A comment on the previous post (thank you Tim!) reminded me of another trick (I mean, extended technique) of horn playing.
This old-time trick involves a very handy “alternate fingering” for the very exposed high Bb in the following excerpt.
What you do — on a Kruspe! — is this. Take your F horn first valve slide completely off the horn. And play the high Bb on that fingering, F horn first valve. The sound will come out the slide tube (!) as a light but very plausible (more plausible than a cracked note!) high Bb. You still have to buzz it with your lips, but it’s extremely secure. For the remainder of the passage, go back to your regular fingerings.
It helps also, in context, that the second horn has the same four notes down an octave.
This works well on a Kruspe wrap horn and probably some others, but, as with the high C trick, I think knowledge of this trick is not common today with all the Geyer style horns in use.
Would I use it?
Ha ha, short story there. The one time I played first horn on Beethoven 4 I used my descant for that passage. So, no, I would not use it in performance. This passage is pretty much an advertisement for getting a descant or triple if you play a lot of first horn.
That said, occasionally composers will ask for the very real extended technique of notes to be sounded out a valve slide like this. Tuning will likely be off if you have different wraps of horn than the composer had in mind (assuming they discussed the effect with a horn player, which one would hope…).
Overall, I put this in the category of tricks, but maybe you will find it a handy in some future situation with a PP high Bb entrance.
