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The repertoire portion of the course is organized as an overview of the historical development of the horn, from the earliest days of the horn to the present.
The horn before 1750, an overview
This week the focus is the very first article in what became a long series of readings that were posted specifically for the repertoire and pedagogy courses at ASU. My overview of the horn before 1750 may be accessed here:
One of several potential elephants in the room: What is “standard rep” anyway?
Before we get to actual music it is worth thinking about the topic of “standard rep” for the horn.
Speaking broadly, in this course due to time constraints I feel that I have no choice but to focus somewhat on introducing works that are “standard” horn rep, determined by my perception of what works have been recorded and performed often in recent years. It is a bit of a moving target, but there are works that would be widely considered to be standards of the horn world.
As we go on in the course there are many “popular” works to look at, works that are standards by virtue of being performed often. From the Baroque period though, there are hardly any “standard rep” works, which gives us more room to look at works that I think are significant, even if at present rarely performed.
Go for Baroque
At one point some years ago I had a workshop presentation titled “Go for Baroque!” which attempted (unsuccessfully) to champion several of the works we will look at this week. We have pieces for horn, original works from the Baroque period, that if they were for trumpet they would be performed literally all the time. On horn though, they are rather high, and with the limited use of descant horns they are, sadly, somewhat out of reach of most players.
It would be possible to structure the overall course very differently, and I have considered big changes. At this time I still feel that I owe students a clear look at the most important, standard works as part of an overall historical overview of the horn. But be aware that you should keep an eye and ear open for works that lie outside the realm of conventional, standard works. These works it may be up to you to champion and bring to the attention of others.
We will have listening
A work I would highlight to online readers from our initial listening is the one “standard” solo concerto to come from the time, the Telemann Concerto in D. Discussion will also focus this week on other works listed on page 37 of Playing Natural Horn Today. And this brief article on Telemann and the horn (also linked from the article above) is a good, introductory reading.
Continue to Week 5 of Repertoire Course
This is week 4 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.
