A link to an article on the Techdirt site, “RIAA Accounting: Why Even Major Label Musicians Rarely Make Money From Album Sales” caught my attention as it lays out some truth clearly on the earnings of musicians in relation to recordings. In short, they don’t make much. They cite a statistic that “for every $1,000 sold, the average musician gets $23.40.” The longer version is not much better, and it relates to how the contracts are laid out and expenses recorded in the music industry. The full article lays it all out pretty clearly but cutting to the chase again,

Going back ten years ago, Courtney Love famously laid out the details of recording economics, where the label can make $11 million… and the actual artists make absolutely nothing.

…huge megastars like Lyle Lovett have pointed out that he sold 4.6 million records and never made a dime from album sales. It’s why the band 30 Seconds to Mars went platinum and sold 2 million records and never made a dime from album sales. You hear these stories quite often.

The element I would like Horn Matters readers to ponder is that of new horn recordings. These are done on much lower budgets, of course, and even with the poor economics of the endeavor a few do keep coming out. In the best scenario of independent release and such the net profit will be low. But, as noted in the same article,

…take a look at the models that some musicians have adopted by going around the major label system. They may not gross as much without the major record label marketing push behind them, but they’re netting a whole lot more, and as any business person will tell you (except if that business person is a major label A&R guy trying to sign you to a deal), the net amount is all that matters.

When you see something new and interesting from a horn artist be sure to consider buying it, especially independent releases, as a few sales will certainly help the artists get closer to the breakeven point on the project and will generate ideas toward future projects. It is highly likely that they have put personal funds on the line to bring the recording to you because it is a project that they believed in; they will appreciate your support.

I was recently given a copy of volume 1, number 1 (February, 1971) of The Horn Call and in it there is a most interesting item on a work that proved deadly for the first horn.

Max Hess tells a most interesting story about Friedrich Gumbert [sic] and Oscar Franz:

“In the first performance of the Rhine Journey the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra’s first horn, Gumbert played it on a single F-horn. Oscar Franz had come over from Dresden where he too was a first horn player in that city’s former Court Orchestra. Dresden still felt itself superior to a civic orchestra like the Gewandhaus, and for Herr Franz to deign come into Leipzig for the performance was in itself slightly unusual.

The performance went well, and afterward Gumbert said to Franz, “Don’t worry, for your chance will com too, because no doubt Dresden will be playing this before long.” In a very short time this indeed came to pass, and Franz had to perform it. With the “setting-in” embouchure he used it must have been quite a chore. At any rate within a very few days he passed away.

One can only surmise that the physical exertion as well as the nervousstrain upon the man in this particular situation may have had its effect.”

The teller of this sad tale, Max Hess (Principal Horn in Boston and Cincinnati), was one of three prominent students of Freidrich Gumpert who emigrated to the United States and were leading players of their generation, the other two being a bit more familiar to modern readers, Anton Horner (Philadelphia/Curtis) and Max Pottag (Chicago/Northwestern). This article will lead you to more on their teacher Gumpert, and I have more from Oscar Franz here. The portrait above is of Oscar Franz.

As an aside, the IHS has back issues of the vast majority of every issue of The Horn Call still available! Check their website for more information.

One topic I mention to people in conversation periodically is that of trumpet players and dental modifications. I know to a horn player that thought is pretty stunning, that players might intentionally modify their teeth, but actually there has been some thought about this for years and years in the trumpet community. What it seems to boil down to for them are two factors; that the teeth not be too long in relation to the upper lip and also a gap is desirable. Modifications may be in fact made to enhance these characteristics.

I am sure many readers at this point are still having difficulty conceptualizing this topic (I am sure I would never modify my teeth!) but it is on that is out there and has been for a long time, again especially so in the trumpet world. For example Philip Smith, Principal Trumpet of the New York Philharmonic, brought up the topic in a very interesting CNN interview back in 2001. Check it all out, but I was especially interested to see his answer to the question “How important is dental care to a trumpet player?”

Oh, you gotta take care of your teeth. When I was a kid, my two front teeth protruded. My dentist said, “The best thing you could be doing is playing trumpet, because that will naturally put them in line.” Poor gum health, chipping teeth — all of that is a problem for brass players.

Any kind of change in your teeth can be a problem. If you don’t like the way your teeth look, and some dentist says, “Oh, I’ll just file this down” — you can lose an octave, just like that. There are great stories of prominent high-note jazz players who have a space between their teeth. That space presents a turbulence with the air stream, which enables them to play up high. And some of these players, not liking the look of that space, had bonding done to make it look good — and all of a sudden, they can’t play.

I have observed this same thing with horn players. Players with the easiest, almost freakishly easy high ranges have either slight gap teeth or crooked teeth. In either case it seems to allow a slightly freer vibration of the lips when they are in the formation for making the highest notes, as only confirmed by Philip Smith above. Again, I won’t be in to my dentist to modify my teeth but it is a topic that is out there and one worth understanding, as for horn playing perfect looking teeth are not necessarily the best.

As noted at the end of the previous post, I was off to the banquet at about 1:30. It was a very nice meal with a number of notables present, including in particular Barry Tuckwell and also the niece of Dennis Brain. The food was excellent and it was a nice time to celebrate.

Time worked out fine to get to the rehearsal I had before the afternoon concert which also doubled as the business meeting of the IHS. The afternoon concert featured Frank Lloyd, Jeff Nelsen, William VerMeulen, and the Advisory Council horn ensemble.

First up was Frank Lloyd. His opener was announced from the stage and again I can’t tell you accurately what it was but it was a solo horn work played impressively that had a theme in it similar to the tune of Jesus Christ, Superstar. Next up he played the Berhnard Heiden Sonata with pianist Tomoko Kanamaru. I have not mentioned her yet in these posts and she was another pianist heard often on the programs who did great work. After a solid performance of this Lloyd turned a corner and performed another difficult solo work, I Hit a Breakfront Forking Funk by Anthony Gustav Morris. This was another world premiere and was actually on the Monday program but was not yet at that time prepared for performance. The title he explained was an anagram but I have not tried to work it out. This was followed by yet another solo work not in the program. I am pretty sure the correct info is it was Etude, Don’t Make it Bad by Tim Jackson. It is based on a Beatles tune (you can guess which one from the title) and again showed off his impressive technique.

Then we turned to Bill VerMeulen and Jeff Nelsen. They performed the Haydn Double Concerto very nicely at a brisk pace and both showed off their technique yet again.

Next up was “something completely different” that was a surprise for the audience for sure. At this point the official business meeting of the International Horn Society was held during sort of an extended intermission. Reports were given (I gave reports about the Facebook page and also the Meir Rimon fund), new honorary members announced, etc. It took a little while with Robert’s Rules and such and for sure we lost part of the crowd.

