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

Milan Yancich in A Practical Guide to French Horn Playing offers a practical approach to finding a good hand position.

There are many hand positions that result in a range of sound from a closed or covered one to an open sound….

There is no one correct position for the hand or the horn. A great deal depends on the sound one wants to produce. To aid the student in finding a good hand position, I instruct him first to hold his hand flat, fingers together, and slightly cupped, as if scooping water out of a brook to drink. I then tell him to insert the hand into the far side of the bell, far enough in so that if he were supporting the bell while standing, it would rest on the thumb and forefinger. He should then play a note with the hand wide open, and as he sustains the sound he should slowly close the hand until the tone becomes muffled. At that point he should open the hand slightly by moving the hand out a bit. That will be his approximate hand position.

Most great horn players feel quite strongly about hand position in the bell. One of my colleagues told me that if his students were errant in keeping the hand firmly in the bell he had them place adhesive tape inside the bell to make sure that the hand remained quietly in the bell in the same position. My cure … is to stand while playing. Since the hand must then support the weight of the bell, it cannot easily be moved.

Yancich does not suggest adjusting the bell from note to note as it “can lead to an uneven scale.”

A critical factor: the stopped horn/open horn relationship

William C. Robinson suggests in An Illustrated Advanced Method for French Horn Playing that to find the best right hand position one first find a good stopped position for the right hand in the bell.

When a good stopped position is attained, the heel of the hand should be swung open, with the seal maintained near the ends of the fingers. This should result in a good right position; the hand can be opened or closed slightly, according to individual tonal preference.

Personally, this is the angle I most often take with adult students to find a good hand position; you want to ideally be able to go quickly and easily from open to stopped and back to open by just closing and opening the door of the hand in the manner Robinson describes. Of course this won’t work with every student, especially if they have small hands and a large bell, but it is an ideal if it can be achieved.

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The second chapter of Horn Technique by Gunther Schuller is on the topic of tone production and the first aspect of tone production discussed is that of right hand position.

The essentials, with a view to national styles

He considered right hand position to be a very essential aspect of what it is to produce a characteristic sound on the horn. Within his discussion note his then current (1962) thoughts on the styles seen in various countries.

The manner in which the instrument is held is of the utmost importance. Tastes and national schools vary considerably in this. But in general, one can say that playing positions seem to be determined by the type of sound a particular school finds desirable.

…The Americans, by and large, rest the bell of the horn on their lap, and in varying degrees turn the bell slightly in towards the body. The English players tend to hold the horn free of the body in a higher more horizontal position. Since neither approach can be proclaimed “right” in a absolute sense, the only conclusion, once again, should be that either position is admissible in so far that it permits the authentic recreation of a composers intentions.

…My personal preference … is for a hand position that helps produce a velvety mellow sound, free and projecting in lower dynamics, which at the same time prevents excessive brassiness at high dynamic levels….

The preferred hand position, to which I refer to, can be described as follows: the hand is inserted into the bell in a vertical position, as far as it will go without forcing. The hand should be slightly cupped, and the fingers held together so that no air can pass between them, while the thumb should be in a relaxed position reaching towards the second joint of the index finger….

On this particular point I have found that a loose relaxed position of the thumb, not necessarily closing off the area between thumb and index finger, makes a better resting place for the bell of the horn.

Looking back at Farkas, his first rule was to close off that area next to the thumb, while for Schuller holding the horn comfortably was the overriding factor on thumb position. Schuller also supplies a bit of context as to why the vertical position of the hand is highlighted–some players clearly were holding the hand flat at the bottom of the bell, and he felt that tone production benefited from a “channel” being formed between the hand and the body.

National styles? Hand positions?

Finally, note that his 1962 comments on the tendencies of certain national styles of playing are rather dated. There are some differences from country to country, but not nearly on the level of the past.

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Most active horn teachers have read the Farkas book at some point but mostly not recently. One thing that you may have missed was that Farkas described a “new method” for the right hand in the bell.

Stepping back and looking at some statistics

I suspect that very few professional players use the right hand the way he describes. I base this statement not only on my experiences but actually also the raw data from an unpublished research project done by a previous ASU horn professor, Ralph Lockwood. This illustration is from his survey, and more information from this survey may be found in a two part article that starts here. [A final summary of the results was published as  “A 1982 Horn Right Hand Position Survey: Tips, Notes, and More.” The Horn Call 45, No. 3 (May, 2015), 50-55.]

More than one way to hold a horn

There are a lot of variations to consider, and as teachers and players we can lose the perspective that there might be another way that is also valid but not exactly what our teachers taught us to do. In this portion of the Hornmasters series we will see this clearly.

And back to Farkas and his “new method”

As noted above, Farkas presents a very specific type of right hand position in The Art of French Horn Playing that relates to his “new method,” which is for playing with the bell on the leg.

1. Hold the right hand flat with the fingers held together so that absolutely no space occurs between them. Pay particular attention to the thumb, which should lie along the edge of the hand, and in the same plane as the fingers. Now cup the hand lightly, in the same way that the hand would be held while swimming. Again watch the thumb. It should touch the side of the index finger, but not in such a manner as to form an opening between the thumb and the hand.

2. Now hold the hand in a vertical plane, with the little finger nearest the ground and the thumb uppermost. Do not hold the palm upward as though you were holding a handful of water, as this position does not permit the right hand to support the horn sufficiently.

3. Insert this slightly cupped, vertically-held hand in the horn bell so that only the backs of the fingers and the top of the thumb touch the metal. This means that the hand will be against the side of the bell farthest from the body. The fingers should be lightly curved and the backs of them should hug the side of the horn bell, particularly at the tips. The curve of the hand then brings the thumb, in a natural manner, to the roof of the bell’s throat. It rests against the top of the throat so that the horn is partially supported by it…. This will enable the palm and the heel of the hand to swing open or shut like a door, the hinges being the knuckles of the thumb at the top and the little finger at the bottom of the bell.

This hand position is quite vertical, and relates to his holding position of the horn being on the leg and also on the outside of the thigh, so the horn has to be supported slightly but not fully.

As to a general amount of hand closure, Farkas notes that

When the heel of the hand is about one-and-a-half or two inches from the side of the bell closest to the body the tone should be about right; but this depends on the size of the bell and the hand size, and can only be determined by careful, analytic listening. If the tone sounds too dark or muffled, swing the hand a little more open, or back the hand out of the bell a little…. Of course, if the sound is too open, reverse this procedure.

So what does Ericson do?

Personally, I play standing and off the leg with the hand rotated slightly counterclockwise to what Farkas describes above. And my initial training was to play palm up with the bell on the leg, which is quite different and representative of a different school of horn playing.

If you are a student reading this carefully for the first time and you are suddenly curious about your hand position, it is a great topic to re-examine with your current teacher. And keep reading on for more thoughts on the topic.

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