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While his book A Study of Musical Intonation is well known, I was interested this summer to literally stumble across another publication by Christopher Leuba, The Rules of the Game, at the horn symposium. This book was originally published in 1993 which may be part of why I had missed this publication, and also the title does not indicate that this book relates so closely to horn playing. It is now available in a reprint edition from Faust Music and is a publication I have enjoyed getting to know.
Leuba is an IHS Honorary Member (bio here) and among other career highlights was Principal Horn of the Chicago Symphony from 1960-62. The Rules of the Game reflects on a long career of teaching and playing the horn in an easy to digest format. I don’t believe any horn teacher will agree with everything he says in the book, but he does lay it all out clearly and makes his case well, with a lot of practical tips and information.
The book itself is divided into two halves. The first half focuses on musicianship and the second half on the physical side of playing the horn. The book has no page numbers, table of contents, or index, but is fairly easy to navigate as each section is numbered in order.
The dedication page sets the tone: “To those of my students who missed the point.” There are longer and shorter points in the book, with this shorter example, rule 28 of part I, serving as a brief example.
All music which can be subdivided must be subdivided … SUBDIVIDE AND CONQUER!
The section I was most interested to see had to do with the timing of entrances and articulations. I had seen the drawing previously that is given in the “appendix” (actually published, in my copy at least, just after rule 3 of part II) and it relates to his take on where the inhale and release/attack occurs. It is in short similar to the approach espoused by Gunther Schuller in Horn Technique, but with this general rule added.
All “starting” notes (notes following a silence, or rest) should be “timed”, with at least three beats preparation.
Regardless of the player’s philosophy of playing, each player should understand their own timing in each metric, tempo or rhythmic situation.
For more on this I will just point readers to the actual publication, but for sure his approach could help to solve what he calls a “stall” or “stutter” problem, which I would usually call a hesitation attack problem in my own teaching. A problem that, if present, must be fixed.
In short this is a valuable and easy to understand resource that should be referenced more often by horn teachers and players. And it is great that it is available again from Faust Music (look in the category of Horn Etudes and Methods on their website for more information).
And, for another very recent review, see this one by James Boldin.
UPDATE: I was also pointed to a new, huge resource that is an interview with Chris Leuba:
http://www.ampexguy.com/horn/leuba/index.html
