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As we now get to looking at horn repertoire (especially solo and chamber literature) more directly, a critical first topic is playing the natural horn.
Music is composed with an instrument (and players) in mind
Composers, especially from earlier times, were writing pieces to be played on concerts or at events that were coming up soon, and writing them so that they could be played by the performers they had available and the instruments those players had available. Thus, understanding the natural horn is a key to understanding a big chunk of music that is important to our repertoire. The music was written for the natural horn and has specific characteristics that were driven by the capabilities of the instrument.
For those following only online, a brief introduction may be found here:
However, students actually taking this class at Arizona State will be given a copy of my recent publication, Introducing the Natural Horn, and bring a mouthpiece! We will be playing natural horns together in class. The book is introduced here, with a short video for reference:
The topic of mouthpiece choice
I will demonstrate this in class as well, but for those only reading this class online it is important to note that mouthpieces used on the natural horn differed a great deal from those used today. They were made of sheet metal and were very deep, complementing the design of the natural horn in terms of tone and flexibility. A typical modern mouthpiece does not sound or work that well on natural horn. The one illustrated here is a reproduction made by Richard Seraphinoff.
In my own playing on natural horn I typically use a “compromise” mouthpiece. If you are interested in more on the topic, the following article has some useful information:
The natural horn is not for everyone…
As I also state in my method, the natural horn is not for everyone, but it really can be a valuable part of the overall process to working out your horn technique, and certainly in terms of understanding our repertoire it is something you have to have tried to play a little if you are an advanced horn student.
Next week we will begin our look at the horn in the Baroque period. The class sessions as they go forward also involve listening to portions of works together, and looking at the music. How readers following along solely over the Internet manage this element of the course is up to you, but much of the music we will study is standard repertoire that may be found on YouTube and many other places.
Continue to Week 4 of repertoire course
This is week 3 of a fourteen week course in horn repertoire, the second semester of a broad overview of horn repertoire, performance, and pedagogy. The introductory article is here, and the series is presented for the educational purposes of our readers.