In any event, the most significant results are the following, which have also been reported in the News section of The IHS Online:

New officers are: President: Frank Lloyd, Vice-President: David Thompson, Secretary-Treasurer: Jonathan Stoneman

New Advisory Council members are Frank Lloyd, Peter Luff and Leighton Jones, replacing Michelle Stebleton, Heather Petit-Johnson and Jeff Snedeker, whose terms expired and were ineligible for further service. Joseph Ognibene, John Ericson and Geof Winter were re-elected to the AC.

Newly elected Honorary Members of the IHS are Dale Clevenger, Anthony Halstead and Lowell Shaw.

After that was the end of the concert, finally, with it not ending until close to 6:30 PM which I heard an audience member note was a bit epic. The members of the Advisory Council (plus a few ringers such as Armin Terzer) performed four works for large horn ensemble, Fanfare and Toccata by William Holcomb, an arrangement of Amazing Grace by Simon Procter, and the closer was William Tell Overture arranged by Armin Terzer, who sat just to my left in the performance and laid down some notes! Bravo again to him.

Astute readers may have noticed that I said there were four last works but I have only described three. The other work needs its own paragraph; the surprise guest conductor was Barry Tuckwell. He has been present the whole week and was easy to spot in his series of colorful “No Kopprasch” shirts every day. For the final day he chose purple and as to the work he chose a new arrangement of Randall Thompson’s beautiful Alleluia. It was a treat to work with him briefly and to meet him if only in my case in passing, and I am sure many hornists present felt the same way. [The shirt mentioned, by the way, is from the Barry Tuckwell Institute. A photo of one may be found in an account of the 2009 event in the Newhornist’s Blog.]

The Last Concert (really!)

The Final, Gala concert featured works for horn and orchestra with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. On the program were the Franz Strauss Concerto with Hector McDonald, Mozart 4 with Valentin Eschmann, The Schumann Konzertstuck with the American Horn Quartet, and if that were not enough music for you the concert ended with the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra.

The concert began with Valentin Eschmann. Unless I am missing something I can’t tell exactly from either printed program book, but he is a younger player (born in 1988) of which my understanding is he won a competition to perform on this program. Since these posts have run on so long already, a bit of digression. “Back in the day” (roughly in the 1980s) at IHS horn workshops there was an informal “Medaling Committee” that gave various awards. One of them was the Giant Clam award. So far as I know there is thankfully no such committee any more but I believe he played better earlier in the week.

This was the third time I have heard the American Horn Quartet perform the Konzertstuck live with an orchestra. So I was curious going in what new they would bring to the table, especially with the recent personnel change. When I heard them previously it was with semi-pro or student orchestras at regional workshops in the United States. This however was with a fully professional orchestra in a fine hall with a large audience that included several political figures that were announced at the beginning (as elections are in about a month in Australia). With a stronger and tighter orchestra they did bring it up a notch I think and it was a fine performance.

They have performed this many, many times and have recorded it. I think it is no secret that they use their own version of the parts as they also sell this version (publisher here). What they did in their version was split the first part among the top three players and rearrange the voicing as needed. This I have no problem with really, it sounds the same or better out in the hall if performed by a good matched group. I did note however, as did others in the audience, that they actually have changed the ending and some other spots a bit more than I remember. It still sounds fine really but unfortunately I know too much! The very ending for example had several extra chords which for me, I don’t know, the revision is a bit Hollywood for my tastes. I really hate to sound critical though on this as the point is to please an audience and this they did for sure with a spirited and enjoyable performance which got a great crowd reaction. It just shows the choices we have as artists.

After intermission we had Hector McDonald, who we heard earlier in the week on Vienna horn and he was back with it again to perform the Franz Strauss Concerto Op. 8. This for me was pretty exciting to see attempted live as I have played a good bit of single horn with crooks, but at the same time you have to be careful to prepare the audience for this. McDonald gave a clear and entertaining intro to the Vienna horn beforehand and it was a good job overall but still I worry that it all may have gone over the head of many members of the audience in general. It is one of those tough calls for me as I on one hand really admire what he is trying to do and was excited to hear that classic Vienna horn sound live in a good hall but it is hard to do it effectively outside of practically a lecture-recital format at a horn workshop.

[And for completeness/disclosure, I did actually give a lecture-recital on Franz Strauss at the International Horn Symposium in Bloomington in 2003. The big additional note being that Franz Strauss did not play a Vienna horn, he played a rotary valve single B-flat for most of his career. See this post for more and my handout is here. And I should note that McDonald did not in any way imply that Franz Strauss did play a Vienna horn, but I want with this note to be sure any students reading this later would be very clear on the topic, that Franz Strauss was a progressive in his time and an early adopter of the single B-flat.]

The concert ended with the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra. It was a very strong performance, the orchestra is a fine orchestra and it is not often that after a performance of this work will the horns be given the first acknowledgement!

I only hung out a while afterwards and tried to get some rest. I understand there was some serious celebrating going on afterwards though with the plan to be tired on the plane.

Trains, Planes, and Automobiles

For the trip back I started out on a train to the airport and at that point took this photo which will end our official coverage, me with Dan Phillips, horn professor at the University of Memphis and manager of The IHS Online. The event was quite a ride and the way back was I hope smoother for all than in the movie Trains, Planes, and Automobiles. My final two, random notes would be

• I probably saw more than the average person at the event but at the same time, in retrospect, I managed to miss all the master classes. So, on the record, if you attend in the future there are master classes to attend!
• I would love to visit Australia again with more time to see things and with my wife. Perhaps someday….

On this note I bid farewell and end coverage of this symposium. It was a great event that more people should have attended. Get to the next one if you can, June 20-25, 2011 on the campus of San Francisco State University, hosted by Wendell Rider.

The event ended on Friday. I started my day with a quick warm-up and some practice for the afternoon concert, so I had to miss the group warm-up which was with Nicole Cash which I heard was a good one. I also made a quick run to the vendors when they opened to check on a couple last things, and then it was on to four concerts.

Before and after Morning Tea were recitals featuring Sarah Barrett, Robert Johnson, Andrew Bain, and J.D. Shaw. Effectively however instead of being two recitals they were one very long recital that ran from 9:30 AM to 1:30 PM with a half hour break. As such those performances will be the focus of this post, with the activities of the remainder of Friday to be discussed tomorrow. The image at right is the cover of the program book for the event.

One general topic I have not hit yet is one that the host and the artists have to sort out before the event, that of what to put on concerts. Some artists opt for the big splash with new works and playing things that mere mortals really should not be able to play on a horn. Others opt for works that I am sure some audience members in fairness really want to hear, works that one might think of as jury pieces or senior recital solos. An event honestly needs both, there has to be a balance, and over the course of these four hours we heard examples of all of the above from the featured artists.

One other general thing since I have been mentioning the hall, the two artists on the first program chose to play with no additional panels and the piano short stick and the final two artists chose to play either with no piano at all or with the lid full up.

