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On the single F horn, part V: Will the real B. Ed. Müller please stand up?

John Ericson
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Working on notes for this CD project I realized that the dates given in IMSLP for B. Ed. Müller can’t possibly be correct. Their Müller lived from 1824-1883 and was a music director and composer in Meiningen. But the works I recorded were published well after his death and don’t fit with what I would think of being from the pen of someone of his generation, not to mention the very specific dedications as well. I have recorded the following of his works:

  • Melancholie, Op. 68, dedicated to “Herrn B. Hoyer, Königl. Bayr. Kammervirtuos, Professor am Konservatorium in München.” Copyright 1906
  • Wiegenlied, Op. 69, No. 1, dedicated to “Seinem lieben Freunde und Collegen Herrn Arno Rudolph, erster Hornist der Theater und Gewandhauskapelle in Leipzig.” Copyright 1906
  • Am Abend, Op. 71, dedicated to “Seinem lieben Freunde F. Rost, Kammermusiker und Lehrer am Großherzoglichen Conservatorium in Weimar.” Copyright 1910
  • Nocturno, Op. 73. Copyright 1910

I highly recommend these pieces, by the way, and they all are on IMSLP. If you are at all familiar with his etudes, Op. 64, these works are nothing at all like them. The brief Nocturno is haunting and dark, Am Abend is like a miniature tone poem, very tuneful, I love these pieces. They will be featured on the CD.

What is especially striking is they are totally idiomatic for the F horn and for a second horn player in particular; this fits perfectly with the scant biographical data I did find on the real B. Ed. Müller. In Pizka, Hornisten-Lexikon there is a listing for Bernhard Eduard Müller, born on June 2, 1842, and listed as being second hornist in the Gewandhaus Orchestra. There is no death date given, but we can presume he was still alive in the early years of the 20th century when these works were published.

muller-snipThe cover of Melancholie offers this info as well, that he was a member of the “Theater – und Gewandhaus – Capelle in Leipzig.” If any readers have leads on more information, especially his death dates, I would love to hear from you.

Looping back to his etudes briefly, the old Sansone edition (taken over by Southern) gives his name as B. Eduard Müller, and the probably more familiar International/Chambers edition gives his name as B. E. Mueller. I am trying to practice them a bit now and while good, challenging etudes, again his works for horn and piano are nothing at all like the etudes! These are very attractive pieces of music and I look forward to presenting them to the horn world in their first recorded versions soon.

Very soon I will be in the studio editing the takes, more on the project as it progresses forward further.

UPDATE: See the comments, he was second hornist of the Gewandhaus orchestra from 1876-1920 according to the bio at http://www.french-horn.net/index.php/biographien/90-bernhard-eduard-mueller.html. And, thanks to this article getting the ball rolling, the dates for the horn playing Müller have been updated on IMSLP.

Continue reading F Horn recording series

Brief reviews: Recent recordings by Anneke Scott, natural and piston horns

John Ericson
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Today the final of this series of brief reviews is of not one but two new CDs featuring Anneke Scott performing a wide variety of music.

Getting it out right away, I love these recordings and basically everything about them. The performances are excellent, production and packaging excellent, and that they are mostly recordings of works that are pretty much not known today that deserve to be better known is also outstanding.

First up is Mozart: Stolen Beauties, chamber music by Mozart, Punto, and Michael Haydn. This recording is simply stunning. If you like natural horn and the music of Mozart at all you simply must obtain this CD.

I really love this CD. I may connect to it so much as I am familiar with some of the music and appreciate how the Mozart themes and works were reworked by musicians back in the day. I was especially taken by the Mozart arrangement by Barham Livius (1787-1865) for pianoforte, horn, viola, and cello, performed on the early valved horn. This work is for an unusual combination but extremely attractive — and also, as I am working on a recording project of my own involving early valved horn (series of articles starts here), I recognize and appreciate the challenges. This was no simple recording to make.

