Mutations: November 12, 2026
Overview
If you’ve been following the ASO’s journey through the Brandenburg Concertos, you may by now have a different picture of Baroque-era music than you did when we began. I’ve tried hard, in previous notes, to drive home that the common view of Baroque-era art as starchy and uptight leaves much on the table. It’s true that Baroque composers viewed music more as an intricate puzzle to be pieced together than a vehicle for emotional expression—in sixteenth-century France, the term “baroco” came to refer to anything viewed as uselessly complex—but just because intricacy is the name of the game doesn’t render this music devoid of energy or affect.
For this program, however, I’m going to focus on the technological differences between the instruments for which this concerto was written, and their modern counterparts. The horn, oboe, and bassoon of Bach’s day were entirely different creatures from what we know today, and their unique qualities don’t just influence Bach’s treatment, but form the foundation of the piece itself.
As in previous years, the ASO has paired one of Bach’s exemplary concertos with works inspired in some way by him and his contemporaries. In this program, we’re treated to a Bach chorale reimagined for modern brass instruments by Samuel Barber, a choice that brilliantly highlights the evolution of instrument technology. We then hear a piece by Béla Bartók that applies the concerto grosso form to entirely modern musical material.
Instruments of the Baroque
Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 in F Major (1721)
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Run Time: Approx. 20 minutes
In this photo, you’ll find the 18th-century versions of the horn, oboe, and bassoon next to their modern counterparts. It’s not hard to see that these previous iterations were simpler in design than their descendants. For one thing, they have far fewer keys, and the horn has none at all. Over the years, improvements in materials have made instruments generally louder and more resonant, and today we favor rounder, darker sound colors than in years past. Modern oboes and bassoons, for example, are made of very hard woods like African blackwood or rosewood, while in Bach’s day, they were made from softer, less resonant materials. Without the extensive keywork of modern instruments, they were also lighter in weight, creating a brighter overall sound that I can’t help but describe as “honky.” ASO principal bassoonist Tariq Masri says that honkiness is also a function of the reeds, which have changed significantly in shape and size over the years. I feel compelled to note that, while reed-making may have evolved, modern professional oboists and bassoonists still make all their reeds by hand. Imagine having to whittle your own pencils before work everyday.
With fewer and less sophisticated keys, the Baroque instruments were much less timberally even between notes. On today’s wind instruments, every note, no matter how many valves or keys are depressed, produces the same sound, totally even across the instrument. In historical instruments, some key combinations were better or worse than others, creating a spectrum of sounds from bright and open to muted and covered. Horns, having no keys at all, relied on the manipulation of the hand in the bell to create some pitches, which drastically altered the sound between notes. Composers used this to their advantage, relying on these covered notes to produce a more solemn effect.
By contrast, string instruments had, for the most part, reached their mature form by this time. When Bach was born in 1685, Antonio Stradivari had already settled on his final design for the famous violins that are still played today. While changes in materials for bows and strings have contributed to shifts in color and resonance, string instruments themselves have remained largely unchanged.
The second factor influencing Bach’s approach was the historical role of wind instruments. Like the unruly puppies of the instrumental family, the comparatively unsophisticated winds of Bach’s day had only recently begun to be allowed indoors. The ancestry of wind instruments traces back to signaling practices, when they were used to announce everything from danger to the arrival of the post. Horns, in particular, were strongly associated with hunting, as seen in this depiction of a French fox hunt. Even after they were admitted into the concert hall, their rustic history remained hugely influential, tying them, perhaps permanently, to themes of nature.
Bach’s writing in the first Brandenburg Concerto shows a keen understanding of all these intricacies. Just in his choice of key we can see that he desired a bright, open sound from the oboes and bassoon. The horns, too, are situated in their upper register, where more uncovered notes are available. The musical material draws directly on courtly hunting practices, and the historian Bruce Lamott even suggested that the three instrumental choirs, strings, reeds, and horns, may represent different groups in the social hierarchy:
“The courtly Kapelle of strings, led by a soloist on the violino piccolo (as the name implies, a smaller violin tuned a minor third higher than the regular violin), the woodwind choir of three oboes and bassoon, played by the elite city band (Stadt-Pfeifer), and two French horns borrowed from the stables of the nobility. Rather than blending with the other instruments, however, the two horns brashly gallop through the opening ritornello playing hunting-calls in rhythmically incompatible triplets, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the band.”
