Online Horn Section Listings FAQ

I am so glad to find your site! So much information! But where are the horn section listings I heard about?

Horn section listings?

Yes, I was just reading A Devil to Play and it says they are in some website in Arizona. Are you those guys? You are in Arizona after all.

Oh yes, A Devil to Play, I know why you are confused about this. In the hard cover editions it says “There’s a Web site mastered out of Arizona State University that, among other essential esoterica, lists the horn sections of every major orchestra in the world, and most of the minor ones too.”

Right! Your site in Arizona! Where are the section listings?

Ok, let me continue. I believe the site to which the author refers is my Horn Articles Online website, which is “mastered” from my faculty website at Arizona State University. I have actually never had any horn section listings in my site ever. Also the Thomas Bacon Hornplanet.com site used to be based out of Arizona State (he was my predecessor as horn professor) but he did not ever have horn section listings in his site either. The site that is referenced is actually the Hornplayer.net website, which is run from England by Robin Moffatt. It is a classic horn site that has been around since 1996.

Really! Wow, that is kind of a big error, especially with the author right there in England too. Why do you think it says Arizona State University in the book?

I am not sure, could have just been something that slipped through the cracks in editing but it probably also made a better story to say the site was way off in the wilds of Arizona. I understand that the error will be corrected in the soft cover edition, and also that I will be credited in relation to the words in the book that were taken verbatim from my horn history research on Franz Strauss.

As in plagiarism? That reminds me, I read something recently in the Los Angeles Times about plagiarism, about how it made an author feel to find words that they worked hard to research restated in another book with no attribution. Did you see that?

I did, and it made me think of A Devil to Play again and the topic of plagiarism, which I talk about in this post. Although it certainly did not plunge me into a depression, it was disappointing to see and I can totally relate to what M. G. Lord says in her Los Angeles Times piece.

Using the quotes and facts would have been just fine had Gerber acknowledged their source. Legally, there’s some ambiguity about who holds the copyright on a quotation. And scholarship, by definition, is a new structure built on an existing edifice with a bit of fresh material, which Gerber has. This makes her behavior more baffling.

As my friend Ellen Handler Spitz, honors college professor of visual arts at the University of Maryland (UMBC), reminded me, “Scholars cite existing books so readers will know they did their homework.” Nor can Gerber plead ignorance of ethical practices….

The violation plunged me into a depression. I collected stories from friends who’d had similar experiences. Richard Rhodes, author of “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” described a happy instance of plagiarism — during the Clinton administration, one of the president’s speechwriters borrowed his words, and he was pleased to have had an impact at the White House. But when an alleged scholar ripped him off, he was glad to see him disciplined — though his firing struck Rhodes as harsh. Columnist Katha Pollitt also reported that a journalist who stole her words lost her job.

I get asked about A Devil to Play fairly often as it is a popular book on the horn.  A Devil to Play is an entertaining book that is promoting the horn to a wider audience, and that the paperback version now references me as a source makes me feel a bit better about the situation at least.

Ok, good to hear. So, back to the original question, I need to go over to the Hornplayer.net site for the section listings?

Yes, he has tons of them, you could get lost in the listings for hours and hours. The direct link to the listings at Hornplayer.net is here (see UPDATE), be sure your section is listed! And be sure to surf around the site a bit, there is a lot of content there worth reading.

Thanks!

UPDATE: The section listings that used to be at Hornplayer.net are now in the IHS website; for more please check http://www.hornsociety.org/section-listings