First up was Sarah Barrett who is Principal Horn of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. She opened with a tight performance of the Hindemith Alto Horn Sonata. The pianist was her husband Andrew Barrett who hit the difficult piano part well. Barrett has a great sound, she is one of a number of players at this event that had such an effortless quality to what they do, it just sounds so easy for them. She also produced plenty of volume on the big spots. For me the most interesting work from her program was the Ballade and Waltz composed by Andrew Barrett. It had a bit of a popular feel and especially so the waltz which was a jazz waltz.

The other hornist on this half of the program was Robert Johnson who is Principal Horn of the Sydney Symphony. He presented a program with several works that were either new or new to pretty much everyone there. One that caught my attention was a work that was composed by an Australian composer back in the 1950s, the Three Pieces for Horn and Piano by Alfred Hill. What was nice about this work was that it is not only not well known but also it was aimed compositionally toward younger students, I can imagine these as good study works that should be better known, and they were of course well played by Johnson. He also had a world premier of a solo horn work, Concorno by Alan Holly (great title) and his last work also was quite an attention grabber, Bakery Hill Rising for solo horn and eight pre-recorded horns by Vincent Plush, with lighting effects and some staging.

I should mention that the above artists alternated who was playing pretty much piece by piece, as did the artists on the next concert. With that we went to break.

On return we were back and first heard Andrew Bain who is Principal Horn of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He opened with the Mozart Quintet K 407, very nicely played, elegant with great balance. In the last movement he played a little cadenza that sounded like the one in the Mason Jones book but it could have been a coincidence.

After that work we had a surprise! On Monday there was a contributing artist recital that was supposed to feature Darren Robins (of www.hornexcerpts.org fame) playing the Gillingham Divertimento for horn, tuba and piano. However, the tubist had a schedule conflict come up (Steve Rosse of the Sydney Symphony) so they were able to slip the work into this program. It was a good surprise as it was very well played and I really like the combination of horn, tuba, and piano.

Then things shifted gears yet again, with the remainder of the program being either solo horn works performed by Andrew Bain or an impressive variety of works performed by J. D. Shaw. Without taking anything away from Bain, his other two works were announced from the stage and I am honestly not sure I have accurate titles or composers in my notes. They were however very nicely played and were new or at least newer works for solo horn; I hope the details make it into some official report of the event in The Horn Call.

J. D. Shaw is currently the horn professor at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, but that does not really tell you where he is coming from as he formerly toured for years with the Boston Brass and is very well known in the drum corps world as well. He knows something about showmanship and put it out there as he took on the end of the concert.

First up was a world premiere of a work he had commissioned for horn, didgeridoo, percussion, and piano. The work Catalpa is by William Pitts and in it the horn doubles on didgeridoo, which is very likely a first at a horn workshop and very appropriate in Australia. His next work was by the composer of the film score of The Godfather, Nina Rota. Castel del Monte is for horn and piano and hearing it I wonder why it is not performed more often, it is an attractive work that Shaw laid down well. Next up were arrangements of works by Astor Piazzolla, three tangos. Again, these had a lot of wow factor, they were really hard arrangements played really well of very interesting music. Along the way though by now people were drifting out, perhaps because of the concert running long by a half hour over the printed program time, so maybe 2/3 of the original audience heard his final work, an arrangement of Glitter and Be Gay by Bernstein, the soprano aria. Again, wow, Shaw has high chops like are hard to even imagine having and he impressively closed out an impressive performance.

The one final aside for this concert would be that Shaw noted from the stage that as a child growing up he had always dreamed of being a featured artist at an International Horn Symposium before he turned forty years old, and he made it by one day! Happy birthday J. D., and “lordy, lordy, look who’s forty.”

With that I was off, late, to the banquet but got there in time for food! Look for a final post on the last two concerts of the event tomorrow.

Thursday things shifted gears a bit, with an emphasis on horn ensembles.

As I keep waking up early (which works well for posting these reports, anyway) I easily started my day with the warm-up with Frank Lloyd. He had, as noted earlier in the week, sounded great on his recital and I am sure most people there were curious how someone with all the technique he has would warm up. The venue for the warm-up was open to the outdoors and it was cool even with a jacket, which was not ideal, but it worked and we found out that he warms up aggressively! It was a great warm-up session, the first in a long time that I actually felt really warmed up at the end, and contained much that was similar to things I would do normally. In short it involved a lot of fast flexibility studies on the F and Bb horn and also scales in every key. In the Q and A at the end he revealed that he can go on and on working on these materials for hours (but he does have a short version if a quick warm-up is needed, as well). He sounds like he does hours and hours of this stuff for sure, the moral of the story being if you want to sound like that there is work to be done, get busy!

The Massed Horn Choir rehearsal was next but as I needed to practice I opted out in favor of being in the audience later when they performed. The rehearsal and concert were in the same covered, outdoor venue near the Conservatorium. Instead I visited exhibits including the IVASI display (I am impressed that they keep this going and even keep expanding the system) and made a brief run to try horns again.

I would have also enjoyed seeing the “get fearless” session with Jeff Nelsen at 11:30 but I still had a rehearsal and meeting starting at noon which also made it so I would miss the organized horn ensemble reading sessions after lunch.

Horn Ensembles in the Afternoon

Actually my first stop after I was free again was to check instruments a bit more. At this point I have tried a sample of every table and brand and in short I liked most of them fairly well to very well. There are a lot of good horns out there on the market. I hate to vote for a favorite but trying them on tables like this I always find Alexander horns interesting and I was also particularly interested to see and try a ¾ size single B-flat horn by Paxman. The dealer said they had sold over 100 of these in Australia recently and they are really an ideal instrument for a young beginner to hold and play.

The next stop was the afternoon concert which was, you guessed it, horn ensembles.

The first group was from the Japanese Horn Society who played a pleasing program of the Norwegian March by Buyanovsky, an arrangement of Nimrod by Elgar, and a medley of Japanese folk songs. Next up was a group from the Sidney Conservatorium conducted by Ben Jacks, who nicely played an arrangement of the slow movement of Bruckner 7 and also La Danza from the first London Horn Sound album.

Concerts are not a contest but in a way in this type of concert at this type of event for the audience they become a bit of a contest, and in this case it actually mirrors a contest at the event. The next group threw it down and to my mind pretty much stole the show, Horn Pure from the Mahidol University College of Music in Thailand. The octet opened with Kerry Turner, Farewell to Red Castle, performed from memory with no conductor. Digest that for a moment; I don’t recall seeing such a thing from any college horn ensemble I have seen at a workshop and I hope they get a video up on YouTube soon. They for sure raised the bar and performed this work beautifully, a great example of the real variety of works and sounds that have come from the pen of Kerry Turner. The octet followed this with an arrangement of Thai folk songs and closed with Pirates of the Caribbean. Their director (but all was performed with no conductor) is Daren Robbins, who many Horn Matters readers will know as the brains behind www.hornexcerpts.org. They performed impressively for sure and it was clear why they won the horn ensemble competition this week at the symposium. I would love to hear this group again.

