Howl

Quite a few years ago I was driving back to Philadelphia from Maine after a summer at the Pierre Monteux School in my Pontiac LeMans hatchback (I called her “Jezebel” – what a dreadful little car…) packed with suitcases, crates of scores and a sleeping dog in the back. The dog in question was my husband’s (then-boyfriend’s) mutt, Sieglinde (named as only a horn player and Wagner enthusiast would.) I had given her some sedatives for the 10-hour drive back to Philadelphia and had utterly forgotten that she was even there. Many hours into my journey the radio happened to be tuned in to the local classical station, which was playing Brahms’s “Tragic Overture”.

There’s a bit towards the end where the horns play loud and prominent octaves, concert “D” (around measure 320, if you want to check it out), and Sieglinde was always sensitive to that note on the horn – which I knew because when my husband played that note at any dynamic above mezzo forte she would begin to howl. Imagine how startled I was when my canine companion, who, to this point, was drugged to unconsciousness and silently passed out in the hatchback, raised her head woozily and moaned out soft howls to the radio!

We recently discovered that Sieglinde, now nearly 13, is deaf – she hadn’t been responding to our calls for a while, which we wrote off as just part of her obstinate personality compounded by age. The other day, however, my husband was practicing that very same section of “Tragic” with Sieglinde in the room, and she remained curled up in a ball, oblivious. Which made me a little sad, but maybe it's a relief for her, who no longer has to hear daily hour-long warm-ups on the French horn.