Attentive readers in this series would have noted that, earlier in his list (numbers 14, 15, and 16), Hill covered the extended techniques of lip trills, stopped horn, and muted horn (click here to go back to number 14). But there are, at an even higher level, more extended techniques to learn.
How important are they, really?
The fact is you could play horn for a lifetime and at a high level and hardly run into any of these techniques.
That said, there is always the chance there is some $$ situation where things come up and it really matters that you can play the extended techniques correctly and convincingly.
Story time
With that thought, I have a story in two parts from probably my second summer at the Aspen Music Festival, 1983. I was an undergrad. Within a few weeks of each other I played very different, recent works in student orchestras with composers as conductor, and clearly learned a lesson, that there are two types of composers.
One composer, I can still see him in my mind, but I really can’t remember his name. I think he was an American composer. His work was for a full orchestra, but it was a type of chance music. If I remember correctly, he would point at your section and held up a piece of paper with a number on it and you played that event at that time. It was kind of a sound painting exercise, and no two performances were ever going to sound the same! What we had to play included various extended techniques, and it was really enjoyable to play. He was very relaxed and was pretty much happy with anything anyone did in the spirit of his notation.
The other composer, I can remember his name but maybe better not to say it. European composer, more famous, deceased now. His work was very complicated with, beyond various extended techniques, unusual rhythms and intervals in a very thin texture. And he was very uptight. I was playing second horn, and he was very unhappy with the first horn. Eventually he made a big stink and one of the horn faculty (!) replaced the student first horn. I thought she was doing OK, but he did not. In retrospect maybe he had some strong financial interest in getting a good recording at the festival. Or some personal backstory with Aspen. I don’t know.
The experience though helped me see that how you approach extended techniques is influenced by the composer or at least my sense of the composer. Some are looking for an effect and will be happy with most anything you do that is in the neighborhood of what is notated. Others, they want every jot and tittle of their notation to be performed exactly as notated. It’s your job to figure it out.
For that latter group, you really owe it to yourself to try to play every extended technique as closely to the composer’s intention as you can.
The best music to work on these extended techniques
I highly recommend solo horn works. There are a lot of them that make use to varying degrees all of the advanced techniques mentioned by Hill.
When I work on these with students, I consider the points made above. But the starting point is always the markings made by the composer. They put effort into putting those there, and if they say staccato and soft at a certain tempo, for example, that is your goal. At least try it first! You can’t just play anything.
A little help with any of these advanced techniques?
Of all the ones listed by Hill probably my favorite is vocalizations or horn chords. I can play a pretty decent horn chord outside of a performance context! They are a challenge. I have more on the topic in this article:
Oh, and glissandi are a piece of cake to play and fun, more here:
Update: For a podcast on the topic of this article and the previous one see Episode 66 of the Horn Notes Podcast (direct link, but find it anywhere you get podcasts).
When the series continues the topic is the natural horn.
Continue reading the Fundamentals Series
