This horn repertoire class is a companion to the University of Horn Matters Horn Pedagogy Course, launched initially for the fall semester of 2012, and is also fully organized as a hybrid, online class. Readers interested in all things horn playing, but just now discovering this course, may wish instead to go back and work through the pedagogy course first, which starts here.
This course by design continues on the concepts of the pedagogy course and integrates an overview of the solo repertoire and horn history with the topics of orchestral horn playing, the natural horn, descant horn, triple horn, and Wagner tuba into the flow of the course.
As with the fall semester pedagogy course, the starting point of the content was an abandoned writing project, which I felt it made more sense to break up and present to the horn world as an educational resource. To that I also added content from couple draft articles which were never published, materials from my dissertation, etc.
In short, this online content parallels the content of my courses at Arizona State, but was not specifically developed for those courses. In reality, I make use of additional materials from multiple sources, altering the course content somewhat every year. Because there is …
Too much to cover in so little time
There is a lot to cover in the context of a single year, especially as roughly every two weeks of material in this class could easily be expanded into an entire semester of a physical class with real students. This is why, in reality, what you see online here is absolutely overkill in relation to what can actually be covered in one semester of an horn repertoire class at the college level. Which is why I don’t follow this exact course with my students at Arizona State.
Overall, the goal of this entire course remains to introduce a total overview of horn pedagogy and repertoire clearly, but please don’t feel that you have to read every word on every topic.
This half of the course has some lengthy readings, but less than in the pedagogy course, as listening and performance are also important to this course. Hopefully readers following online will find interesting works they were not aware of as they follow the course.
Just looking for a repertoire list for reference?
For those finding this course online who just want something for quick reference, I might suggest this PDF list:
When I created this list of solo literature around 2002 and posted it on Horn Articles Online, my method involved looking at what had been recorded, what pieces showed up on student and professional recitals, what I saw in library holdings, and probably some other factors. I tried to make it a fair survey of what was being played. Updates leading to the 2014 version presented here pushed some pieces in and out of the list.
As today I would consider this at best a list of “old standards,” and a quirky one at that. Something that it is still valuable to have, but it really could be updated. For example, I think the Gordon Jacob is not nearly as often performed today as it once was, and of course it is very problematic that there are no works by women composers on the list. Topics that are addressed in the actual courses I teach.
Three supplemental texts
Besides the online readings posted this semester in the University of Horn Matters, anyone wishing to follow along very closely online may want to purchase these three texts:
- Introducing the Wagner Tuba (Horn Notes Edition)
- Playing Descant and Triple Horns (Horn Notes Edition)
- Playing Natural Horn Today (Horn Notes Edition)
These books are available in print or as Kindle ePublications. For those taking the live course at ASU, I just give you copies of these, no need to buy a copy.
A comprehensive overview?
For any online reader that wants a REALLY complete view of all horn rep, check out this recent publication:
Kicking things off with a bonus reading on ensemble dynamics
The first topics of this semester are on orchestral horn playing. As a bonus reading to kick things off I would offer this quote from Philip Farkas from The Art of French Horn Playing, where he gets at the topic of how dynamic markings really work and vary by musical context. Farkas wrote
Most students go through years of indecision before finally coming to the realization that in ensemble playing there are, in effect, two distinct types of dynamic marks. One set is for accompaniment passages, and the other is for solos. Piano in an accompaniment means just that—play softly. However, the same mark in a solo passage might require much more volume. A solo passage must carry, even though the dynamic mark indicates softness. Your first duty in playing a soft passage is to make it audible….
Although solo passages can often be a degree louder than the dynamic indicated, the opposite is true of accompaniment dynamics. Here it is our duty to keep down sufficiently to let the soloist come through even though it means playing piano when mezzoforte is indicated. Thus the orchestral player might make a simple rule for observing dynamics. Solos should be played a little louder than indicated and accompaniments slightly softer
With that thought we bridge over from pedagogy to Week 1 of the University of Horn Matters Horn Repertoire course, with an initial focus on topics related to orchestral horn playing.
Continue to Week One of Repertoire Course
This is the introductory article of a fourteen week course in horn repertoire, the second semester of a broad overview of horn repertoire, performance, and pedagogy. The series is presented for the educational purposes of our readers.