The final group was the “home team,” the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University Horn Ensemble. First, that they could play at all after manning tables and running around all day for four or five days was a testament to their skill. They played three very substantial and difficult works as well and they did a good job at them, opening with octet arrangements of two full nineteenth century orchestral works with no cuts, Der Freischutz Overture and Academic Festival Overture. The arrangements are by Armin Terzer and first I should commend these arrangements, they are really difficult and well done (I will be playing another of his arrangements on the final day as well). Another thing to mention is Armin has not only been the right hand man of the workshop host but also he has an international reputation of his own as a member of the YouTube Symphony. Check out this older Horn Matters post on his audition which is a very impressive video audition, and now I have been in the same room he filmed it in and have heard him play live multiple times. And the entire studio did a solid job reflecting serious effort on their part. Their closer was an arrangement of Braveheart for 8 horns, 4 Wagner tuben, and percussion which was a great closer to the concert and fit the mood and moment very well. I was glad, too, that it was over a bit early as I for sure needed a break, we have had a lot of long days.

An Evening of Massed Horn Choir

The evening concert was, you guessed it again, more horn ensembles. This time it was the Massed Horn Choir conducted and led by Randall Faust, host of the horn symposium last year.

To digress a bit first, students of mine over the years may recall playing an arrangement of Landsighting by Grieg for 6 horns in horn choir. I have done this a number of times and actually it is a work and arrangement that I purchased after playing it in the mass horn choir at my first International Horn Symposium in Charleston, IL back in 1983. Which is to say there must be students having the same experience tonight of playing works that they will come back to again with their own students.

In short it was an enjoyable and short concert performed by what I counted to be roughly 75-80 horns. They played a variety of works, my favorite being the Meditation (2007) for double horn choir by the conductor, Randall Faust. Bravo to him yet again!

There was a jazz concert later that probably was a lot of fun but I was very happy to be back in the hotel room before 8:00 PM for a change and was sleeping soundly before 10:00 PM. With the note being to future workshop hosts that a 40 minute concert in the evening on Thursday is OK with me!

Friday is the last full day and it looks to be another really full one. For those following this series as it is posted I don’t know if my final report will go up before I leave Australia or after I get back to the United States due to the window of time open to me, but there will for sure be at least one more post about the event so be checking back for it by this weekend, and for photos that go right along with this series of posts check the International Horn Society on Facebook.

Wednesday was quite a busy day where I again had to make some choices.

I was planning to start the day by hearing Annie Bosler present “Happy chops, happy body” as not only was Annie a former student from Brevard days but also I knew she was working on issues such as this even back then and now is on the faculty of the pre-college division at the Colburn School. However, as there was a schedule conflict for a judge I was called in to be a judge for the Dorothy Frizelle Orchestral Audition Contest. Without giving away secrets on this in short we heard some fine playing and for me personally it was especially interesting as not only had the late Dorothy Frizelle actually worked on my horn in roughly 1985 when I was a Masters degree student (she was an instrument repairman at that time in Rochester, NY) but also I got to judge with Michael Hatfield who had been my major professor for my Doctorate.

After the judging I was only able to hear the last work on the recital of David Thompson, España by Buyanovsky. This he laid down impressively by memory and I am told that the whole recital was by memory and quite impressive. Bravo to Thompson. This was actually the end of the second (!!) recital of the day, having also missed the recital that was at 9:30.

Two more recitals after lunch

After lunch I had options and I chose to hear the 2:00 recital or at least most of it. Before I go on though so readers know my process in writing these posts, I have some notes laid out for each day from before the symposium, I take notes during the day, I write them up in the evening, and then post them after sleeping on them in the brief period a day I pay for Internet access (usually 45 minutes for $11). As I start writing the remainder of this post (offline!) I am looking at nine pages of notes in my little notebook; really there was a lot to hear today.

One subtitle of the recital this afternoon could be old-school Conn 8D players. Three of the contributing artists on this program came from the United States with vintage Elkhart 8Ds with fixed bells showing their dedication to the cause! The first was John David Smith from the University of Delaware. He played two works and his performance of the Planel Légende was very strong.

Next up was the first of a whole bunch of world premiere performances today, the Sonata by Johanna Murphy performed by Jeffrey Powers of from Baylor University and Loretta Bloomer. I have not been mentioning pianists and perhaps should be; she learned this new work on very short notice and it is I feel an engaging and substantial new work that was performed very well. This work was partially supported by the Meir Rimon Commissioning Assistance Fund as were others heard later in the day. It is exciting to hear a piece and realize that it has not been performed before and to get a strong first impression. Powers also played a vintage 8D and again it was a strong performance.

Back to the topic of first impressions, the very next work was the Australian premiere of the Quartet No. 1 by Anthony Plog. This was a consortium commission and is also for sure an interesting and substantial new work for horn. It was performed by Brent Shires (University of Central Arkansas, on a vintage 8D), Susan McCullough (University of Denver), J. Greg Davis (Houston), and Nancy Joy (New Mexico State).

The last group I heard was Brenda Luchsinger (Alabama State University [another ASU!]), Nicholas Kenney (Concordia University), Patrick Smith (Virginia Commonwealth University), and Kristin Smith (Virginia) playing two works by Michael Kallstrom. These were both given spirited and tight performances by the group, the second being the very interestingly titled Headbanger.

After Headbanger I was not quite to the point of banging my head but I did really need a little break and stepped out before the closing group, the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts Horn Choir. Would have liked to have heard it but again this is the type of event that you really can’t hear it all.

The later afternoon recital was shared by Jeff Nelsen and Hiroshi Matsuzaki. Matsuzaki, Principal Horn of the NHK Symphony in Japan, opened the program with the Rheinberger Sonata, a work I enjoy hearing. As noted yesterday there is a setup issue with the big hall and while I have no doubt that he is a fine player with some great musical ideas, out in the audience for me honestly I don’t think he sounded his best. He sounded rather distant as his sound was mostly directed offstage; I would like to hear him again in another venue.

Nelsen took a different tactic and used a setup similar to that used by Frank Lloyd and it worked a lot better for me at least out in the audience. I also really loved his program. He opened with the Nehlybel Scherzo Concertante which is a great opener, which he followed with a little “encore” of a movement by Arthur Frackenpohl called the MP Rag from his Three Diversions for horn and piano. This the crowd also really got into, it is a cute piece for sure. Then we turned a corner to the extent that a new paragraph is in order.

Thunor’s Gate. Just reading the title you know it must be something big and interesting and it was. This was the second world premier of the day for me and it was again a work supported by the Rimon Fund. This one is for horn and live electronics and I thought was quite interesting and substantial. Thunor is the god of sea and storm; the work itself is meditative in character and is based on a technical level on manipulations of the horn sounds produced by the soloist.

