CJ Replay: Mozart Goes to the Birds

(From the Choral Journal article “Adding Birds to Mozart’s ‘Sparrow Mass’: An Arrangement with Children’s Instruments,” by Paul Wranitzky.)

 

       The birdcalls play not only specific pitches, but also characteristic rhythms and, in the case of the cuckoo, a characteristic melodic idea. The quail plays the three-note rhythmic pattern familiar from Beethoven’s imitation of the same bird, while the cuckoo plays its two notes as a descending minor third, with the second note almost always in a stronger rhythmic position than the first.

       The toy trumpets and horns, made of wood or metal, were not brass instruments proper (with cup-shaped mouthpiece and without reeds) but contained internal reeds that allowed each of them to play only one pitch. In the Mass, one horn plays C, another plays F; a pair of trumpets play Gs an octave apart.  Wranitzky’s percussion group consisted of Glocken [bells] in B, C, and D; a tamburino in C (probably a small drum with definite pitch rather than a tambourine in the modern sense); Glockel and Schellen (little bells or chimes, without definite pitch); and Ratschen (ratchets or cog rattles).

       The nature of three toy instruments used by Wranitzky (in addition to the mysterious Orgelhenne) is unclear. The Glaser in E and C were glasses with definite pitch. But did the player rub or strike them?