The Heckelphone: A Window into the History of Music

The Heckelphone: A Window into the History of Music

The heckelpone is a woodwind instrument invented at the dawn of the 20th century. Inspired by Richard Wagner and prominently used by Richard Strauss, it soon rose to prominence in its native Germany and far beyond. In this book, the history and use of this curious and obscure instrument serves as a thread running through the history of music, from the romantic period to the late 1960s. From the invention and making of musical instruments to the origins of widely known and all-but-forgotten composers and their works, from New Orleans jazz to atonal music, from 19th-century Germany to 20th-century Mexico, "The Heckelphone" provides glimpses into "a past of which one has been ignorant" - a past made of music, musicians, conductors, composers, instrument makers and collectors, who all play their parts in a series of intriguing, interweaving stories, told here to educate and entertain. Holger Hoos fell under the spell of the heckelphone as a teenager, but then had to wait for over three decades before acquiring one of the fewer than 200 specimens known to have ever existed. Meanwhile, he studied the bassoon with Benedikt Manemann, Michael Held and Heiko Dechert, but then decided to pursue an academic career in computer science, where part of his work has been on topics in computer music.He now holds an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship in Artificial Intelligence at RWTH Aachen University (Germany), as well as a professorship in machine learning at Universiteit Leiden (The Netherlands) and an adjunct professorship in computer science at the University of British Columbia (Canada). Since 2019, he studies and plays the heckelphone.