As we begin this look at orchestral playing, it is important to take a bit of time and step back and look at professional orchestral playing from several angles.
You need a good resume
One of the projects this semester is to develop a great, professional resume. To prepare this document there is an excellent guide put out by the American Federation of Musicians (available to members only), and I would also point to this reading in the great Douglas Yeo trombone website as our first assigned reading of the semester:
What music should you practice in general?
As to what to practice to prepare for auditions, besides cross training your technique in every way possible (solos/etudes/etc.) I have developed two different lists that will be of use for reference. First up are the
These would serve well to guide basic horn study toward the goals of reaching the next level for the advancing student. Next up is the the
This list of excerpts for study are based on the results of a survey I did of major orchestra audition lists. For the complete results see John Ericson, “A New ICSOM Audition List Survey,” The Horn Call 33, no. 1 (October, 2002), 53-55. In short, if you know every major excerpt in every work on the left side of this PDF list very well you are getting towards where you need to be to win a job.
Horn Matters has a large online resource of orchestral horn parts, keyed to the list above, and a three volume PDF excerpt book as well, all accessible from the link below:
What about excerpt books?
For the initial learning of excerpts, standard published excerpt books can certainly be quite useful.
While I currently mostly use my PDF excerpt books, I still recommend to my students highly the Anthology of French Horn Music by Moore and Ettore, published by Mel Bay. The Anthology is to be especially noted for not only presenting well thought out and laid out excerpts, but for also giving good solid suggested metronome markings and other tips for every work, information that is alone well worth the cost of the volume. The only major shortcoming is that this publication has no Shostakovich, Strauss, Mahler, or Wagner excerpts.
For introductory versions of excerpts from those works my suggested resource is the Horn Player’s Audition Handbook by Arthur LaBar, published by Belwin. Published in 1986, this book includes in addition to Shostakovich 5, major excerpts from Strauss, Mahler, and Wagner. Combined with all the other standard works included and the list of terms at the back it is a great resource for initial excerpt study, although in some cases it does not give you quite what you need from the works included (such as only half of the excerpt at the opening of Tchaik 4).
A final book to mention that is also a good, comprehensive resource is Orchester Probespiel (Test Pieces for Orchestral Auditions) published by Peters. It is very European in relation to what works were selected and has some quirky choices in editing (such as missing the first bar of the third movement excerpt from Beethoven 6), but covers a good selection of major works that are in the public domain (no Shostakovich), including a number of operatic works and a long section of Wagner tuba excerpts (!) at the back.
The Mel Bay Anthology and the LaBar make a good combination for introductory excerpt study, but any of the above books can work well with an advancing horn student, especially when supplemented with the actual orchestral parts such as found in the Horn Matters online resource.
Those pesky foreign terms
While you are at it, if you are serious about playing the horn at a high level you must know what the foreign terms in the music mean! Below is a handy checklist that was also referenced last semester, with terms that are especially worth learning as they show up often in real life. Never ever walk into a lesson or rehearsal not knowing what the foreign musical terms in a work mean!
Who is your audience at an audition?
As to who your audience is at an audition is another part of the discussion this week. It is a topic that students rarely consider.
The short answer is your audience changes from round to round of a professional audition. Ultimately in a final round you are playing for the conductor to win an orchestral job, with the audition committee serving only in an advisory capacity. Initial rounds are in the hands of the audition committee, the composition of which will be dictated by terms spelled out in the master agreement that the musicians have with the orchestra. But, again, eventually you are playing for the conductor, and you need to have that in your mind in relation to your approach to many performance elements.
The final two “Hornmasters” readings, on conductors
Related to that thought, the final two articles in the Hornmasters series are the last required readings for this week.
For some flavor as to what you will read in the above links, I offer this from the second article above, a favorite of mine from all the quotes from the Hornmasters.
The eminent violinist, Isaac Stern, said jokingly, “There are only six conductors in the world. All the rest are bums!” An exaggeration of course, but we all know what he meant.
Next week the focus is on Orchestral Auditions.
Continue to Week 2 of the Repertoire Course
This is week 1 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.
