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Farkas and a Blood Oath to use the F Horn?

John Ericson
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The Nancy Jordan Fako book Philip Farkas & His Horn has quite a few little known facts and scenes from the career and training of the late Philip Farkas. In 1979 he was on a panel discussion at a brass event and there are a number of interesting stories and quotes from this session presented by Fako. In particular at one point Farkas is rather negative about descant horns, and it was a bias rooted in his training.

My teacher made me sign an oath in blood to play the F horn once a day, the idea being that if I remembered how the F horn sounded I wouldn’t drift too far away. He resented the Bb horn because you can’t remember how the F horn sounds from day to day. After a period of several years you’ll be quite away from the basic tone. The double horn came along and I thought that was a great improvement [over the single F horn]. Then people who had the double horn never left their thumb off. Then came the descant horn with the high F above the Bb….

I think in a way it is like a dope addiction. Somebody finds out that it is a little easier to play the Bb horn up high, then year by year starts using the Bb horn lower and lower. And when he finds that the high F horn helps accuracy he goes further and further, to the point that you see a lot of people playing Brahms symphonies on a descant horn. I think this is an abomination. I think Brahms would be the first to be angry about this if he could know.

3558793509a09f0b51cc7110.L._SL500_AA240_.jpgNot a fan of the descant horn! The example he gives is a bit extreme, I have never ever heard of a player performing Brahms symphonies on descant horn, at least in the United States. It cannot be common. I also believe the “oath in blood” to use the F horn daily was only a figure of speech (!) but the whole discussion about tone and the F horn with his teacher must have really impressed Farkas as a young high school student. Farkas in the quote does not state which teacher to which he refers. He could be referring to Louis Dufrasne, who is the person most would think of as being his teacher; Farkas according to Fako considered Dufrasne the “biggest single influence in his life.” However his first horn teacher was actually Earl Stricker. Of him Fako notes

His extremely structured German approach … provided Phil with all the elements of correct playing. Stricker was born in 1902 in Okawville, Illinois, and came to Chicago in 1920 to study with Pellegrino Lecce, the principal horn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He also spent time studying with Max Pottag and Leopold de Maré. He had a reputation as a fine player, holding the position of first horn with the Little Symphony of Chicago, under the direction of conductor George Dasch. He was a good role model and inspiration for a young, ambitious player.

Back to the blood oath, originating with either Dufrasne or Stricker, reading this now as a horn teacher in the context of the horn in the United States today the standard tone is on a practical level actually that of the double horn, not the single F horn. I have posted before about the double horn being the home base instrument and would be inclined to stick with that in a modern context. But if you want to emphasize the F side of your double horn in your warm-up, which I think is part of what Farkas meant to communicate to his audience in 1979, please go ahead, it can be a tactic to improve accuracy at the least and you have the idea of working toward the ideal horn tone in place as well.

Got Dimes?

John Ericson
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Many players struggle along to varying degrees with an instrument that does not fit their hands well. The instrument may actually feel “normal” but there is a new normal that could open up more technique and comfort with some minor adjustments. One of those adjustments is extending the levers to meet the fingers better.

Ideally the fingers will at a very natural curl hit the valves perfectly. This is often not the case, especially some older brands and models of horn made in a period when horn playing was more male dominated. But even very recent horns can benefit. My main, go-to horn for over ten years was a Paxman 25A which I modified with these purpose-made “dimes,” made for me 001by natural horn maker Richard Seraphinoff. I like these better than real dimes, which are often used, but are a little large in diameter. If you do use real coins, I always suggest to students to go to a coin store and shop for at least a set of Liberty silver dimes, they are a bit smaller in diameter than modern dimes and wear better as they are solid silver. But besides that there are other alternate small coins from other countries that may strike your fancy. Larger coins are bad as they will tend to pinch your fingers between the levers.

Any repair shop with a lathe and brass rod stock can easily make up a set of these just like mine at a low cost. I have also seen these more poetically referred to as “finger cups.”

