Hornmasters: Farkas on Right Hand Position

Most active horn teachers have read the Farkas book at some point but mostly not recently. One thing that you may have missed was that Farkas described a “new method” for the right hand in the bell, one that actually I suspect few use literally exactly the way he describes. I base this statement not only on my experiences but actually also the raw data from an unpublished research project done by another horn professor that I have in my possession. Hand positions vary widely, and teachers, it pays off to check what your students are doing often as they may have issues to address.

Which also serves to illustrate again a fact: many elements of horn technique seem obvious to us as teachers and players but we can lose the perspective to see that actually there are a wide variety of approaches that are also valid. In this portion of the Hornmasters series we will see this clearly.

As noted above, Farkas presents a very specific type of right hand position in The Art of French Horn Playing that relates to his “new method.”

1. Hold the right hand flat with the fingers held together so that absolutely no space occurs between them. Pay particular attention to the thumb, which should lie along the edge of the hand, and in the same plane as the fingers. Now cup the hand lightly, in the same way that the hand would be held while swimming. Again watch the thumb. It should touch the side of the index finger, but not in such a manner as to form an opening between the thumb and the hand.

2. Now hold the hand in a vertical plane, with the little finger nearest the ground and the thumb uppermost. Do not hold the palm upward as though you were holding a handful of water, as this position does not permit the right hand to support the horn sufficiently.

3. Insert this slightly cupped, vertically-held hand in the horn bell so that only the backs of the fingers and the top of the thumb touch the metal. This means that the hand will be against the side of the bell farthest from the body. The fingers should be lightly curved and the backs of them should hug the side of the horn bell, particularly at the tips. The curve of the hand then brings the thumb, in a natural manner, to the roof of the bell’s throat. It rests against the top of the throat so that the horn is partially supported by it…. This will enable the palm and the heel of the hand to swing open or shut like a door, the hinges being the knuckles of the thumb at the top and the little finger at the bottom of the bell.

This hand position is quite vertical. Personally, I find this exact position to be somewhat uncomfortable and play standing and off the leg with the hand rotated slightly counterclockwise to what Farkas describes. And my initial training was to play palm up with the bell on the leg, which is quite different and representative of a different school of horn playing.

As to a general amount of hand closure, Farkas notes that

When the heel of the hand is about one-and-a-half or two inches from the side of the bell closest to the body the tone should be about right; but this depends on the size of the bell and the hand size, and can only be determined by careful, analytic listening. If the tone sounds too dark or muffled, swing the hand a little more open, or back the hand out of the bell a little…. Of course, if the sound is too open, reverse this procedure.

If you are a student reading this and you are suddenly curious about your hand position, it is a great topic to re-examine with your current teacher, and do check back in the coming weeks for more on this topic from other classic horn texts.