Then we turned a corner again with Nelsen and he performed three works in collaboration with his wife, mezzo soprano Nina Yoshida Nelsen. This was another big score for me as an audience member as my wife is a mezzo as well. Call me biased but I just love the combination of horn and mezzo. They started out with and adaptation of the Brahms songs op. 91 for mezzo-soprano, viola and piano. Just beautiful, you can’t beat Brahms, and she has a great voice. But there is more! Next we had another world premiere, also supported by the Rimon Fund of a set of five songs for mezzo-soprano, horn, and piano by Ryan O’Connell Remembering the Future which I really liked too, it has a bit of a Broadway flavor and would please any audience. If that was not enough, the final work was the world premiere of a new arrangement of Time to Say Goodbye (the one Sarah Brightman sings) for TWO horns and mezzo-soprano and piano. For this they invited back to the stage Matsuzaki and it was a great finale to a really strong concert. Bravo to all!

And yet another concert

The evening recital was shared by Nicole Cash, William VerMeulen, and the Virtuoso Horn Duo. It was great. Then I went back to the hotel and relaxed briefly at the end of a long day.

OK, so after all the text above about the afternoon you are thinking “hey, Ericson, how about some details? You were going to leave us hanging like that?”

I was particularly interested to hear Nicole Cash as she is a player that is fairly new on the scene. If there were a “rookie of the year” award for International Horn Symposiums she set the bar really high with really beautiful tone and it all just sounds so easy and relaxed for her, I could listen to her play horn all day. Cash is Associate Principal horn of the San Francisco Symphony and everything she played was just great, including the Reynolds Partita, the Bitsch Variations, and especially the Willy Burkhard Romanze which was a work I was not familiar with and is one to look into more.

Next on the program listing (but they took turns playing, he actually played first) was William VerMeulen. As expected he also played great on a variety of works. The most significant perhaps was his last work which was the final world premier of the day (also Rimon Fund supported), Phoenix for horn and piano by Anthony DiLorenzo. It is a substantial three movement work with a Hollywood flavor to it and was only completed seven days ago (!), so to perform it to such a high level speaks to the skill of not only VerMeulen but also to the second pianist to mention for the day, Mitchell Leigh. Bravo to both and bravo again to VerMeulen for his efforts to commission this work!

Last on the program was the Virtuoso Horn Duo of Kerry Turner and Kristina Mascher. They also played a quite varied program very well. I did not mention that for this concert the setup was yet different again and I think the panels on each side of the piano did help with the sound in the audience being more consistent. As to the works they played I especially enjoyed Twas a Dark and Stormy Night for two horns and piano by Kerry Turner with its Gothic flare and also their encore, When I Fall in Love by Victor Young. Very tight, very enjoyable, what you would expect from a virtuoso duo.

This concert was a great one with tons of variety and came out at just under two and a half hours so nobody got overtime pay.

The schedule for Thursday is a lot different and will be a good bit more relaxing; check back tomorrow for more.

Tuesday morning I had to hear the 9:00 recital. Why? Because I was on the 11:30 recital in the same venue and I wanted to hear a few more players in the hall first! Part of being a smart artist is to hear other artists and if you can check out how they sounded in the hall because there are a lot of ways you could set up and in my case I had no rehearsal time in the recital hall.

The first artist on the schedule, Ysolt Clark, had to pull out of the concert due to a sick baby so the order was switched around to start with Bill Scharnberg from the University of North Texas. He certainly threw it down, showing that he could play chords well in Happy Blues by Zsolt Nagy and that he had tons of range and technique in Stephen Frank, Variations on Barnacle Bill the Sailor. This work was actually his arrangement of a bass trombone work (the exact words he used were “stolen and transposed”) and it was a crowd pleaser. Next up was Alan Mattingly and Nicholas Kenney from Nebraska with Majaliwa by Paul Basler for two horns and piano. This was also a hit with the audience, a very attractive work and well played. To close it out we had John Cox from Oregon who also sounded relaxed and threw down some great playing. His main work was the Sonate by Siegfried Köhler (1927-1984). This was a work I was unfamiliar with and it was effective, it is one to look into more.

After that, while I did have my ears checked for a hearing project being done at the workshop, I missed several potentially interesting sessions so that I could warm up and be ready for my performance of the Neuling Bagatelle on the 11:30 recital. This was a shared recital with several players. It started out with Susan McCullough from Denver and our current workshop host Peter Luft performing the Kuhlau Concertino for two horns op 45. The part I heard the best was the end where they surprised the audience and played the ending offstage. As I was offstage I had the best seat in the house for that. Next was Larry Lowe, horn professor at Brigham Young University. He is also a composer and the performance of his Sonata No. 2 for horn, soprano, and piano I believe was great, although I could hear very little of it through the door. This work was 2nd prize winner in the 2009 IHS Composition Competition and is one that while difficult really needs to be heard more. After that we had the Beethoven Sextett performed by Jeff Snedeker and Jonathan Stoneman on natural horns. I heard little of this again.

Then it was my turn onstage for something completely different. I was interested to play the Neuling for several reasons. One is that I only learned it a couple years ago and it is still pretty fresh for me but the bigger reason is it is a piece that everyone has heard of, it is a standard on European low horn auditions, but it is a work that almost nobody performs in public. It shows off pretty conclusively if you have or don’t have a good low range and if you can make a work that is not especially great sound interesting and melodic. I believe I came off in the category of players that are able to do that and it was exciting to be called back by the audience for a second bow.

As to the end of the program I will mention that Valentin Eschmann sounded quite strong on the solo horn arrangement of the Bach Toccata & Fugue in D Minor through the door. We will hear more from him later in the week.

Shifting Gears after Lunch

With that I can now start enjoying the event more as my main meetings, sessions, and performance events are behind me. In celebration my first session attended was Randy Faust on “Howe to Play Horn.” Marvin Howe is a person I never met but has long interested me as to this day I think nobody has written a better beginner method for horn. Much was covered but one focus was the “3 R’s” of Howe in relation to building the most beautiful tone, respiration, response, and resonance. Another interesting point, to me, was that the embouchure setup advocated by Howe was quite a bit different than that of Farkas, being considerably more downstream in function and much more like that described by Gunther Schuller. This will be a topic in the Hornmasters series in Horn Matters at some point soon.

I had been itching to try some horns and at this point started in on it. There are not as many horns here as at some events. I liked a couple horns I tried very well on first impression, an Alexander compensating triple and also a Finke triple, will try more another day.

After that I went to hear Rose French present a session on chamber music for horn, cello, and piano. Rose is IHS Exhibits Coordinator but also is an active player and teacher back in Phoenix and was my first student to complete their DMA at Arizona State. Her session related to transcriptions done as a part of her DMA project and at the end it was great to be able to congratulate her yet again.

