"The Triumph of the Fox"

Quartet for Horn, Two Violins, and Cello

Electronic demo here

Mozart, in all four of his horn concerti, painted musical pictures evoking the imagery of the English fox hunt. So... rich people on galloping horses, some carrying hunting horns to alert their fellow hunters as to whether or not the quarry had been sighted.

Well... what if the lead horseman on this particular hunt had a horse with a bad leg that kept stumbling?

This piece depicts just such an event and the story ends with the horse finally throwing the rider into a shallow pond, though nobody ends up badly hurt. It's meant to be a cartoonish fantasy with a lot of alternating 6/8 and 5/8 passages (representing the stumbling horse).

Happy hunting... er... playing!

Scores

Triumph of the Fox

Set of parts (PDFs) - $15