Speaking to challenges, Scott meets them all beautifully. Wonderful intonation, phrasing, great music making. Besides the unusual Mozart arrangements and little known works, the CD concludes with the Mozart Quintet K. 407. A wonderful performance by Scott and the period-instrument ensemble Ironwood.

The other CD is titled Songs of Love, War, and Melancholy, the operatic fantasias of Jacques-François Gallay. Gallay is best known to horn players today for his etudes and unmeasured preludes, but he composed and arranged a great deal of music for a variety of ensembles. This recording features full fantasias on themes of operas (mostly Donizetti and Bellini) performed by horn and piano, and also three shorter numbers with soprano. A great recording that will be perfect for anyone to reference who is thinking of performing one of these fantasias today, but also just great background listening music as well.

The most familiar sounding number to me was the first selection from L’Elisir d’amore but I would be lying if I said I really recognized anything in this CD. A lot of melodies sounded familiar of course, but mostly falsely so, more like generic opera melodies — but that said, this music should be performed more, I believe it will be effective recital fare.

Horn players with an interest in opera or Gallay certainly will want to obtain this CD. The Amazon listing for Songs of Love, War, and Melancholy is here. Curiously, Mozart: Stolen Beauties does not seem as of this writing to be on Amazon, but a search will quickly lead you to other sources for purchase.

Review: Saxophone palm key risers as finger pads for horn

John Ericson
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Back almost five years ago I posted a brief review of a product called “finger pads.” These are sold as an alternate to soldering dimes on the valve paddles (more here) when they can’t be adjusted into a comfortable position.

Those finger pads, truth be known, were/are probably clarinet thumb rest pads but sold in sets of three for use by horn players. The negatives for me after extended use of these was that they were not quite tall enough and they tended to work off the end of the valve paddle.

IMGP5446Then, just a few weeks ago, I picked up a tip from the Horn People group that there was another woodwind product to try as finger pads for horn; Saxophone palm key risers. They come in sets of three and can be obtained very inexpensively. So I bought a set.

When they arrived I was a little worried they would not fit on the valve paddles, but I did manage to carefully push them on. They are a tight fit, but remember that the clarinet thumb rests tend to work off? These won’t work off as I play for sure. Someday the rubber material may fail, but hopefully they will last for quite some time.

IMGP5467To the second photo, the other big plus with these are they are taller than the height I was getting with the thumb rests as finger pads. The height is roughly that of three dimes and on this horn certainly I need that much extra height with my big hands. These will be staying on this horn.

I should note as well that the pads extend the valves to a point as well. If you need to change the valve paddle position, and have an instrument such as this one with mechanical linkage valves that can’t be adjusted easily, this is a product certainly worth trying, especially if it would take stacks of dimes to adjust the height properly for your hands.

 

PDF: Low Horn Kopprasch, edited by Josef Schantl

John Ericson
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These PDF, public domain low horn etudes are extracted from Volume IV the Große theortisch-praktische Horn-Schule of Josef Schantl (1842-1902).

Originally published in 1904, the best known portion today is Volume III, which was reprinted in 1941 in abridged form as Preparatory Melodies to Solo Work, edited by Max P. Pottag. The primary focus of Volume IV of the Horn-Schule is transposition, and included for purposes of that study is a rather heavily edited edition of 51 of the Op. 6 etudes and 13 of the Op. 5 etudes of Kopprasch. [The Op. 6 Kopprasch Etudes are the ones we all know and love. Those were written for low horn; the Op. 5 etudes are similar, but set in a higher range for high horn study.]