The final afternoon session was Jonathan Stoneman interviewing Barry Tuckwell on the topic of “Essential Recordings.” This was a well attended session and I have enough notes about it to almost write a full post on it. Perhaps sometime in the future I will follow up more. The scenario was that Tuckwell was selecting eight recordings he would like to have with him if he were stranded on a desert island. His very interesting number one choice was Tommy Dorsey from 1935, for the beautiful natural lyric quality of his playing. Also in the Q and A I was very interested that Tuckwell agrees with the theory that Mozart 1 was not by Mozart but rather a re-writing by Mozart of a work of Leutgeb. I have more on this in this prior post and the case is pretty compelling. And finally I should mention that the album he said that he was most proud of and remembered the most fondly was his recording of Jerome Kern. This is currently available under the title A Sure Thing, and I am certainly interested to hear it now, I don’t own it.

Evening Recital

The evening concert featured Hector McDonald and Kostas Siskos. McDonald was mentioned yesterday and he opened the concert with the Brahms trio performed on Vienna horn. In this context the Vienna horn has much of the character of the natural horn and it was great to hear it live in this manner at the workshop, I would guess it to be a first for an International Horn Symposium.

One quick aside would be that about ten years ago I wanted to play the Brahms trio on natural horn and worked and worked on it for a few months. I then took it to the first rehearsal and that was it! I instead performed it on my standard double horn, and can say conclusively that it is probably twice as hard on natural horn and Vienna horn has to be harder than double horn in the say way by some similar factor. So for me this performance had a lot of wow factor but I don’t know if it hit the audience the same way or was lost on them a bit. Also, the setup unfortunately left the horn sounding a bit distant and under the volume of the violin by a degree.

Speaking of setups, virtually every player I have seen in this hall has tried a different setup and I think the hall has been a challenge for the soloists. I have seen setups ranging from lid completely closed to up full on the piano and the horn in every position left to right across the stage that you can imagine including the visually jarring facing away from the pianist. The problem being this venue is actually an opera theater and it is set for a show now with the pit open. There is a scrim down to define the back of the stage but behind that I am told is scenery for a show. What this has done I think is make the acoustic quirky on and off the stage.

Kostas Siskos is solo hornist of the Athens State Orchestra and is the first Greek horn player that has ever been featured at an International Horn Symposium. He stood well over to the side away from the pianist and came across on the Villanelle as a strong player but I wonder if he was overplaying in reaction to the hall, it was among the more aggressive interpretations of this work that I have ever heard.

After short selections by both artists (McDonald on the Gliere Nocturne and Siskos on two Greek song arrangements) the closer was McDonald and Siskos together playing the third double concerto by Friedrich Witt (1770-1837). The first part is a screamer and on this Siskos played first horn and I believe (it was a bit hard to see from my seat) that he played it on a single F descant. I don’t know if this is a first but these are not often seen (ASU owns one) and it gave each player of the duo a very distinctly different sound. Bravo to both artists!

I was glad the concert came in at a bit under two hours as well, as I was by that time running on fumes and every day so far feels like it has contained about two days of activities. I think participants should feel that they got their money’s worth.

No photo today, but if you want to see some be sure to check Facebook for the International Horn Society Fan Page, new photos are appearing there every day.

Wednesday looks to be another very busy day, more tomorrow.

The first full day of the event was Monday. Of all the days on the schedule this is perhaps the busiest on paper and in reality. For sure it would be impossible to be at everything as there were as many as four things happening at the same time. So choices had to be made, and one overall goal for the week is to go to as much as I can to things by presenters I have never heard before to keep things fresh.

Good Morning Brisbane

As I knew that I would have to miss the master class in the afternoon by Hector McDonald, which is one I really would have liked to have heard, I hit the trail early and went to his warm-up session at 8AM. MacDonald is a player that I was unfamiliar with but his bio describes him as an Australian horn soloist who is “presently Professor for Horn at the University for Music and the Performing Arts in Graz, Austria.” We will hear him more this week. I like warm-up sessions in general and will hit several during the week. My observation is they can be run one of two ways. One way is to set it up like the warm-up they would use and to run it through with the group of people present. The other way is to more or less talk about warming up without really playing much. Either way can be an interesting view into the pedagogy of the leader of the session. In this case McDonald hit pretty much a middle ground. In initial comments he emphasized how the warm-up will be different for everyone. His version started with stretching, some free and mouthpiece buzzing, and warming up on the F side. His warm-up session was led with him on Vienna horn which for me was a first at a workshop. The playing was a mixture of low flexibilities, scales, and long tones, all in the mid and low range. We never played above the staff in the hour, probably due to the constraints of time.

At 9:00 I had a rehearsal for the Advisory Council horn ensemble (more on this another day, with the notes for now being the surprise guest conductor was great and I don’t often need to double tongue down around low C!) and after that planned to go to the session by Oregon Symphony Principal Horn John Cox on the playing the long line. However, there was a room change and his room was quite full by the time my end of the line got to the door so I chose to rest a bit before the 11:30 recital.

The recital was by David Evans and Ben Jacks. Neither player is one that was familiar to me (both are principal horn players of orchestras in Australia) and this was a great first recital to hear. Evans played the Hindemith horn sonata with a beautiful sound and elegant slurs. Jacks played a new work by Philip Hall for horn and piano Alexander Pearce very handsomely but I must say the program behind the work was a bit depressing as it involved a tale of cannibalism.

A Good Afternoon

In any event, I had to duck out after that to get lunch and get ready for my Beyond Farkas presentation. This photo is of the electronic sign next to my door. The session went well and was attended by 40 or so hornists; I especially appreciated the great comments from the audience. This was the busiest hour scheduled for the whole week as there were actually four different things going on.

After a brief visit to exhibits (more on those another day) I had another Advisory Council meeting and a rehearsal and dinner. Whew!

Blasts from the Past

There is a balance any workshop host has to find, as people want to hear well-known individuals and groups but also want to hear the new talents of the horn world. Our host hit that balance with an Australian flavor over the course of the workshop.

Monday ended featuring Frank Lloyd and the American Horn Quartet. Mr. Lloyd and the AHQ are not exactly old timers of course but I a fairly sure this is the fourth workshop I have heard Lloyd and the AHQ play at over the years so for me they are old friends so to speak. Fortunately they both had some new things to hear.

As to Frank Lloyd, he just sounds so effortless when he plays. Wonderful playing although it curiously did not seem to wow the audience as much as I would have thought it should. It may have been the rep which was not well known. I was especially interested in his first work, the Quantz Concerto. I have never heard anyone play this live (Tuckwell recorded it years ago) and it was so refreshing to hear at a workshop. As I tell people often, on horn we have a group of Baroque concertos we could play that are better than music trumpet players play all the time. Also I should note that if there were an award for the most high C’s played in a concert at the event Lloyd certainly set the bar really high tonight.