Wherever you obtain them, they are a very simple matter for a qualified brass repairman to solder on to the instrument (don’t use super glue!) and can make a huge difference for hand comfort.

UPDATE: Also check out finger pads (rubber extenders for valve levers), they are another great option.

Improvise your Cadenza

John Ericson
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One thing that students hate to do is write their own cadenza. Once they get going they usually find it is not that hard to do. A cadenza should ideally sound as if it is improvised on several themes from the work. This is not often the case today.

Recently music critic Alex Ross took on the topic in an article in The New Yorker, “Taking Liberties: Reviving the art of classical improvisation.” In his article he writes,

The art of embellishment—improvising cadenzas, adding ornaments, taking other opportunities for creativity in performance—is a hot topic in classical music these days. For generations, conservatories preached absolute fidelity to the score: do what the composer wrote and nothing more. The problem is that the scores of prior eras can leave quite a bit to the performer’s imagination, and the earlier the piece the sparser the notation….

Musicians had been embellishing the score for centuries, and perhaps the cadenza was a way of bringing improvisation under control, corralling it. Mozart, as composer and pianist, brought the practice to its peak; one of his contemporaries stated that cadenzas should be dreamlike in their logic, expressing “ordered disorder,” and Mozart’s playing evidently had that quality. (He wrote out cadenzas for many of his concertos, so his performances may not always have been spontaneous.) Beethoven carried on the tradition—the darkly rumbling cadenza that he devised for Mozart’s D-minor Piano Concerto is a fascinating case of one composer meditating on another—but he also helped to kill it. In the first movement of the “Emperor” Concerto, the soloist is told not to make a cadenza but to play “the following”—a fully notated solo. Performers gradually stopped working out their own cadenzas, instead turning to a repertory of written-out versions. Opera singers retained more freedom, especially when it came to interpolating bravura high notes, but they, too, grew more cautious. Improvisation became the province of church organists and avant-gardists, the latter often taking inspiration from jazz.

My next recital includes the Rosetti Concerto No. 2 in E-flat, and I have been attempting to improvise a different cadenza each time I practice it and I have been experimenting with various embellishments, especially in the Rondo movement. I really think this is much closer to what Rosetti thought a real artist would do in this work. It really is time to in general loosen up a bit when it comes to cadenzas and performance practices in the Classical era. Read over the full article by Mr. Ross and give it some thought.

Muted or Open (or Stopped?) in Symphonie Fantastique?

John Ericson
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Following up on the topic of stopped horn in Brahms, there is a related issue in the famous “March to the Scaffold” movement of the Symphonie Fantastique of Hector Berlioz. In some editions the part is marked Con Sordino. In some recordings it is played muted, in others it is open. What did Berlioz want?

Berlioz also wrote an extremely influential book on orchestration, his Grand Traite d’Instrumentation et d’Orchestration Modernes (1843). In it he clearly addresses a “dangerous abuse” carried out by some horn players.

Many composers show themselves opposed to this new instrument, because, since its introduction into orchestras, certain horn-players, using the pistons for playing ordinary [natural] horn parts, find it more convenient to produce by this mechanism, as open notes, notes intentionally written as closed notes by the author. This is, in fact, a dangerous abuse; but it is for orchestral conductors to prevent its increase; and, moreover, it should not be lost sight of that the horn with pistons, in the hands of a clever player, can give all the closed sounds of the ordinary horn, and yet more; since it can execute the whole scale without employing a single open note. Since the use of the pistons, by changing the key of the instrument, gains the open notes of other keys, in addition to those of the principal key, it is clear that it must also secure the closed notes.

This passage is especially relevant to his own Symphonie Fantastique (1832), movement IV, where in a note to the published score (1845) Berlioz requested at the beginning of the movement that the horns “produce the stopped tones with the hand without using the valves” (“faites les sons bouchés avec la main sans employer les cylindres”); this instruction is almost universally ignored today. [See Hector Berlioz, Fantastic Symphony (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), ed. Edward T. Cone, 122, for this marking, not seen in all editions of the work (I first saw this noted by Jeff Snedeker in his dissertation on the valved horn in France; see pages 77-79)].

