwich is located on Long Island Sound.  Our Saturday night party was scheduled for a yacht club right on the water. Cue the ominous music, it's the perfect set-up for a disaster movie. You can imagine the shots of the yacht club on the water, the storm approaching, then the gigantic waves, breaking glass and screaming people... but no, it didn't happen.

Indian Harbor Yacht Club, Greenwich, CT

When I woke up Saturday morning, my flight had been cancelled because all transportation was being shut down at noon on Sunday. The reunion party had been relocated to a hotel in downtown Stamford, next door to Greenwich, and the tour of the high school was cancelled for safety reasons. The beach party was moved to a club and then finally cancelled when the caterer shut down.

Before dealing with the approaching hurricane,  eight of us, three music teachers and five former students, met for a music reunion. Except for Sue, this was the first time I had seen any of these people since the 1970s. There was Chris, who was a friend a year older than me, who still plays violin. Tom and Jeff, both trumpet players in high school, with whom I had spent a lot of time in rehearsals. Our band director, Carmel Signa, and our theory teacher, Anne Modugno, both now retired, but looking pretty much the same as they had in the 70s.  There were lots of hugs and reminiscences. It was difficult to switch to calling my high school teachers by their first names, but very interesting to hear about our high school years from the perspective of the teachers. We, the students, all agreed that the music faculty at Greenwich High had been outstanding. We talked for three hours, and exchanged contact information and possibilities of getting together in other cities. Chris, Tom, Jeff and Carmel, I expect to hear from you if you come to Chicago!  I felt that coming to Connecticut and braving the hurricane was totally worth it to have been at this mini-reunion.

In the time between brunch and the big dinner party, I was able to get through to the airline and find out they had put me on the "first available flight," which was Tuesday morning, call my supervisor and partner teacher to tell them I wouldn't be at school until Wednesday, and call the hotel desk to try to extend my reservation. The hotel clerk informed me that they were booked and would let me know if there was a cancellation. Yikes! I had images of myself sitting in the lobby with my suitcase for two days.

The class of 1971 had a somewhat reduced reunion that night, as many classmates cancelled or were unable to get to Connecticut. As I ate and chatted I still didn't know what would happen on Sunday. Sue had come with her close friend Christine and Christine's husband Jud, and I sat with the three of them. When they all decided to leave, Jud and Christine turned to me and said, "We think you should come home with us. We'll take you to your hotel to get your things." I was overwhelmed with their generosity and immediately saw the good sense in their invitation.

Christine and Jud have a beautiful house nestled in a hilly section and right on a small pond. When I woke up Sunday morning, after sleeping soundly without worries, the power was out along with the water, branches were falling and it was raining.  We spent the morning doing the New York Times crossword and watching the storm outside through the picture window. After the hurricane passed, we took a ride through town. There were a lot of trees down and quite a few streets blocked or partly blocked by trees. Sue was able to drive home to the Philadelphia area that evening.

Cos Cob with high water

Christine and Jud were wonderful hosts. They grilled food from their defrosting freezer to make delicious meals. On Monday, Christine needed to visit her school, which is the junior high that both of us attended. In a bit of serendipity, both Christine and I teach gifted children, so we spent considerable time discussing curriculum (and I told my head of school, once I was back in Illinois, that I really had done professional development while stranded!). Because I was still in Connecticut, I was able to go to a second music reunion Monday evening, with additional former students. My other friend Chris, the violinist, picked me up and on the way to the restaurant she suggested we could drive by my family's former house in Cos Cob.  Though a number of the houses in my old neighborhood have been torn down in order to build McMansions, our old house is still there and looking good. Our second reunion was again wonderful. I got to see more old music comrades and catch up. We closed the restaurant that night.

So I have two strands to my high school reunion story. One is the hurricane story, the main theme of which is the generosity of so many people in offering me a place to stay, rides, meals, and most of all friendship. I feel very fortunate to have new friends because of Hurricane Irene. The other strand is the music. When I thought of my high school years, I mostly thought of the negative. Revisiting the music part of high school has reminded me of how much fun I had during those years.