As to the AHQ, they got the strongest audience reaction to their closer Casbah of Tetouan, the great work for five horns by Kerry Turner. I knew there was a brass quintet version of this work but I did not know until Turner gave the intro that actually that was the original version, composed way back in 1983, and it was re-written for five horns. Frank Lloyd was the guest hornist to fill out the group. I don’t know if it was the wood panels directly behind the group or some other quirk of my seating and the acoustic but the AHQ for me came across as playing in a more angular, aggressive style than I recall from them in the past. In any event it was a crowd pleasing show and a great end to the first full day.

Tuesday I have my solo performance and there is a lot more on the schedule. I will have more from the event tomorrow.

The first event of the 42^nd International Horn Symposium in Brisbane was on Sunday afternoon. But for members of the Advisory Council the event began on Saturday with more than ten hours of meetings and four more on Sunday morning.

To set the scene a bit, the hotel I am at is connected to the convention center and also is just across the street from the Conservatorium so everything for the event is close, split between these two venues. The Brisbane River is behind the Conservatorium and there are places to walk along the river and also toward shopping either over there or away from the river. And with it being winter in Australia the weather here is just gorgeous. The photo is an overall view of the area; the Conservatorium is behind the big Ferris wheel and the hotel behind that.

The first question I believe many readers might have is what do you do in over fourteen hours of meetings before a Symposium? As I start my second term on the Advisory Council I can assure you in there is a lot to address. To back up, the Advisory Council is the fifteen member body that effectively runs the IHS. To quote the bylaws, “The Advisory Council shall be responsible for carrying out the aims and purposes of the Society and determining Society policy. It shall have the ultimate and final charge in management of Society affairs excepting certain matters pertaining to the Annual Workshop.” Without going into gory details this year we have a 170 page agenda book to work through. Not all the business is done for this year as I write this, we will have several more meetings over the course of the workshop, but business is largely done I am happy to report.

The breaking news, just approved for release, is that IHS43 will be on the campus of San Francisco State University June 20-25, 2011. Be watching www.hornsociety.org for more details.

Turning back to Brisbane, my impression now that I am here after a relatively pleasant 14 hour direct flight from Los Angeles and three days on the ground is that this is a great venue for this event, really better than it seemed it might be just looking at photos and reading the descriptions. I sure hope some people make it to this workshop as it looks like it should be great.

Sunday afternoon was the first event of the symposium, the Welcome Ceremony. This was held at the Conservatorium as will be the majority of events and featured the “IHS42 Horn Ensemble,” Jeff Snedeker, and the American Horn Quartet. For an opening concert it was pretty eclectic. With a neat, newly written work for 16 horns Under Southern Skies by Sean O’Boyle (conducted by the composer) opening the event, the other works listed on the program were the James Nicholas Sonata No. 3 for natural horn and piano and Kerry Turner Waltzing Matilda.

Snedeker was on natural horn for this fairly recent work which was subtitled by the composer “Searching.” The subtitle is full of meaning as of course especially on natural horn we end up searching for the notes. I hope it is not a theme for the week! He had an encore as well, Le Basque like Dennis Brain played but on natural horn. A great surprise.

The concert closed with the first of what will be a number of performances by the American Horn Quartet. More about the AHQ later in the week but they sound in great form after their recent personnel change. They had two surprises on their part of the concert. Waltzing Matilda had two offstage horns which was very effective in the hall and also an encore, a brand new arrangement of Moon River.

In final random notes,

• One thing I did know was that the Internet probably would not be included with the room so I am opting to only access the Internet a short time every day (which is does not actually cramp writing these posts too much as I normally write drafts as Word documents) but also I did not know they use a different type of plug here! A trip over the river to the nearby mall solved that problem with the purchase of a converter.
• Rumor is that less people than they expected attended the ITG event and we may duplicate that at the horn event. Which is a shame as again it looks like ours will be a great one. If you are in the area reading this and have not planned to come to the event you should find a way to be here even briefly.
• Even with just a few days here I am sure this is a place I would love to visit again with my family. Keep it in mind if you are thinking of international travel.

I should be able to post every day I am here so be sure to be looking for more news from the symposium as the week goes forward, and while you are at it tell a friend to check out Horn Matters for these reports and also all the other great content in the site.

In several ways you can tell that there are more trumpet players than horn players out there. If you were to base this on Facebook alone however horns rule the brass at this time. The ITA, ITEA, and ITG all have no official Facebook fan page that I can locate, while for horn there are over 3,000 Fans of the IHS on Facebook! Even mellophone beats the trumpets, trombones, and tubas on Facebook with well over 1,000 members of the group I play Mellophone and therefore I’m awesome.

But there are areas where the trumpet players shine and conference coverage is certainly one of them. The ITG had their conference in Australia last week; to see great coverage of all the events check out this link. I will have some coverage of the horn symposium here next week to be sure so keep checking Horn Matters but don’t expect me to equal this! There are more trumpet players out there and they put together a great team of reporters, I believe with someone at every event the entire week which is very impressive not to mention photos of I believe every artist and full descriptions of everything! Very worth checking out or telling your trumpet friends to check out.

Early in the summer we took a road trip and among the CDs I took one of the family favorites was Meir Rimon, Horn of Plenty.

This recording by Meir Rimon (1946-91) was released way back in 1988 on the IBWP label. Rimon, who was Principal Horn of the Isreal Philharmonic, sounds just great on this recording Isreali pop music arranged for solo horn and chamber orchestra, his phrasings are really beautiful as is his sound. When he goes up to the top of his range a wonderful, light quality comes into his sound and I suspect it is where he is up on the high F side, as he was an early adopter of the triple horn. Song titles, to give you the mood of the album, include numbers such as “Perhaps it was Just a Dream,” “Kinneret of Thee I Sing,” Soldiers’ Love Song,” etc. The arrangements are creative and very nicely done as a multi track project in a studio. The horn playing, again, is just great.

If you check iTunes this CD is not listed but his recordings on the Crystal label are still available. If this review has you interested in hearing Meir Rimon, Dances, Moods, and Romances in particular has several tracks in a similar style to those on Horn of Plenty. There are samples of the tracks on iTunes and also in the Crystal Records website. Highly recommended as summer listening.

Sunday, July 18 2010 will mark the opening day of IHS Brisbane. I will be there performing and presenting a session and look forward to the event and program. There are many featured players at the event that I am not familiar with whom I very much look forward to meeting and hearing, and I will have more time to do that than at the last two IHS events as I won’t have a booth for Horn Notes Edition.

I have been looking at the website to get an idea of what is in store for me and I would invite Horn Matters readers to look it over as well. A first stop is the page of artists where you will find there are two categories of artists. I am a “contributing artist.” If you go to the page with my listing you will see there are a lot of them. The “featured artists” are here.  Perhaps it is a quirk of my computers but I can only get the PDF biographies of the artists to open in Internet Explorer. Firefox, Safari, and Chrome (my current favorite) don’t work for me with these PDF files. So if you can only see a lot of names and can see photos in this section you will need to try another program or computer. But even with just the photos and names it looks like quite a variety of players and a lot of them I know very little about so I will be making good use of the program book when I arrive.