So what Berlioz wants instead of muted horn is for the horn players to produce the combination of open and closed notes that would occur on the natural horn. It really is an interesting effect in this context, which is one reason I love period instrument orchestral recordings such as the recording of the Symphonie Fantastique done by Roger Norrington and the London Classical Players. My copy is on vinyl (!) but it is still presently available as a CD or download and very worth checking out.

As to what to do today, while Berlioz clearly wanted a different effect, I would be inclined toward doing what the part set you use says, playing it either muted or open. The original effect is unfortunately almost impossible to duplicate without natural horns.

From the Mailbag: My Water Key is Worthless

Bruce Hembd
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question234QUESTION:

I must be a total idiot, but I cannot get my spit valves to work on any horn I have tried. It seems that if I wait until I have “water-noises”, then open one or both valves and blow soft, medium, or hard, then it doesn’t seem to work. I end up with water everywhere, it takes just as long or longer then the “pull-slide(s)-and-dump.”

Am I missing something, or do they just seem mostly worthless? Is it only intended to be used during a piece where there isn’t time to actually pull a slide?

ANSWER:

I can sympathize.

I once owned an instrument with an Amado water key on the lead pipe. While these water keys profess to be acoustically much better that the traditional water key, it never worked very well. When I would blow with force to get out the condensation, it would spray everywhere — getting my hand all wet.

Here is a technique that works for me:

While holding the instrument at rest, shift the right hand into a very tight, stopped horn hand position.

Gripping the horn tightly in the bell with that hand, open the water key with the left hand and blow gently. (Blowing hard will only make a mess. )

The air now only has one way to escape — through the open water key. The extra force from closing the bell with the hand gives a little more oomph to water drainage without making a sprayed mess.

signatureBRUCE

Stopped Horn Notations in Academic Festival Overture by Brahms

John Ericson
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One major work with notations in the horn part that have confused many are the unusual stopped horn notations in the Academic Festival Overture of Brahms.

There are two big issues to consider in relation to this writing. The first is Brahms intentions as notated in the parts. In this case, the intention is clearly to write the parts in a manner that would leave them performable on the natural horn. But the second issue looms large in the background. How did players actually perform these parts in the period? They almost certainly performed the work on the valved horn in early performances.

The Academische Festouverture, Op. 80, was composed in 1880. In the following passage he requests certain notes to be performed Gestopft [stopped] at times in all four parts, this part being the first horn in C.

Stopped horn passage, horn 1, Brahms Academic Festival Overture
Stopped horn passage, horn 1, Brahms Academic Festival Overture

The first of the notes marked stopped would have been performed stopped on the natural horn in this context but would have been performed open on the valved horn absent any further instructions. This notation could be seen as an admission by Brahms that he realized his natural horn parts were in fact being performed virtually everywhere on the valved horn; the notation makes it clear however that these specific locations were intentional stopped effects that must be performed stopped even if performed on the valved horn.

[I also love that poco F dynamic marking; very Brahms. It is a dynamic between mf and F.]

A strong statement that Brahms may be making musically by his continuing to request natural horn in this passages is that to write for the natural horn was one of the most anti-Wagner stances he could have taken in relation to the charged musical climate of the period. Even if this was not his intention, he certainly gained something by writing for the natural horn, an almost intangible aspect but one that we, as horn players, are sensitive to. Horn writing conceived for the natural horn is inherently “hornistic;” it has a sound that sounds “right” for the horn, a sound that cannot be mistaken for a part written for another instrument in the same range as the horn. Being as well versed in the natural horn as Brahms was, this “sound” issue alone must have been highly significant.

