Horn Matters | A French Horn and Brass Site and Resource | John Ericson and Bruce Hembd

First a question, did you notice any general category of technical material missing from the materials in the previous posts in this series?

In the first post I mentioned the Reynolds etudes. I studied with Verne Reynolds and I end up using his etudes to a point with advanced students but to be honest, and this may sound like heresy again, what I really wish I could say is I have found is a book that is similar to Reynolds but the etudes are somewhat shorter and easier and could be attempted by younger students. Because that is the material I am still looking for.

In the Horn Central website there are currently [Update: were, site no longer online] 194 horn studies books listed. Certainly nothing listed there has quite reached the level of being a standard that is from the category of contemporary in style and not overly difficult.

A book I have been thinking about trying in lessons next year is this one, The Oliveros Interval Studies by Pauline Oliveros. These were written in 1959 and were published in 2002 by Burdick’s Edition; the listing to purchase may be found on this page. Oliveros is better known for electronic art music so these are a unique part of her output; I am sure not many horn players or teachers know of these etudes.

Musically these etudes do fit in at a place something like the Reynolds etudes (they are both interval based books) but not so long or difficult. They also seem musically interesting based on my impression to this point and it is a nice short book. However, and I hate to be overly critical in reviews such as this, I am a tough customer when it comes to music notation and I do wish they were notated better by the publisher. Still, it is not an expensive edition and is an option to consider trying as it is important to work on materials in a more contemporary style.

Besides the Reynolds the only other books that I have actually used in lessons from this general category are the Schuller Studies for Horn and the Falk Vingt Etudes Atonales (20 Atonal Studies). There are I am sure other books out there of this type that I have not tried; your thoughtful comments on this topic are certainly welcomed below. Or better still, if you are a composer/hornist, get busy, there is a market for something of this type that will track well in lessons week to week in a contemporary style.

Return to part I of series

UPDATE: And I took the plunge and filled a gap, see my new publication, 12 Modern Preparatory Etudes.

First, to add one big point in the previous post in this series, I don’t teach with a one-size-fits-all routine that is the same with every student. There is a big picture that we are working with individuals who have differing strengths and weaknesses.

My Doctorate is in brass pedagogy and my dissertation focused on 19th century horn methods. The title was this mouthful: “The Development of Valved Horn Technique in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany: A Survey of Performers and Works Before 1850 With Respect to the use of Crooks, Right-Hand Technique, Transposition, and Valves.” In short I looked at a lot of 19th century publications. This opened my eyes to a number of books out there that while not well known today give a clear window into the pedagogy of master horn teachers of long ago.

What is great about these books in general is these materials were written above all to fill a need in their teaching and that got me thinking about them as I considered what I felt I needed to make my teaching more effective. But on the negative side these old methods are extremely dated and organized in a way that is really hard to use today. They suited the teachers who put them together but don’t suit the modern student very well.

What I did was over time begin to split out the best of these materials and organize them into a technique book. I did not begin to use these until a few years into my teaching in Arizona and only this summer in the final version underway now I put the names of the composers of the exercises back in. Most of my current students probably only have a vague idea who wrote the exercises they have been working on, but the truth is coming out!

UPDATE/SPOILER: I did publish the book this post is talking about working on, it was published as Ultimate Horn Technique. Honestly, I think I tried to do too much! I replaced it with this more concise publication, which is available on Amazon. 

The biggest chunk of music comes from the Meifred method published way back in 1840. This was the first significant method written for the valved horn and I still marvel at what he did as really he was pretty much starting from scratch as to how to present development of finger technique. I have a lot more background on Meifred here. People don’t use this book today for several reasons, among those being he was actually pushing a very unique approach to valve horn technique that combined valves and right hand technique in the bell. (And, of course, it is long out of print). But if you eliminate that part of the equation actually the materials Meifred created for this book are pretty inventive and have a lot of practical use today.

Besides Meifred, the Kling and Gallay methods are also referenced about equally in the technical materials I have developed. Both present some really nice scale patterns and also I use a number of their exercises for transposition study. As an aside, Kling was also very quotable in his method and did not hold back in passages such as this:

The assertion, which has been absurdly made in recent times, that the use of the crooks in connection with the ventil [valve] horn should be discontinued, as being absolutely useless, since everything could be transposed on the F-horn, is not worth serious consideration. Hornists who follow such mischievous advice by attempting to transpose all passages on the F horn will find themselves frequently coming to grief and exposing themselves to the ridicule of the audience. I advise the employment of the G, A, and high B-flat crooks whenever these are indicated by the composer. By their aid, the passages will be rendered with greater ease, more clearly and with truer tone than when they are transposed on the F horn.

In the main technical part of the book the other horn teachers referenced are Dauprat and Schantl. The Dauprat method is huge, and I mainly reference some of his low range exercises for transposition study. From Schantl I have drawn a few melodic etudes that are “lost etudes” compared to those selected by Pottag in his book of preparatory melodies. From Meifred and Kling I also reference other short melodic etudes; the idea is to balance the finger technique with melodic studies to work on turning great phrases.