Besides performing in horn ensembles and also the Neuling Bagatelle on a recital, I mentioned above that I am giving a session, which will be an improved version of my “Beyond Farkas” session. Unfortunately, full information on lecture programs is also not yet available online but you can from this page access this full schedule for the week which paints the general picture of what the week will look like. It looks like a great week of events divided between the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University and the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Center with often multiple events at the same time. For example, my session looks to be one of three sessions and a concert going on at the same time on their Monday afternoon! I hope I have an audience! I was told that it would be in a smart classroom that had Internet access but it looks to be at the convention center. Hopefully I will still be able to access the online portion of the session, and at least you can for sure from home, the session notes are here, along with a link to more discussion of the topic on the Mellocast.

From the event I will as possible post on the week as it progresses, the first few days being extremely busy for me so no promises! Hopefully the updates from the event will inspire you to come to the next international symposium if you are not already heading to Australia this year. And we at Horn Matters will have the location and dates for IHS 2011 as soon as they are firm and ready for the public, which should be soon.

First a question, did you notice any general category of technical material missing from the materials in the previous posts in this series?

In the first post I mentioned the Reynolds etudes. I studied with Verne Reynolds and I end up using his etudes to a point with advanced students but to be honest, and this may sound like heresy again, what I really wish I could say is I have found is a book that is similar to Reynolds but the etudes are somewhat shorter and easier and could be attempted by younger students. Because that is the material I am still looking for.

In the Horn Central website there are  currently 194 horn studies books listed on this page. Certainly nothing listed there has quite reached the level of being a standard that is from the category of contemporary in style and not overly difficult.

A book I have been thinking about trying in lessons next year is this one, The Oliveros Interval Studies by Pauline Oliveros. These were written in 1959 and were published in 2002 by Burdick’s Edition; the listing to purchase may be found on this page. Oliveros is better known for electronic art music so these are a unique part of her output; I am sure not many horn players or teachers know of these etudes.

Musically these etudes do fit in at a place something like the Reynolds etudes (they are both interval based books) but not so long or difficult. They also seem musically interesting based on my impression to this point and it is a nice short book. However, and I hate to be overly critical in reviews such as this, I am a tough customer when it comes to music notation and I do wish they were notated better by the publisher. Still, it is not an expensive edition and is an option to consider trying as it is important to work on materials in a more contemporary style.

Besides the Reynolds the only other books that I have actually used in lessons from this general category are the Schuller Studies for Horn and the Falk Vingt Etudes Atonales (20 Atonal Studies). There are I am sure other books out there of this type that I have not tried; your thoughtful comments on this topic are certainly welcomed below. Or better still, if you are a composer/hornist, get busy, there is a market for something of this type that will track well in lessons week to week in a contemporary style.

One last little note, we have noted in our stats some traffic coming to us from the Horn Central website which is part of why I wanted to cite it above. It is a large site with quite a bit of horn info on it, developed by Brigitte Labelle. Congratulations to her on a nice site worth checking out if you have not yet done so.

First, to add one big point in the previous post in this series, I don’t teach with a one-size-fits-all routine that is the same with every student. There is a big picture that we are working with individuals who have differing strengths and weaknesses.

My Doctorate is in brass pedagogy and my dissertation focused on 19th century horn methods. The title was this mouthful: “The Development of Valved Horn Technique in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany: A Survey of Performers and Works Before 1850 With Respect to the use of Crooks, Right-Hand Technique, Transposition, and Valves.” In short I looked at a lot of 19th century publications. This opened my eyes to a number of books out there that while not well known today give a clear window into the pedagogy of master horn teachers of long ago.

What is great about these books in general is these materials were written above all to fill a need in their teaching and that got me thinking about them as I considered what I felt I needed to make my teaching more effective. But on the negative side these old methods are extremely dated and organized in a way that is really hard to use today. They suited the teachers who put them together but don’t suit the modern student very well.

What I did was over time begin to split out the best of these materials and organize them into a technique book. I did not begin to use these until a few years into my teaching in Arizona and only this summer in the final version underway now I put the names of the composers of the exercises back in. Most of my current students probably only have a vague idea who wrote the exercises they have been working on, but the truth is coming out!

The biggest chunk of music comes from the Meifred method published way back in 1840. This was the first significant method written for the valved horn and I still marvel at what he did as really he was pretty much starting from scratch as to how to present development of finger technique. I have a lot more background on Meifred here. People don’t use this book today for several reasons, among those being he was actually pushing a very unique approach to valve horn technique that combined valves and right hand technique in the bell. (And, of course, it is long out of print). But if you eliminate that part of the equation actually the materials Meifred created for this book are pretty inventive and have a lot of practical use today.

Besides Meifred, the Kling and Gallay methods are also referenced about equally in the technical materials I have developed. Both present some really nice scale patterns and also I use a number of their exercises for transposition study. As an aside, Kling was also very quotable in his method and did not hold back in passages such as this:

The assertion, which has been absurdly made in recent times, that the use of the crooks in connection with the ventil [valve] horn should be discontinued, as being absolutely useless, since everything could be transposed on the F-horn, is not worth serious consideration. Hornists who follow such mischievous advice by attempting to transpose all passages on the F horn will find themselves frequently coming to grief and exposing themselves to the ridicule of the audience. I advise the employment of the G, A, and high B-flat crooks whenever these are indicated by the composer. By their aid, the passages will be rendered with greater ease, more clearly and with truer tone than when they are transposed on the F horn.

In the main technical part of the book the other horn teachers referenced are Dauprat and Schantl. The Dauprat method is huge, and I mainly reference some of his low range exercises for transposition study. From Schantl I have drawn a few melodic etudes that are “lost etudes” compared to those selected by Pottag in his book of preparatory melodies. From Meifred and Kling I also reference other short melodic etudes; the idea is to balance the finger technique with melodic studies to work on turning great phrases.

Horn teachers don’t teach double tonguing much. I have used materials in the Yancich Method because Arban studies on the whole seem a bit high and there is not that much else that I want students to work on from Arban. What I did for double tonguing in the technique book was track in Arban studies for the most part transposed down a bit so they lay better for horn.

Lastly in my collection I reference some tuning studies from the Gumpert and Kling methods. These I use more as sight reading than anything else, which is why I have them in an appendix, but they are I think very valuable and underrated resources.

As I write this post the technique book has been through a couple generations of draft versions and is nearing the layout stage for publication. It will hopefully be in print at the end of the summer along with a low range collection selected from Bordogni, Gallay, and Pre. These two publications will for me fill a big gap in what is out there and will hopefully be of interest to other teachers who are looking for new, practical materials. However, there is still one general area of technical material that I would love to find some better materials, and that will be the topic for the final post in this series.