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For those following this series on tonguing closely, while many fine horn players do play with the tongue at the bottom of the teeth and near the lip opening at most or all times, Farkas was strongly against that type of approach.
The sforzando exception
However, in The Art of French Horn Playing he does allow for the tongue being further forward in certain situations.
The sforzando or forced attack is made by completely sealing the air column, with the tongue placed very near the lip-opening, perhaps even touching the lips but not protruding between them. Break this hermetic seal violently by sharply removing the tongue at the same time “shoving” with the diaphragm.
But then a change of approach
Farkas seems to have had some change of thinking in respect to how to this technically in The Art of Brass Playing, it is a bit different approach:
There is one type of attack which does call for the placing of the tip of the tongue between the teeth. That is the sforzando or heavy accent. “Bell tones” are also in this category. Here an audible explosion is actually desirable and the forceful breaking of the hermetic seal immediately back of the lips is most effectively achieved by the sudden backward pull of the tongue against the pent-up air.
The sforzando as one of a group of types of articulation
Verne Reynolds includes a more extended discussion of the sforzando in The Horn Handbook.
There are … occasions when we might use the image of explosion to help with marcato, accent, sforzando, and forte piano. For brass players, these articulations are more effective when they are preceded by silence, even a very short silence. This can be confirmed by trying to play a series of sforzando attacks with a legato tongue stroke. The silence needed to produce the sforzando attack is obtained by allowing the air pressure to build up while the tongue is momentarily held against the teeth. This is precisely what we strive so mightily to avoid in legato tonguing. In a series of fast marcato notes we must hasten to return the tongue to the teeth in order to seal off the air flow sufficiently to produce the next explosion. At a slower speed there is enough time to allow the note its normal decay before the next tongue stroke. In an accent, the same procedure applies…. Accents in sforzando are similar in physical action. Sforzando means forced and is an extension of the accent. It is also modified by the prevailing dynamic level. It is more often used as an orchestral marking than in solo or chamber music literature, and it is very effective when played by four or more horns.
They’re not hard to do
Generally speaking performance of this type of effect is not much of a problem for most players. We still have more tonguing topics to cover, more on those soon.
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