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SubCategory Archive (tags): ‘Brass instrument history’

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Brahms and Modern Performance on the Natural Horn

PUBLISHED: January 13, 2011, John Ericson

Brahms wrote for the natural horn in all of his works but wrote for it in a period when the valved horn was coming into widespread use. Periodically a question will come in about this, as it is something that is puzzling to us today, in particular in relation to modern performances of the works [...]

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Brass instrument history

Horns on the Recital II: Single Horns

PUBLISHED: September 5, 2010, John Ericson

After the natural horn the next phase of the story of the horn to feature on the recital this year is the early valved horn. For this phase I also had several options as to horns. ASU owns a couple of piston valve horns and the single horn in this article was given a good [...]

What is an Authentic Sound?

PUBLISHED: August 24, 2010, John Ericson

In late September I will be playing a recital on several different period horns. I will be posting on those in the coming weeks but would first like to step back and begin with a comparison of a few important construction details of the modern horn and the hand horn that relate to the bigger [...]

Long Before Farkas: Horn Mutes and Other Advice for Brass Players from 1813

PUBLISHED: June 3, 2010, John Ericson

Way back in 1813 a comprehensive method book with sections on all the instruments was published, the Vollständige Theoretisch-pracktische Musikschule [Complete Theoretical-practical Music Method] of Joseph Fröhlich. The various instrument methods published inside this work are reasonably well known to scholars (they were also published separately from the full Musikschule), but as described in the [...]

A First Visit to the Musical Instrument Museum

PUBLISHED: May 11, 2010, John Ericson

On Sunday I was able with other Arizona State faculty take a special tour of the Musical Instrument Museum which just opened on April 24. This huge new museum (75,000 square feet of exhibition space!) is breathtaking and needs to be on the must see list of every musician or lover of music who visits [...]

Why is the Short Valve in the Middle?

PUBLISHED: February 14, 2010, John Ericson

Following up on the post on why the valve was invented, another question that comes in periodically is why is the second valve in the middle, as in it might make more logical sense to have the first valve be the short one, the second one longer, and the third longest. In a sense it [...]

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Brass instrument history

Why was the Valve Invented?

PUBLISHED: February 10, 2010, John Ericson

A question that comes up periodically is that of why was the valve invented. There is a myth that is repeated often that they were invented as a crook changing device and only later did players realize that they could use them to play chromatic passages. Myth? Yes, this is absolutely a myth. I wrote [...]

John Ericson & Bruce Hembd
on the French horn, brass related topics, and the field of classical music.