We don’t know whether a social commentary was Bach’s intention, nor do we know for certain whether this concerto was written for an indoor or outdoor performance. It seems certain, however, that the work was meant to evoke the hunt and the celebratory practices surrounding it. If the brazen horns are not an outright joke, they are certainly meant to be conspicuous, and the oboes and bassoon play dual roles, joining the horns in their frolicking romp as readily as they perform their lyrical solos.
The final movement features a collection of dances that capture the essence of each instrumental choir: first, a French minuet played by the reed quartet; then, a stately Polish polonaise by the strings; and finally, a bawdy German trio featuring the horns that feels plucked straight from an Oktoberfest celebration.
For anyone interested in listening to this work performed on period instruments, I highly recommend checking out the Netherlands Bach Society.
Mutations from Bach (1968)
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Run Time: Approx. 5 minutes
In this short ode to Bach, Samuel Barber takes the centuries-old Lutheran plainsong melody, Christe, du Lamm Gottes (“Christ, Thou Lamb of God”), which Bach harmonized for his Cantata No. 23 around 1717, and reimagines it for modern brass choir. He begins with a series of his own voicings, and though they hew fairly closely to the Baroque style, the use of timpani, cinematically sweeping lines, and a more simplistic relationship between soloists and accompaniment give his rendering a distinctly modern orchestral feeling.
Mutations is a curious title for a work like this. It carries an inherent association with biology and evolution not usually applied to music. However, Barber’s creation does indeed feel like an evolution of its source material, rather than a rewriting. Wartime financial constraints had brought Neoclassicism into vogue during Barber’s formative years. He watched his teachers look to the past, finding solutions in the comparatively smaller ensembles that predated the modern 60-piece orchestral behemoth. But unlike many of his predecessors, who largely applied the structures of earlier eras to modern musical language (like Bartók, whom we’ll discuss next), Barber’s choice to stick with Bach’s harmonization gives us a unique imagining of what Bach might have written given access to the modern brass section—arguably the instruments that have most evolved from their 18th-century iterations. Here, like a storybook prince plucked from his castle and dropped into the modern world, Bach is treated to 300 years of technological advancement. You might expect the result to sound more foreign, as does the Neoclassicism of Stravinsky or Prokofiev, but the grandeur of today’s brass section, which can sound a lot like an organ, makes the music feel surprisingly at home.
Divertimento for Strings (1939)
Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
Run Time: Approx. 25 minutes
Compared with Barber, Bartók takes a more common approach to Neoclassicism (or perhaps, more accurately, Neobaroque-ism) by looking to earlier practices for form, instrumentation, and style, while overlaying this historical scaffolding with distinctly twentieth-century harmonic and rhythmic language. As with much of his music, the piece is heavily informed by the folk traditions of his native Hungary, featuring scales that may sound slightly exotic to Western-oriented ears, and shifting, uneven meters characteristic of Eastern European folk music.
In addition to the practical, financial ingenuity that helped spur Neoclassicism, there’s an inherent nostalgia in looking to the past that seems almost inevitable for composers living through two historic wars. As Thomas May observed, these lighthearted works may have been “a kind of backward glance to music’s acknowledged role as a source of civilized social entertainment, not always meant to bear the burden of intensely personal confessionalism.”
Borrowed from Bach
Form: This work is written as a typical Baroque concerto grosso. Unlike the modern concerto, which features a single soloist backed by the orchestra, the concerto grosso highlights a group of soloists that weave in and out of the ensemble texture. The hallmark of this form is the dialogue between instruments acting in a solo capacity and the full ensemble. You’ll hear each unique voice come out of the texture at various points, and then fold back into a supporting role.
Rhythm: Listen to the accompanying figure in the opening of the first movement. That chugging rhythmic impetus, like a motor that propels the piece forward, is a frequently-used device in Baroque music and Bartók employs it throughout the Divertimento to provide the lightness we associate with Baroque music. However, the constantly shifting meters are typical Bartók, and play a big role in giving the piece both its modern and folk-inspired sound.
Dialogue: The instruments frequently pass melodic material among one another, each playing a small part of the larger phrase. The melodies coalesce from short motives circulated among the instruments, creating intricate interlocking textures and evoking the feeling of an ensemble cast of equally weighted characters.
Dance: Like Bach, Bartók concludes his work with an up-tempo movement clearly reflecting popular dance forms. While Bach looked to the courtly dances of his day, Bartók shares the Hungarian folk dances of his youth in his whirling, celebratory conclusion.
—Notes by Valerie Sly, 2026