Hornmasters: Farkas on Mouthpieces

Philip Farkas chose to begin The Art of French Horn Playing with an in depth discussion of mouthpieces and horns. As this was his starting point I will also begin here an extended series of quotations and comments on a variety of topics from master horn teachers.

After a review of the elements of mouthpieces (bore, cup, rim, etc.) Farkas, with a photo similar to this of five cut away mouthpieces, relates,

The best advice about mouthpieces, stated in capsule form, would be this: get a mouthpiece which is generally accepted as “normal” (Conn Number 2, Bach Number 7, Reynolds 6D, King H-2, Farkas-Model, are all good examples). It takes experience to know what “normal” is, but study two dozen different models and you will soon recognize moderation. Be sure the one you choose has no obviously bad qualities; make certain it is comfortable on the lips; then stick with it until it is mastered.

If the truth be told, no one mouthpiece or change of mouthpiece is going to revolutionize anyone’s playing ability. A player with a fine embouchure can play on just about any mouthpiece, but the player with some glaring embouchure fault is not going to improve even by switching to the most scientifically correct mouthpiece—if there is such a thing. It would be far better to spend the time, too often dissipated in hunting a cure-all mouthpiece, for practicing and correcting embouchure faults. This advice is given from bitter experience. The wasted years and dollars most players have spent in this futile search for the “perfect” mouthpiece.

First we should step back and look at the state of mouthpiece design in the United States in 1956. While the inner diameter of most commercial mouthpieces of the period was around 17 mm, there were two major schools of thought. For Farkas “normal” was a somewhat shallow mouthpiece with a somewhat wide rim and a bore around #16. However, for players that came out of the east coast tradition of the time typical mouthpieces were deep, had a narrow rim, and a much larger bore in the neighborhood of #4 using numbered drills for measurement. A number 1 drill produces a bore that would be a very large size for a horn mouthpiece and number 24 would be quite small.

For those players that considered a large bore mouthpiece to be normal a Farkas-Model mouthpiece was rather small while for players oriented around the type of normal mouthpiece of Farkas the large mouthpieces were rather large.

Of the mouthpieces specifically mentioned in The Art of French Horn Playing, only the Bach 7 remains commercially available today. In the photo with this post are all the mouthpieces featured in the Farkas book with, ironically, the exception of the Bach 7 which I don’t own. I have instead substituted a Bach 11 which is a good stand-in, as according to the Bach Mouthpiece Manual this is their “best selling model, with cushion rim and brilliant heroic tone. Players who do strenuous work prefer this model.”

The view of all of these from the rim end is revealing; all are by east coast standards medium wide or wider.

The Farkas-Model was made by Schilke before Farkas became associated with Holton and is generally similar to a Holton MC or a Schilke 30. I have a review of this mouthpiece here.

Of the other mouthpieces, one common thread is if you play on all of them they are not as good as the Farkas-Model, they are all to my sense of how they play rather generic. Also none of them really gets over toward the east coast style thin rim deep mouthpiece such as made by Giardinelli. I have an extended review of the classic Giardinelli mouthpieces here.

The take away point being what average is for one horn teacher is not necessarily average for another.

As this series continues I plan to follow through many classic horn publications on basically all the topic areas found in the Farkas book. My hope is to open up the discussion out there and renew discussion in the broad topic of horn pedagogy.