Especially interesting among the etudes presented by Schantl are these twelve in lower keys than in the standard edition we are all familiar with. In my PDF edition they are unmodified, and the numbers are those given by Schantl. The new key and the many different articulations opens up these etudes in a new way for the modern horn student. Compared to the standard edition the etudes are as follows:

33 (25)Low-Horn-Kopprasch
34 (9)
36 (12)
37 (53) [Note: Transposed up or down, depending on measure]
38 (19)
39 (43)
40 (21)
42 (28)
44 (36)
45 (27)
47 (50)
81 (55)

The etudes, very useful for low horn study, may be downloaded from our PDF page or directly at the link below:

Josef Schantl is not that well known today, but was a major teacher and player of the late nineteenth century. He was a Principal Horn of the Imperial and Royal Court Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic, and has been credited with founding the Vienna Waldhornverein. Among many significant performances he performed on the premieres of Brahms second and third Symphonies and also the third and eighth Symphonies of Anton Bruckner.

With this set of etudes I will likely be closing out this series of free etude and duet PDF downloads. I have in the process of making these learned what I needed to toward laying out publications in a new program; be watching instead for several new PDF publications from Horn Notes Edition to come.

Brief review: Blow Your Own Horn! Horn Heresies

John Ericson
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Originally published in 2011, Blow Your Own Horn! Horn Heresies by Berlin Philharmonic hornist Fergus McWilliam (website here) has been out in a second edition since 2013. “An anti horn-method method,” this book certainly deserves to be read widely by horn players.

On page one he lays out his reasons for writing the book.

Huge amounts of traditional horn pedagogy are often misunderstood and misapplied, not only by students but also by their teachers, and what numerous successful professional hornists teach their students is frequently not even what they themselves actually practise. To make matters worse, too frequently neither teachers nor students recognize and admit to the situation.

Quite a few points in the book go against conventional wisdom, and he explains them well as they come up in the text; straight talk presented clearly.

I recently quoted the book briefly in this Horn Matters article, which gives some flavor of his content.

Two more brief quotes, again for flavor:

  • “I am a musician first and only secondly a hornist” is a very politically correct statement.
  • Playing safe causes more accidents than taking chances does.

There is so much in this book, it really is very worth reading in full by every serious student or teacher of the horn. Some commentary, such as on auditions, is slightly Eurocentric, but still every chapter has points any player can apply.

That said, I would only offer one slightly negative comment. It is not that hard to find things generally from the table of contents, but still I do wish that this book had an index, especially considering it is in a 2nd edition.

Brief review: Kelly 6V mellophone mouthpiece

John Ericson
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To kick off a series of short reviews this summer, first up is the Kelly 6V mellophone mouthpiece in lexan plastic. A few years ago I reviewed their horn mouthpieces, and it bears repeating right off that the MC horn mouthpiece, especially in the crystal material, is surprisingly good. Likewise, the mellophone version also is quite good compared to a standard, metal example of this type of mouthpiece.

Fact: legions of horn players play the mellophone every summer and fall in the United States. One of the first things we have to cope with as a group is the topic of mouthpiece choice, and in this review I will touch on comparisons between some of the options and the Kelly 6V.

First off, why use a plastic mouthpiece? There are two big reasons. One would be metal allergies, discussed further in this article. The other is temperature. One vivid memory from my freshman year of high school was the football team advanced to state, the band went, it was COLD and my mouthpiece was so cold, and finally my valves froze. A plastic mouthpiece won’t solve the frozen valves but it will make for more comfort at the lip contact point.

IMGP5444In the photo are seen a lineup of mouthpieces you could use on a mellophone. Left to right, we have the Jupiter hybrid horn/mellophone mouthpiece (reviewed here), the Kelly 6V, the IYM M-2, a DEG Mello 6V, a Curry 1HTF, and a Kelly MC with a mellophone adapter. Note that I have placed them in order by overall length.

Of course the is some ideal length for any mouthpiece in relation to an instrument, but what it is exactly for Mellophone I could not tell you. I can tell you the Kelly 6V is a little shorter than the DEG 6V which I think is pretty standard for this type of mouthpiece. Comparing these two directly my initial impression is the Kelly has a better sound and plays better. Of course it still has that “third trumpet” sort of sound typical of mellophone rather than a horn sound. The Curry 1HTF is not really a mellophone mouthpiece but is commonly used, it has a bit bigger/better sound, and then you get to the other options all of which have a more Flugelhorn related tone.

