Horns in High C: A Memoir of Musical Discoveries and Adventure

Contemporary Review, Nov, 1999 by Anthony Paterson

H.C. Robbins Landon. Thames and Hudson. [pounds]18.95. 176 pages. ISBN 0-500-01923-0.

This is an autobiography of a very fortunate man born at the right time and given amazing opportunities to fulfil his lifelong passion for scholarship. In return he has given the world a feast of glorious music. He is not a composer - fortunately given the screeches emitted by most modern ones - but rather a musicologist. In one of his aphorisms Sir Thomas Beecham observed that a musicologist was 'a man who could read music but can't hear it.' No doubt this is true of some musical scholars, but it is certainly not the case of Mr Robbins Landon who has not only an excellent ear for music, but a superb eye to find and to analyse musical manuscripts.

Born some seventy years ago into a wealthy New England family, he had an early passion for music, so much so that a perceptive schoolmaster suggested he devote his life to scholarship about Haydn. That is precisely what he did and, in time and with the support of a generous publisher, Thames and Hudson, produced the definitive five-volume life of Haydn. (One wishes he would arrange a one-volume version for the non-specialist.) His passion for finding every fact and manuscript of Haydn recalls the somewhat similar achievement of another well-to-do American scholar-collector, H.W. Lewis, who recounted his adventures in finding and editing Horace Walpole's letters in another lively autobiography.

Mr Robbins Landon has spent all his adult years in Europe and he writes vivid descriptions of his life in a variety of countries: Austria, Italy, Wales, and now France. He managed to acquire a succession of splendid houses and wives, although we are never quite certain how the wives passed out of his life. Working mainly in Austria, often in Baroque Abbeys, after the Second World War, he discovered manuscript copies of many Haydn and Mozart works that had been lost or existed only in inaccurate copies.

Robbins Landon describes all this scholarship with a verve and continual sparkling sense of humour that makes the book a joy to read. He also has a gift for using just the right earthy anecdote. Thus he recounts his speculation with an Austrian Abbot about why Mozart and other composers wrote so many Missa Brevis settings for the liturgy during Advent. The good abbot replied. 'It was cold in those churches.'

Many will remember the numerous BBC musical documentaries presented by Mr Robbins Landon, mainly on Haydn and Mozart, and these were always done with a precise scholarship, that was thoroughly unpretentious. Sadly he comments that nowhere in modern broadcasting, not even in the BBC, would he now be given time to present musical documentaries of this depth.

Naturally Mr Robbins Landon's scholarship brought him into contact with many of the great musicians of his lifetime and this book abounds with anecdotes of great conductors such as George Szell, Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein as well as great performers like Dame Elizabeth Schwarzkopf. He describes amusing encounters such as that with Hans Keller, the dictatorial Austrian musicologist who dominated the BBC's Third Programme for many years. Keller scribbled on a paper written by Mr Robbins Landon 'How can you say that Mozart is a greater composer than Haydn?' He continues to say so and that is just one sign of the balance and judgement that gives him such an eye, and an ear, for the music of the eighteenth century, that most balanced of centuries.

This book will be a total refutation for anyone who imagines that a scholar's life is dull. Mr Robbins Landon's life is as joyous and sparkling as a late Haydn Symphony.

ANTHONY PATERSON