Historical Basset Horns in Australia

When Mendelssohn first encountered Bach’s score for the ‘St Matthew Passion’, one of the first things he would have noted is the request for two oboes da caccia (‘hunting’ oboes) as well as regular oboes in the first orchestra. Like an oboe with a brass bell, the oboe da caccia had a lower, richer tone than a regular oboe, and Bach called for them in several arias and choruses such as Buss und Reu and O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden to add a haunting timbre to the lament.

By the 1800s, however, the oboe da caccia had disappeared. Instead, Mendelssohn had the low, rich sound of the basset horn, invented in 1770 and loved by Mozart, who added it to his ‘Requiem’. Longer than a clarinet and with an intriguing L-shaped bend, the basset horn brought a unique resonance that Mendelssohn loved.

The instrument remained uncommon, however, and the first Australian performances of the ‘St Matthew Passion’ in Melbourne and Sydney would either have featured the later English version or simply regular clarinets.

It wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that Australian audiences could hear what the original basset horn would have sounded like. Following concerts by international touring clarinettists in the late 1980s, local historical clarinet experts Nicole van Bruggen (ARCO’s co-artistic director) and Dr. Ingrid Pearson played replicas of the instrument in a performance of Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ in Sydney in the mid-1990s. Later, Nicole joined Craig Hill and Ashley Sutherland to play Mozart’s ‘Gran Partita’ in a rare basset horn trio with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra. Nicole owns one of just three period basset horns in the country.

Now, with Australia’s first-ever historically informed performance of the Bach/Mendelssohn ‘St Matthew Passion’, the basset horns will once again sing their melancholy lament next to historical flutes, oboes and bassoons in the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra, calling from a distant, Romantic past.

The basset horn is just one of over 20 historical clarinets that ARCO co-artistic director Nicole van Bruggen plays expertly!