Where does this leave us today? A conductor with limited knowledge of horn history and technique will probably expect that we play this passage as modern stopped horn, but this is actually not what is indicated or desired by Brahms. Brahms instead wants the type of light hand stopping used on the natural horn to produce those notes, which in a more modern notation we would call half-stopped. Furthermore, he I believe wants in this passage a mixture of open and stopped sounds just as if the part was being played on natural horns.

I have always performed this passage fully stopped, due to conductor expectations (we played this work dozens of time when I was in Nashville), but I have tried not to make the stopped notes too buzzy and harsh. It would be interesting to do the exact markings with the mixture of open and half stopped notes. You should do something other than play open horn at least.

For much more on Brahms and the natural horn please also reference these articles:

For yet more also reference this post and the dissertation on the Brahms Horn Trio by Joshua Garrett, now posted as a download in Horn Matters.

From the Mailbag: Why Do I Sound So Good On a New Mouthpiece For a While, Then Crash?

Bruce Hembd
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question23QUESTION:
Twice now I’ve switched to a different mouthpiece after using another for a long time.

On both occasions my tone has been better than ever for the first ten days or so, then craters for a while. I can understand the cratering, because the lip muscles are having to readjust to the new mouthpiece. What I don’t get is why the tone is so great there for a short while.

ANSWER:
This question hits on a universal mystery that is fairly typical of what happens with a new mouthpiece. Without the benefit of mind-reading powers and x-ray vision, one can only postulate on what is actually happening.

I do believe that there is combination of physical and psychological ingredients in this phenomena.

Excited with the new mouthpiece and the improved results, the player might go a little overboard with extended practice sessions or new techniques. After a period of time, the muscles rebel and the chops feel weaker instead of stronger.

As to why tone quality may be immediately improved with a mouthpiece switch, I can only explain it like this: after a steady diet of salad and steak, a switch to fish and potatoes is bound to produce a different effect on the mind and body for a period of time.

An embouchure may react to a new mouthpiece change like a change in diet. The new flavors invigorate and test out new taste buds that were not there before.

With a small change in a mouthpiece — a different rim, a slightly different diameter as examples – this improvement might just stick and the muscle memory learning curve may be fairly low. Like adding a new seasoning to the meat or changing to a different kind of salad dressing.

With a more radical change in a mouthpiece, there is a bigger learning curve for the embouchure to adjust to. It is no longer a matter of adding a little spice to a steady meal plan, but rather it is a major shift in diet.

At first the new flavors will taste and feel delicious, but in time the body’s physiological rhythms will react.  They rise and fall over a period of a few days  — or even weeks — in order to adjust to this radical change.

This is why I prefer small changes in a mouthpiece and an extended trial period. An accurate decision is difficult to make based solely on a two-minute trial period.

signatureBRUCE

From the Mailbag: What Kind of Horn Should I Buy For My Kid?

Bruce Hembd
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question2QUESTION:
I am trying to make sense of everyone’s opinion when it comes to buying a french horn for my son, who is 16 and been playing for 7 years. One teacher says a King, another a Holton 179 another a Merker Matic, another a Hoyer 6802. The numbers and particulars don’t make sense to me.

ANSWER:
Your choice of horn depends on your son’s intentions. If he is aiming headstrong to be a pro, without a doubt get the Hoyer. This is a professional-grade instrument.

If he does not intend to be a pro or is unsure, I would not recommend a Holton Farkas horn. At one time long ago, Holtons were considered a professional grade instrument but that is unfortunately no longer true. Even further, my candid opinion is that Holtons are no longer good student horns either.

I would instead would recommend a Yamaha. Your son can always step up later to a different instrument if he gets more serious about music or if he changes his mind.

There is no need to buy a Hoyer unless he is absolutely serious. A Yahama horn will suit him well into the college years and perhaps even beyond.

My recommendation aside, I do know of a few people who really like their MerkerMatic horns.

As a side note, my first horn was a King brand instrument and it suited me well until college. In fact, when my site co-hort John Ericson once needed a loaner instrument at Eastman while his Conn was being repaired, he used that King for a short while.

