I recently got a rather interesting request in my inbox:
“Greetings! I hope this finds you well. I am a fellow St. Louisian looking for expert opinion regarding an old musical score manuscript (which I later found out was Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 56), to unlock a longstanding musical mystery. It is in the handwriting of a famous European composer from the 18th century, and I need help deciphering a single word. The word is the one that follows “in C” in the file below. The word could possibly be in Italian, since this language is used in music. It could also be an abbreviation as well, since it has a period after it.
As I don’t often receive requests from musicians, let alone musicians asking me to solve a longstanding musical mystery, I was intrigued. I quickly glanced at the word below, curious if this musical mystery word would be easy or difficult for me to decipher.
Luckily, I could decipher it at first glance! It said “in C hoch” – “in high C”.
I quickly wrote Roger back, telling him what I read.
All great questions. I replied, “The handwritten word here could either resemble ‘Hoch’ or ‘Hoh’, but the word ‘Hoh’ doesn’t exist in German. In the old German handwriting, a ‘ch’ is often written with the ‘c’ seemingly hidden – it’s just that little rise/point shortly before the final ‘h’. As for the ‘s’ question, an ‘h’ goes above and below the line of writing, just as an (English) archaic long ‘s’ would, but a German script final ‘s’ would look different – almost like the number ‘6’. ‘Hoch’ therefore seems to be very likely here.”
When looking at Haydn’s handwriting in additional scores, we can see similar final “h”s to the word in question, as seen in Haydn’s 1797 “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser” below.
That made sense to him. He then explained the entire situation to me:
“For years, editors had interpreted those letters as “hoch,” –correctly, I now understand. But just recently some Italian researchers claimed in a new book (see below) that it spelled “bas,” short for the Italian basso, which would be low, the opposite of hoch. It would mean the horns were to play their parts an octave lower. I was kind of on board with them, and had even quoted them in a paper I was submitting to an academic journal, but then thought to do some due diligence and question their findings. I am so glad I did! Apparently they did not confer with a German paleographer. Again, thank you so much for this.”
I was so glad to get to help solve the mystery at the symphony! Who knows where German script will lead you next?