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This post is from the original HTML Horn Notes Blog; this particular post dates to 8/6/05, and was from the end of a summer of performing Principal Horn and teaching at the Brevard Music Center.
Today is our final performance of the summer at Brevard, Mahler 6. Playing this work again has been interesting in terms of dynamics both for myself and the students involved.
I performed in the Nashville Symphony for five seasons, have played a good bit elsewhere (National Repertory Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic, Phoenix Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, etc.) and believe that I have a good handle on a wide range of dynamics on the horn. Frankly it does not get much louder or softer than the levels I can produce.
In short, my perception is on this concert today I will be playing soft dynamics either literally or below printed levels and louds that are often right up at my maximum dynamic, one to two levels over the printed dynamic. I am not sure what the students in the section make of this as on one hand our conductor is asking us in words to play F only F but then upon hearing that dynamic immediately asks for the same spot to be clearly louder and more aggressive than printed, at least in the horns.
I feel sure that if you dropped me back in the Nashville Symphony section playing as loud as I am today I would get fired! I would stick out like a sore thumb, way way over the top. But here, it is never loud enough for our conductor in the big spots.
There are several “why’s” as to why so loud today. One element is the hall is semi open and has no real ceiling, just fly space for opera props, so as a result the horns don’t normally project well ever. On top of that, while normally we sit in front of the timpani, due to numbers of people we are sitting on the floor in front of the trumpets who are on risers in front of the timpani. We might as well be sitting in a hole; I believe this alone cut horn projection towards 20%, but we get no sympathy. On top of that, our conductor just likes loud horns and is constantly asking for louder, uglier sounds. At one point in a rehearsal he told us at 4 after 105 to sound like “vomit” for example. The section has 7 college students in it, not all of whom can produce a loud enough peak dynamic for our conductor, which puts more burden on me. Finally, we have to try to balance a trumpet section on risers that he also likes to hear a lot of that is projecting out very easily where again, we just don’t project.
The concert will come off fine, and I will try to lead at the dynamic he wants. Orchestral playing is not only an art but also a craft, and part of the craft of orchestral playing is playing what the conductor asks. For situations like today you have to have the dynamic ready that is the one you use when the conductor keeps asking for loud. Mentally you have to think something like “loud, you want loud? I’ll give you loud!”
At the same time, some conductors just don’t want loud. I am sure the current [now former] director of orchestras at ASU has a chamber orchestra sound in his head even with the large orchestra, so he basically never wants the horns to open up. Back in the National Repertory Orchestra certainly the conductor there did not want a lot of horn. In Nashville our conductor had been a fine trumpet player and generally liked a lot of brass but, again, if I was playing as loudly as I will today generally I would not have received tenure. In orchestra you have to gauge what you do to what they want. Sometimes I think it would also help to have psychic powers, but with conductors I guess too part of it is they want to keep you guessing as to what they want.
Part of any choice of dynamic level is the size of the orchestra and the size and acoustic of the hall. The world you work in impacts your choice of dynamics to be sure, and this comes in as an element at auditions more than students might expect. For us today, we are in a large orchestra in a large hall where horns just don’t project well, so if this was a full time year round job the ideal hornists would have iron chops and crazy loud dynamics to compensate for the hall.
Also, of course, volume relates to the importance of the line you are playing and balancing the other instruments you are playing with. In orchestra on horn you constantly encounter many woodwind quintet like groupings that must be balanced carefully with very gentle “louds” followed by many full brass section passages that require a whole different approach. But if a conductor is telling you to play louder or softer to a point you just have to trust that they are looking for a balance and you just do it.
In terms of today, I would love to put this in a good concert hall and see what out conductor thinks of the dynamics then. He wants loud, aggressive horn playing but I believe that he would be very surprised at just how loud and aggressive we really are playing, but in the hall we are in he just can’t hear it.
In short, try to hear the balance around you and follow the markings but ultimately in orchestra too loud is when the conductor tells you it is too loud.
