So that was Wagner, 1843.
Let's go to Brahms, 1876, 33 years later.
Things have slowed down even further as we hear in the first symphony of Brahms,
one featuring the French horn.
You’ll hear two things. First, we said instruments had personalities.
Well, the horn projects an air of distance and of the outdoors. It was
originally an outdoor hunting horn, forests, mountains, that sort of thing.
But now technology, with these new valves, has made it more agile and
better in tune, so it can play solos.
In Mozart's day, the horns usually just sat in the background and
provided a sort of sonic filler, longer sounds that hold the orchestra
together, like cornstarch in a soup to make it thicker and more substantive.
But now, in the Romantic period, the horn could play the melody, and
the traditional melody instruments, the violins - well,
sometimes they just provide orchestral filler.
Now, corn starch for them in the form of violin tremolos.
The roles of the instruments had been reversed.
Okay, that's point one.
Here's the second and perhaps more important point.
As you listen, notice how slowly and how majestically the music unfolds.
[MUSIC]