Farkas on Lip Curling

I spent the summer looking at many different books on horn playing in depth. Farkas in print was not into the whole concept of rolling the lips. But, it turns out reading in the Fako book he did experiment with rolling the lips or at least elements of this type of approach. Which for me is no surprise, I recall vividly once seeing him enter an elevator talking to Rick Seraphinoff mentioning that he had recently changed his embouchure, which he did many times.

One book I have read a number of times is The Art of Brass Playing by Philip Farkas. Nancy Jordan Fako recalls in her book Philip Farkas & His Horn the time she spent as an IU student of Farkas editing and re-writing the manuscript of The Art of Brass Playing six times. She recalled that “Phil’s writing and organizational ability were extraordinary when one considers his limited formal education…. His parents placed great importance on writing and communication skills and this certainly equipped their son well for a full and productive intellectual life.”

According to Fako, Farkas took a lot of notes and was a fastidious record keeper. On tour with the Cleveland Orchestra in 1965 Farkas wrote a note to himself on an embouchure discovery while in Russia, which Fako quotes in full on page 182.

1. Must hold both lips tightly against teeth. Feeling is almost that of the oboeist ‘curling’ his lips over his teeth. 2. This holding the lips tightly back against teeth will result in a slight but definite feeling of a smile. 3. Playing can and should now be done with very light pressure. 4. Lip position seemingly not too important to this total feeling but seems to arrive naturally at 2/3 upper & 1/3 lower lip.

Curling in of the lips is related to an idea of rolling of the lips. You can’t really roll them in due to the teeth being in the way but you can conceptualize control of the lip opening by thinking of rolling the lips. With the larger point being that Farkas was willing to experiment with things that were a bit outside of the pedagogy presented in his publications. We all would be better off if we were like Farkas and were not afraid to experiment with embouchure mechanics, it can lead to personal discoveries.