Hornmasters: Schuller on Mouthpieces

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Gunther Schuller was certainly aware of The Art of French Horn Playing, and also chose to start his 1962 publication Horn Technique with the topic of instruments and mouthpieces.

A tool used to produce fine art

On mouthpieces Farkas took the general stand that you needed to start with something middle of the road and learn to play on the equipment you had. Schuller gets to some of the same ideas as Farkas (avoiding extremes, and eventually offering the advice to “pick a good one and stay with it”) but takes a quite different track in his discussion. The mouthpiece is a tool that will enhance your artistry.

If anything can be said at all in a general way, it is that a mouthpiece should be a compromise, if it is to enable the player to render with authenticity the many styles required of the modern player, form the lightest Mozart to the heaviest Mahler and Strauss.

While many players and teachers approach the choice of a mouthpiece from a purely physical point of view, I would suggest that this is not enough if we are to consider the playing of the horn as a fine art, not merely as a means of making a living. Since we are dealing with music, the physical requirements of a mouthpiece must be balanced against certain musical requirements.

… I think it is basically unmusical and a fallacy to pursue a specific tone per se, without considering the musical requirements to which end the tone should be only a means. In certain quarters in America and in certain countries in Europe, there are definite ideas on this subject …. A large or fat tone that remains inexorably the same is of very little musical value in a performance of a Debussy or Mozart piece, when that tone relentlessly penetrates the light-textured orchestral fabric….

Reading between the lines, Schuller (who had been Principal Horn in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra) played an Alexander 103 horn, and was not a fan of the big horn and big mouthpiece that produced at all times a large, fat tone (i.e., an 8D with a large Giardinelli mouthpiece). His opinion on the topic has actually held up as well, as that type of “old school” equipment is hardly seen used by fine professional players in the USA, and the Alex 103 is in fact the most popular horn at the professional level worldwide.

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