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Recently I stumbled across my notes from the first big horn master class I ever attended, on October 18, 1982 with Barry Tuckwell at the University of Kansas. It probably was not the very first master class I ever attended, but I have no clear memories of any prior master classes. I took plenty of notes, which I believe Horn Matters readers will find interesting to reflect on.
I also don’t know for sure how I heard about this master class, but there must have been a mailing from the professor at KU, David Bushhouse, whom I had taken a few lessons with.
John Ericson in 1982
The fall of 1982 found me starting my Junior year at Emporia State University. Emporia, KS, was my home town, and my dad taught Chemistry at Emporia State. I had started college as a music business major with a goal of becoming an instrument repairman, but switched to performance the middle of my sophomore year. The previous summer I had studied with David Wakefield at the Aspen Music Festival and changed my embouchure and horn! I was playing a school E-series 8D rather than the Holton I had played since high school, seen in the photo here. I was at the time taking weekly lessons with my Emporia State horn teacher Melbern Nixon (who was a trombonist) and had just started taking nearly weekly extra lessons with Nick Smith in Wichita. In short, I was pretty motivated, and a master class with Tuckwell was an event I was not going to miss.
That October Saturday at KU, the scene itself of that recital hall and the players on stage, is amazingly fresh in my memories, even though 40 years have passed. As mentioned, I took plenty of notes, enough to split this article into two parts. The players are in the order they performed that day.
The very first comment
Tuckwell must have played a few notes, and I immediately noted something that really surprised me. I was very familiar with his recordings — but he did not at all sound like I thought he would in a room. What I wrote was “Tuckwell sounds like he’s playing muted (cup mute).” It was quite covered to my taste of the time, and was really not what is typically done now either.
I did not write it down, but his horn was a (modified) Holton 180. I did note almost all the other horns, so for sure you can see I was already an equipment person.
Franz Strauss: Concerto, Op. 8, mvt. 1
I actually did not write down what F. Strauss work this was, but memory and the notes taken would indicate it was probably the first movement of the Franz Strauss concerto. The player was Nan Funkhauser. I believe she was considered a graduate student (I knew she and her husband Jim had a good-sized private studio in the KC area, and both of them played professionally — looking online, I see she was subsequently in the Kansas City Symphony for 25 seasons). She was playing an 8D.
The first comments from Tuckwell were about focusing on the lyrical rather than the technical. Then he commented on her dynamics. What I wrote exactly was “Don’t play too soft at all dynamics.” He encouraged her to have more of a timbre change between loud and soft. In particular he seemed to have felt she was losing her tone when she got too soft. With years of teaching now I think what he was getting at was it was simply all too soft, not soloistic enough, needed to expand the dynamic range overall.
Gliere Concerto, mvt. 3
Up next was Lisa Krank playing Gliere on a King horn (probably an Eroica). My impression is she was an undergrad. On this Tuckwell zeroed in on breathing issues, and basically every comment related to breathing.
Stepping back for a second, one of the first things to go when you are nervous is breathing. I would guess that is part of what happened for Lisa that day.
He certainly wanted her to take a big breath without tensing up, saving air at the beginning of longer phrases. He specifically commented that you should not think of compressing air as part of this. I also wonder if she had a bit of a hesitation attack issue, as he wanted her to coordinate her breathing better, that she needed (as I wrote it) to “feel rhythm in breathing & playing.”
Strauss 2:3
Our player for the final movement of Strass 2 was Max Cripe. I had met Max in All-State band when we were high school seniors (I was well down the section from him), and the summer of 1981 we both had been in the Kansas Bandmasters Association Intercollegiate Band. Cripe is one of the players that you potentially have heard of, as he was for many years Principal Horn in the Marine Band in DC. At the time he was playing an 8D, and quite a way ahead of me as a player in terms of rep, I would not tackle Strauss 2 until I was a Master’s degree student.
I have a lot of notes on Max. He seemed to stimulate some extra interest from Tuckwell, perhaps he recognized he was playing on a higher level. I won’t quote all of my notes, but here is a good sample.
- Grade dynamics better between loud & soft
- Arch fingers on key[s]
- Phrase melody – like voice [his concern was that phrase endings needed to be nicely tapered, covered in the next comment in my notes, with drawings to clarify it at the time]
- Don’t play repeated notes exactly the same
- Be more conscious of what you accent
- All alternates [fingerings] — don’t try to cover up what you can ‘t do through them, use for varied tones, etc. (started on G, 1st valve) [I think the basic issue was the G might have been out of tune]
- Look down at high notes, not up
- Lighten technique
- A master can play well even with basic faults
That last comment I’m not sure quite what he was getting at, and there was another one I skipped that had to do with “affect legato” but I’m not sure what he/I was getting at there either.
In any case, the class was not over, and when this series returns next week we will look at the Hindemith Sonata and Strauss 2:1, with some final Q&A!
Continue reading Tuckwell 1982 series