The rim on the Kelly 6V is a trumpet rim with a lot of cushion, similar to that on the DEG 6V but I feel a bit more rounded. Would not be my personal first choice (I would rather play something like the Jupiter hybrid in terms of the rim) but seems to be the type of rim that brass techs for marching bands and drum corps think have to be on a mellophone mouthpiece.

To close, the Kelly did in fact work well on my test instrument, a King. These are certainly worth a look. With the horn mouthpieces I found the colored mouthpieces had a deader tone than the crystal mouthpieces, so on horn I would say go with the crystal version, but the colored ones may be worth more of a look on mellophone, they should cut a bit more of the harsh edge out of the tone.

On the single F horn, part IV: Fun with crooks

John Ericson
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As part of ramping up toward the F horn recording project (series starts here) I realized that the crook I was using certainly left the main slide too close to pushed in all the way to be comfortable – and the venue for the recording is going to be cooler than my home, likely I won’t be able to push in enough to get the horn up to pitch. Not acceptable!

IMG_0397Crooks are an interesting part of the equation with any horn that takes crooks. The topic came up in this article a few years ago as well. I came up with five combinations of crooks/couplers that put me in F with at least ¾ inch of tuning slide showing, as seen in the photo.

The winner? It is the one at the top in the photo, the smaller double coil crook with the ½ step coupler. That crook was a cousin to the one I had been using and has similar playing qualities but as a bonus has a better high range. So with that I think I have the setup set! Recording next week. Now my practice focuses on intonation….

Also, while not formally part of this series, see this article for a few notes on working on articulations and accuracy on the F horn.

Continue reading series

On attention to detail, accuracy, and tonguing problems

John Ericson
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This week a legendary figure in the horn/music world passed away, Gunther Schuller. His name has come up in Horn Matters quite a few times, and I have over the years come to appreciate several things a great deal from his classic publication, Horn Technique.

Regular readers know that presently I am working on a project, preparing to record a group of forgotten horn and piano works from around the turn of the century on a period F horn (information on this project starts here). F horn is not easy to play at all on a high level. Playing this horn successfully has required a great deal of attention to detail, and my present warm-up greatly resembles the one advocated by Gunther Schuller in his book. More on that in a minute.

At an extreme horn teachers advocate one of two approaches to solving playing problems. One approach is to visualize what you want, get inspired and let the body adjust to make it happen! This is kind of a fun way to try to practice, it sounds great on paper, avoids paralysis by analysis, but in terms of mastering difficult articulations on the F horn it does not work.

Instead, my best progress on the topic of tonguing on the early valved horn has been to really try to pay attention to the “bubbles” at the beginning of notes, using that word concept from Schuller (more on that shortly) and thinking a lot as well about tonguing as described by Eli Epstein in his book.

Warm-up is an interesting topic. As I sometimes tell students, my sense of the Schuller book is he had a copy of the Farkas book, thought to himself most of this is wrong, and wrote a very different book without directly attacking Farkas in any way. This article on Farkas and Schuller and the warm-up is a great place to ponder this point. The Schuller warm-up is focused almost entirely on articulations and first note accuracy. It is not at all a “captain warm-up” type routine like that seen in most warm-up publications.

Back in 2004 we were honored to have Schuller on campus several times at Arizona State. He confirmed his warm up ideas then, and this article recalls the two key details he was most interested in opening our ears to in the horn master classes, bubbles and clicks. Bubbles really are the enemy on the single F horn, and in that article I note,

“Bubbles” (his term) are a big concern for him, probably his biggest concern. Most players are not even aware of the somewhat uneven quality of attacks as they are just not really listening to them closely. We get used to how we sound. Open your ears! The cause of “bubbles” can be several things but in my opinion it boils down to two items. One is choice of mouthpiece and horn; some mouthpieces in particular will by nature produce an attack with a bubble. This is however compounded by choice of syllable for the articulation. We are taught so often to articulate a “TA” articulation, but in reality I rarely if ever really articulate “TA.” My normal articulation is something closer to “DA” or even “DUH,” and varies by range (very high is “DEE,” for example–“DUH” is more of a mid-range articulation). The best light articulations are made with a distinctly brushing stroke of the tongue to be sure.

