Hornmasters: Berv on Mouthpieces

Harry Berv has a number of thoughts on mouthpieces in A Creative Approach to the French Horn, noting in the following passage how the mouthpiece over time creates a “groove in the lips.”

The correct mouthpiece is important in producing a beautiful tone and in adding strength and endurance to the embouchure. It will influence your general approach to playing horn and help to achieve security in attack and elasticity in traversing the range of the horn in a beautiful, unbroken line. It stands to reason then, that the mouthpiece must insure utmost comfort and control in the playing. As you can start to see now, the mouthpiece must be selected with infinite care and intelligence. Every player’s physical makeup is different; one cannot attempt to select a mouthpiece by listening to someone else play on it and judging from the performance. This next point is vitally important: once you have by process of elimination chosen a mouthpiece, you must stick to it, play on it, and get accustomed to it. After months of playing on it, the mouthpiece will form what is called in brass terminology “a groove in the lips.” this placement “groove” is mad by the constant pressure exerted by the mouthpiece on the lips. When it has been successfully formed, the mouthpiece, when placed on the lips, will fall right “into the groove”—and will feel comfortable. The lips will react to the mouthpiece with sensitivity and complete familiarity.

As to students he has a note of caution on trying mouthpieces.

After they have played on the same mouthpiece for two or three years brass players, particularly younger students, are continually trying out different mouthpieces I hopes of bettering their performance. This can be the start of an extremely frustrating and dangerous period in their careers. Every change of the embouchure involves the use of more or less lip muscle tension, and with the embouchure so highly sensitive to any change, a new mouthpiece can cause new problems in intonation, tone, and endurance. Initially every new change will make the player feel that the response, sound, and attack are better—but soon all the old faults come back, plus a few new ones.

Moving on to specifics, Berv notes “The volume of the cup, the size of the orifice, the calibration of the backbore, and the fit of the mouthpiece all have an important bearing on the production of tone.” As to mouthpiece fit he explains that “The proper fit of the mouthpiece into the instrument is important, for if the mouthpiece goes in too far or not far enough, the intonation, tone quality, and response of the instrument can suffer greatly.” He does not suggest the use of a large bore mouthpiece, as a large bore combined with a deep cup will produce “a foggy sound and blatty attacks.” As to rims,

If the rim of a mouthpiece is too wide, it will lack the sensitivity of the medium-narrow rim. The reason for this is that the wide rim covers too great an area of flesh on the lips, reducing the sensitivity and flexibility of the embouchure. The medium-narrow rim against the lips has far more sensitivity and gives the lips more freedom to move. A very narrow rim can bite into the lips too much and severely reduce the player’s endurance.

Next Berv presents the dimensions of his own personal mouthpiece, “one that I have used throughout my entire symphony career.” The two most easily notable dimensions are that it is number 14 bore with an inside diameter of 17.8 mm. This is a similar bore to the mouthpieces suggested by Farkas but with a larger inner diameter. Berv notes that “Many times during my many years of playing I have had duplicate mouthpieces made from my original one, and even in these instances there is always that minute difference in some area of the mouthpiece that makes my playing sound and feel different.” Finally, he notes a strong preference for a gold-plated rim.

I highly recommend a gold-plated rim, which, together with the moist lip, helps the coordination of the embouchure muscle tension and provides a great feeling of smoothness and cleanliness on the lips, so that together they work like a well-oiled machine.