Horn teachers don’t teach double tonguing much. I have used materials in the Yancich Method because Arban studies on the whole seem a bit high and there is not that much else that I want students to work on from Arban. What I did for double tonguing in the technique book was track in Arban studies for the most part transposed down a bit so they lay better for horn.

Lastly in my collection I reference some tuning studies from the Gumpert and Kling methods. These I use more as sight reading than anything else, which is why I have them in an appendix, but they are I think very valuable and underrated resources.

As I write this post the technique book has been through a couple generations of draft versions and is nearing the layout stage for publication. [UPDATE: The cover of this book is seen here.] It will hopefully be in print at the end of the summer along with a low range collection selected from Bordogni, Gallay, and Pre. These two publications will for me fill a big gap in what is out there and will hopefully be of interest to other teachers who are looking for new, practical materials. However, there is still one general area of technical material that I would love to find some better materials, and that will be the topic for the final post in this series.

As mentioned in my previous post, in terms of materials I started out as I was taught but over the years began to experiment with other materials.

In the initial comments to the first post Pares Scales came up right away as a favorite out there. I have had a couple students come into my studio who had used this with prior teachers and I certainly could tell a difference as their finger technique was much more worked out. The materials are formulaic to be sure but they do work you through the keys well toward the goal of being able to toss off scales in any key. I experimented some with the Schantl book as an alternate but for me Pares works out better in lessons. I will probably keep using it for some students (I think it is especially good with students committed to a music education program, as the same book is available for every instrument and they can make use of it in lessons on other instruments later) but in the last couple years I have been developing my own technique book.

Another favorite and old standard is Kopprasch. It is really hard to beat it for working out articulations in particular; there is a way that number 10 for example needs to sound. But on the negative side, and this may sound like heresy, some of the etudes are actually a bit long for introducing and working on transpositions. What I would like are some slightly shorter etudes of a similar style that I can use for more focused transposition study, and that is another element of what I have been working into my technique book.

Another book I can’t get away from is Maxime-Alphonse. I love the musical element and the variety in the content. The only negative really is that it is expensive, and I try to pick carefully which volume to buy and try to use it well.

None of my teachers worked with me on Gallay. I like the unmeasured preludes and make some use of them but in particular now make use of the Op. 57 studies for second horn. I like how “orchestral” and characteristic they are for horn; in the last few years I have started using these with most every student who is up to the level to be able to play them.

The final area where I make use of some standard materials is in the low range. I like the Neuling etudes a lot but have concluded over the years that many students find them A) too long and B) too hard. I experimented with some other materials down an octave and finally found an edition of the Bordogni etudes down a fourth (the standard bass clef version not being low enough). I was not that happy however with that edition overall and have worked out a version of my own that I have been using with students recently. But one great point for me of the Neuling is that they are in and out of old notation bass clef, and a slightly easier set of similar etudes would complement the Bordogni. I feel that I have found this in the De Pre low horn etudes, which I have recently been making use of in lessons. As they are out of copyright I have also been working on my own edition of these.

Warm-Up materials are also technical materials, and I should mention that I do recommend the horn version of The Brass Gym and use these materials often but not so much as actual lesson material.

As noted above, I have some materials under development, which include some that I have newly developed, and I am still looking for more contemporary materials that hit the right place technically. More on those topics as the series continues.

Horn teachers tend to teach out of materials that they used as students with their own students up to the point that they find that they can’t cover what they need to as effectively as they would wish.

In late high school the first materials I really used in lessons were the Max Pottag, Preparatory Melodies to Solo Work for French Horn (Belwin—these etudes are by Schantl) and G. Kopprasch 60 Selected Studies for French Horn, book 1 (Carl Fischer). This was supplemented soon with Maxime-Alphonse Two Hundred New Melodic and Gradual Studies, volume 1 (Alphonse Leduc). In college a teacher the summer between my freshman and sophomore years added in Gabriel Pares, Pares Scales (Rubank), which I credit as a key to sorting out elements of my technique. The book is repetitive and could extend better into the low range but is very affordable.

I kept tracking forward through these materials generally, and at the end of my undergraduate studies another teacher added in Hermann Neuling, 30 Spezial-Etuden fur tiefes Horn (Pro Musica Verlag), materials I also particularly credit with being very effective at the time. There were excursions into other materials including a few of the Verne Reynolds 48 Etudes (G. Schirmer) and more exotic materials but actually this compact list certainly includes a good 95% of what I actually studied in lessons of this type technical and etude material until the end of my Doctoral studies, balanced of course with study of excerpts and solos starting in high school.

I started out as a teacher largely using these materials and experimented with other materials that students already owned from their prior teachers. Balance is a key element.

Over time I began to regularly request some different materials than my teachers used with me, and I developed some of my own. More on that as the series continues.

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