IMG_0393Turning to the Epstein part of the puzzle, for me I find in the upper range on the F horn it is not just that brushing quality of articulation it is also very location oriented, it must be very precise to eliminate the bubbles. Epstein addresses this in great detail in his book, Horn Playing from the Inside Out. My review of the book starts here and is worth reading in full; in short, Epstein talks at length about the location of the articulation point in every range. As I ascend on the F horn I certainly have to think of the articulation location differently (or more precisely) than I would by default on a double horn, an instrument that really is much more technically forgiving overall to perform upon.

To that point, the truly freaky thing is that right now, when I occasionally pick up a double horn, I literally feel like I can’t miss notes. I think the attention to detail of figuring out how to articulate well on the F horn will totally pay off, performance will be on a higher level.

I should note for readers what my default articulation location is/was. In the high range Epstein recommends a position that puts your tongue up on the gums for the contact point, but normally I would tongue a bit further forward in much the manner recommended by Anton Horner in this article.

There is more I could go into, as another line of recent experimentation has been inserts. Without giving away all my secrets they do more good than I expected on single F horn. Dennis Brain famously had “match sticks” across key locations in some of his slides before he turned to playing a modern Alexander horn; I can see why.

There is a final point any reader can apply from this article. Years ago, as a younger student, I did an accuracy routine religiously on the F horn — a similar exercise may be found in the Singer book and the Schuller book. Try it! Work this exercise out perfectly over many weeks on the F horn at quarter note = 60, you will see a difference when you use standard fingerings.

On the single F horn, part III: Gearing up for a recording project

John Ericson
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It took over two months but at this point I am fairly comfortable with playing a period single F horn.

In part I of this series a topic was my being inspired by the discovery of forgotten horn repertoire that I think has potential — quality works aimed at low horn players of the late 19th and early 20th century who still used single F horns. The horn solo works we usually perform from that era strike me as being centered on high horn players and more suited to single Bb (and later double) horns.

Part II of this series addressed among other things the mouthpiece issue. Besides just learning the music a big part of the puzzle has been figuring out the horn and mouthpiece question. I can’t right now say for sure I won’t adjust things further, but I think I have them.

IMG_0265After quite a bit of serious practice I am back on the horn that was made for me by Richard Seraphinoff, described in part I. The alternate instrument I tried was a King F horn that Seraphinoff helped me convert to take crooks, also mentioned in part II. Each instrument has a personality and individual intonation issues, more so than on modern horns. The bottom line at the moment is the Seraphinoff has better valves (especially in slurs vrs. valve changes) and overall it sounds better, it has a bit less of that rough natural horn edge (“bubbles”) on the articulations. A very German horn perfect for the German music on the recording.

(So what is better about the valves exactly? It has to do with “clicks” when the valves move, the way they affect the flow of the airstream blowing through slurs. For more on where I learned to use the term “clicks” in this context, and for an explanation of “bubbles” see this article.)

Of the mouthpieces I have (mentioned in part II), the modified Atkinson H-10 did well on the King conversion horn, and is seen on the Seraphinoff in the photo, but I am leaning toward the Moosewood LGC being the mouthpiece of choice on the Seraphinoff horn. Sound has a bit more “life” and it is easier to play.

(Easier to play? The reason this is an element is kind of along the same lines as the typical discussion in the Horn People group about Geyer/Knopf design horns compared to Kruspe/8D type horns. If you are going to play a horn for hours week after week you need something that plays easily, especially as you get older, rather than expending great physical effort to produce some idealistic sonic concept. On one mouthpiece the horn is a bit more “smoky” and on the other it is more in focus. A topic for a different article, but relevant to current equipment choices for this recording project, as I need to record everything in a three day window of time.)