Lastly, it was a rather Proustian experience. No madeleines or other food, but driving down roads that I hadn't been on in over 25 years, recognizing buildings that I hadn't thought about, brought up exactly the kind of memories Proust was talking about.

Flanders & Swann

For years I would occasionally hear a comedy version of the Rondo of Mozart's 4th horn concerto on WFMT. Someone had put words to the horn solo, words that told a story about a lost horn. This was my introduction to Flanders & Swann, a British comedy and music duo in the 1950s. If you are a horn player, there is an excellent chance you know Flanders & Swann, only because of this piece.

When my daughter was in high school and starting to get serious about horn, I told her about this version of the Mozart that I had heard on the radio, though the telling fell far short of explaining what was so funny. So I went on a search (amazon.com) and ordered a CD, "A Transport of Delight," because it included "An Ill Wind," the song set to the Mozart 4th horn concerto, so I could play it for people whenever I wanted.

I also listened to the rest of the album, which today is a sort of window into another decade. Michael Flanders wrote the words to the songs While Donald Swann wrote the music and played piano. Both sang, though Flanders did most of the talking part of their shows. Some of the humor, being political, is now dated and some of the act is very unpolitically correct. Other parts are absolutely delightful. They were known for their animal songs, and both the Hippopotamus Song and the Gnu Song are charming, standing the test of time well. The album includes a version on the Hippopotamus Song with a verse in Russian and a joke about cultural relations. Remembering the time when we worked on our cultural relations with the Soviet Union and the oftentimes nonsensical restrictions placed on musicians visiting the USSR, I laughed out loud. Other of their songs have spurred me to learn more about the historical background of the political comment they are making. For example, "All Gall," is about Charles DeGaulle's career, set to "This Old Man." And then, some of the comments and lyrics are stunningly prescient. This bit got a big laugh on the recording: "We had to look outside during the interval, see if our car's all right. It's getting a bit old, it'll have to be tested soon. You know they started these tests for 10-year-old cars, they brought it down to six, now five, they'll bring it down to three. There's even been some talk of having them tested before they leave the factories." Hmm.

Here are the words to "An Ill Wind," thanks to Flanders & Swann Online:

I once had a whim and I had to obey it
To buy a French Horn in a second-hand shop;
I polished it up and I started to play it
In spite of the neighbours who begged me to stop.

To sound my Horn, I had to develop my embouchure;
I found my Horn was a bit of a devil to play.

So artfully wound
To give you a sound,
A beautiful sound so rich and round.

Oh, the hours I had to spend
Before I mastered it in the end.

But that was yesterday and just today I looked in the usual place-
There was the case but the Horn itself was missing.

Oh, where can it have gone?
Haven't you-hasn't anyone seen my Horn?
Oh, where can it have gone?
What a blow! Now I know
I'm unable to play my Allegro.

Who swiped that Horn?
I'll bet you a quid
Somebody did,
Knowing I'd found a concerto and wanted to play it,
Afraid of my talent at playing the Horn.
For early today to my utter dismay
it had vanished away like the dew in the mom.

I've lost that Horn-I know I was using it yesterday.
I've lost that Horn, lost that Horn, found that Horn ... gorn.
There's not much hope of getting it back though I'd willingly pay a reward.

I know some Hearty Folk whose party joke's
Pretending to hunt with the Quorn,
Gone away! Gone away! Was it one of them took it away?
Will you kindly return that Horn? Where is the devil who pinched my Horn?

I shall tell the Police I want that French Horn back.
I miss its music more and more and more.
Without that Horn I'm feeling sad and so forlorn.

I found a concerto, I wanted to play it,
Displaying my talent at playing the Horn,
But early today to my utter dismay it had totally vanished away.
I practised the Horn, and I wanted to play it but somebody took it away.
I practised the Horn and was longing to play it but somebody took it away.

My neighbour's asleep in his bed.
I'll soon make him wish he were dead.
I'll take up the Tuba instead!

And here you can listen to Flanders and Swann performing An Ill Wind.