This was over 20 years ago. I have not played on any King horns recently, so I cannot speak from any authority on their current quality or standard.

signatureBRUCE

From the Mailbag: Is Using the Assistant Horn Cheating?

John Ericson
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I had a question come in recently on the use of the assistant first horn. I actually wrote a full article on this topic that was published a few years ago in The Horn Call; a version of that may be read here. 

In short it is not cheating to use an assistant! But speaking generally any passage that really has the first horn in the hot seat should be taken by the principal horn alone, with passages that resemble tutti/brass passages being played by the assistant alone so that the principal horn can stay fresh. If you are playing principal horn there is a wise usage that will extend your career and allow you to play at your peak more consistently.

Dr. Eldon Matlick of the University of Oklahoma has posted [but see update] a very practical article on the topic of the use of the assistant horn, in which he notably includes as an example a description of exactly how he would use an assistant horn on Shostakovich 5. His opening passages serve well as an introduction to the topic.

I believe it was Anton Horner who first insisted on this position as a regular section player in the US. All succeeding Principals owe a lasting gratitude to him.

I attended a Master Class by Gail Williams on this very subject. She stated that the Assistant has probably the hardest job of all the section players. This is probably accurate. The assistant should be ready, and able, to perform all solo passages at a moment’s notice (Principal becomes indisposed for some reason). Also, having a strong assistant will allow the Principal to rest, reserving strength and/or lip to be ready for the solo or high danger passages which are notoriously difficult.

During these interim moments, the Assistant assumes the role of the section leader. However, the responsibility of the assistant does not stop there. Many times the assistant is also a utility player meaning that should any other member of the section become ill, or asks off a service, the assistant assumes that chair. Thus, the competent assistant should be aware/familiar will ALL four horn parts should any unforeseen catastrophe arise.

Assistants are sometimes maligned by egocentric Principals. It is too often that assistants are not used effectively, sitting for extended periods of time. There is an art to using an assistant, but more than that, a professional courtesy should be followed.

I am aware that, according to circumstances, all assistants are not created equal. However, intelligent Principals know how to effectively use their assistants without being heavy handed or self-serving. Remember how it would feel to sit for long periods of time and then be asked to play pianissimo entrances at the top of the staff.

There is much more in the full article, including his suggestions on Shostakovich 5. Thank you Dr. Matlick for posting this information in your site.

UPDATE 2011: The article by Dr. Matlick is no longer posted on his website, but the quotes above give the essence of the article.

From the Mailbag: Horns in the Boot

Bruce Hembd
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2797956179_335a96f428QUESTION:
Horns in a hot car? Or cold for that matter? What could possibly go wrong?

ANSWER:
In short, many things.

When I lived in the Midwest, I would sometimes leave my horn in the trunk (that’s the boot for UK readers). Once after a particularly cold day, I noticed that a solder point had popped loose.

The valves too were extremely sluggish for a while. The valve oil, I presume, must have congealed due to the low temperature.

This should have come as no surprise. Metal expands and contracts with heat and cold.

In the intense summer heat in Phoenix, Arizona, leaving a horn in the trunk can have serious consequences. While the valves might feel very frisky at first — the heat seems to make them very slippery — over time, the slide grease will melt and ooze into the valves.

This really gums up the works.

Heat and cold issues aside, leaving an instrument in the trunk of a car is also not a good idea in terms of security. I have known several colleagues who have had instruments stolen from their car trunks.

As if this tragedy is not enough, dealing with an insurance claim in this scenario can be very tricky.

A typical homeowner’s insurance policy will cover most stolen instrument claims. However if it is stolen from a car, the insurance company may determine that the instrument was job-related — and not a possession used in the home.

In that case the insurance company, looking to cut corners in any way that it can, will not honor your claim and will not reimburse you for the stolen instrument.

For this reason, I have a separate policy purchased through Clarion, which specializes in musical instrument insurance. I highly recommend this company to any musician who resides in the U.S.

signatureBRUCE

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