So the plan as of now is to use the Moosewood LCG on the Seraphinoff horn for the recording. And I now have recording dates set in early July, the recording project will happen! I also have nearly all the literature picked as well. I will hold off on describing it for now to be sure nobody else records them first to undercut my profits (LOL). But seriously, rep is about 90% picked now, almost all of it has never been recorded before and I feel certainly deserves to be performed more often. More on the repertoire as we get closer to the recording date.

UPDATE: I also now am using mostly the E crook described in an earlier article, from when I was preparing to perform this same horn on a recital. Never underestimate the power of a change of crook, it does help sort the overall intonation out better. The only thing that worries me is I have to have the horn main slide pushed in nearly all the way with this crook; I hope the recording studio is not overly cool, it could cause problems.

Continue to Part IV

Copyright week, part V: On dissertations, exercises, and other closing thoughts

John Ericson
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Creative enterprise comes in many forms, and research/scholarship is certainly a type of creative enterprise impacted by copyright.

“Back in the day,” writing my DM dissertation, my committee did not raise any copyright concerns with me. All of the music itself was in the public domain clearly, but some examples, in those days before the popularity of music notation software, were actually clipped from fairly recently published editions. My understanding at the time (right or wrong) was this use only became a concern if it was submitted to what was then known as University Microfilms for publication, which I did not have to do and did not do. So as a result you can’t buy my dissertation in any form! Copies are only found on the shelf in the library at IU, on loan from the IHS lending library, or on the shelf in my office. About half of it is online somewhere or became published articles … and it is probably time to think about those remaining materials, there is an article or two still in there for sure.

Nowadays of course every Doctoral project goes to ProQuest (UMI successor firm) for publication, and has to have proper copyright notices and permissions for musical examples from copyrighted works or editions. Faculty is also much more up on the facts.

Which is to say though, if you received a Doctorate some years ago, you may have slipped through with materials in your dissertation that actually can’t be there today, and you need to be careful how and where you post those materials now. Lack of proper copyright clearance could come back to bite you. And even if it was a more recent project, your permission to reprint copyrighted musical examples was most likely specifically limited to your actual dissertation, you can’t unilaterally extend that permission for other uses without putting yourself at legal risk.

One bottom line of all of this is that we all must set a high standard in regard to copyright, and that horn teachers in particular need to be setting good examples for their students.

Clarke-snipA point should be added on the topic of warm-up routines and exercises. These tend to get photocopied, passed around, and posted online. If they appeared in a printed source before 1923 (such as this Clarke study) they are public domain, but if published later they would be copyrighted exercises. Even if an excercise was only written down and no copyright notice is present they could be copyrighted, as noted in the last quote in part III.

I hate to be real specific but there are certainly warm-up materials and routines by famous teachers posted online in PDF format that are based on exercises from recently published resources. But the fact is that actually the only legal version to use for study is the original book from which they originate. You can of course post recommendations and guidance as to how to use those materials, but the exercises themselves should really only be referenced from a legally purchased physical copy. By posting or copying those exercises (even by hand) you are depriving the copyright holder of income they are entitled to; the exercises are in fact the copyrighted creative enterprise of their creators. You should not be undercutting them or their heirs of income that is legally deserved.

As a part of writing this article I have done a bit of self-evaluation as well. I have made a few changes, including tossing out a bunch of music photocopies and I will be getting rid of more this summer. For example I had some Bach chorale Xerox pages in the horn choir folders. Those had been copied out of a theory book years ago, but now have been tossed in the recycle bin, replaced by selected pages of Bach chorales from a free online, legal public domain resource.

A final bottom line to mention is this. Teachers and pros should never post or share copyrighted materials online if there is any question of it being legal or not. We need to set a high standard, following the letter and spirit of copyright law, to ensure that we support the ongoing creative enterprise of our peers and colleagues.

Return to Part I of copyright series

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