I wrote in a recent Instagram post that
One of the most basic techniques of natural horn is to match the sound of natural slurs and slurs that you have to legato tongue. This exercise is by Duverony and is an excellent one for matching types of slurs on the natural horn. I should add that there are fine players that will still slur that written B to C, for example, instead of legato tonguing it. My training was to avoid doing that, it’s not artistic sounding in many situations. My goal is that the legato tonguing closely matches the sound of the natural slurs. I practice exercises like this every time I get a natural horn out. For more examples of this type of exercise see my natural horn book.
Unpacking that
I don’t post a lot to Instagram, but when I do the content that gets the most likes is the natural horn content.
And I pay attention to other natural horn content as well. When you do, you will see there is a divide between players in terms of how they approach slurs.
Going to the exercise I used in my post,
There are slurs on two pairs of notes. The C-D slurs are natural slurs; two different harmonics are involved. Play those as normal. The B-C slurs, however, are not natural slurs, as they are on the same harmonic. For these my training is that you should legato tongue these slurs. This is to avoid the slide between pitches, and is the same type of legato tonguing used all the time on the trombone. With practice you can match the two types very closely. An audience should hardly notice any difference between the two types of slurs.
I’m firmly in the legato tongue camp on these slurs. However, you won’t look long to find fine players not tonguing that or similar intervals, with audible slides between notes. I think it does not sound very good that way, but obviously opinions vary on this. It bothers me less if the music is very fast, which is the point I might begin to use them too. But never on slower music.
Practice and articulation choices
Another point I’d make is on the topic of practice on the natural horn. You should be practicing exercises like these Duvernoy exercises every day. If you can’t make something like this sound good you really have no business posting more difficult natural horn content on Instagram.
And I’ll just throw this out briefly, but this does also point out that the slurs in printed editions of say Mozart often don’t work on natural horn, you must modify them to be clear where legato tonguing of this type is appropriate. Something that doing exercises like this one helps point out to us today.
Anyway, that’s the context of my Instagram post and a few things I’d hope anyone interested in natural horn would give some thought to.
BONUS: Building natural horns?
Earlier this summer I finished rebuilding two different early (and basket case/wall hanger) valve horns into nice natural horns. The one below is the one I’m playing in the post, it has a pre-WW1 Glassl bell. It came out well and is a lot of fun to play. A photo of the horn is below, and if you are interested in more details on this, check this post in my personal blog.
