Lip Trills

The Mozart horn concertos absolutely require elegant, controlled trills. The most tasteful and elegant musicianship cannot make up for a clumsy or coarse sounding lip trill.

A very funny example from the Hilarious Trumpet Bloopers page illustrates the point at the comical extreme:

I have heard a few very fine performances — live and recorded — marred by lip trills that sounded more like a machine-gunner having an epileptic seizure rather than as elegant, Classical-era ornaments. The pursuit of a beautifully controlled lip trill should be a major technical and musical concern when working on a Mozart horn concerto.

This video (now sadly removed by the user) demonstrates demonstrated one approach to lip trills, using a trilling tongue motion. For myself, this technique works beautifully on fast trills above middle space C.

This is was a great video. A few points I would add:

• For some players this technique may work very well but for a minority that cannot whistle, it may not be as simple to learn as is suggested. Also too I am not so sure with this whistling technique that the tongue moves up and down so much as back and forth, in a rocking motion resembling double tongue technique.

• Someday I would love to see a slow motion video with a transparent mouthpiece to actually see if the lip muscles move or not when trilling. I believe that there is some motion involved, but without the benefit of x-ray eyes one cannot be sure.

• I would add also that there is much more to an elegant Mozartean trill than a quiver of fast notes wobbling up and down. The beginning and end of a trill especially can define the difference between a good technique and fine artistry.

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For more information on lip trills, please see “My Lip Trills Stink!”