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Internet Meme: A Rage Comic on Rolling in the Mud and Playing Like a Pig

Bruce Hembd
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Regular readers will know already that I enjoy making silly cartoons and Photoshop renderings that are related to the French horn.

Some previous efforts have included:

Rage comics

Today’s act of silliness represents a new foray into a meme genre known as Rage Comics. These comic strips feature roughly-drawn characters who come to represent a single, basic emotion. Punchlines revolve around some kind of conflict with that basic emotion.

A strip will often take on a life of its own as more and more people join in on the fun and share their own renditions online. Put in simple musical terms it is something like a gigantic, ongoing game of Theme and Variations.

Rage Comics draw their stories from real life experience and in that vein, here is a little comic related to horn players and conductors.

Wallowing in the Mud with a Maestro

Horn Player and Conductor Meme

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Fried Horns, by William Melton

John Ericson
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Today we welcome an article by hornist and scholar William Melton, with a link to a fascinating recording of Mahler 2 (the first complete recording!) and the story of an important horn player and conductor that is little known today.

We live in a great time to be an orchestral music fan, with ensembles worldwide posting live or recorded concerts for free listening. The internet offers more links to more brand new performances than you can possibly keep track of. But if you’ve got a moment, I’d like to steer you to a recording of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony that won’t win any sonic beauty contests, but makes for rewarding listening, anyhow. You could shell out cash for a commercial 2-CD set, but the European Archive will give it to you for nothing:

http://europarchive.org

[UPDATE 2025: The direct link to the Mahler no longer works, and a quick search could not find the current link. Hopefully readers can still locate this interesting recording.]

No brilliant sound here, but there is a lot to learn. The recording dates from 1923/24 (the exact date remains a mystery). The ensemble is the Berlin State Opera orchestra, formerly the Court Opera Orchestra. The conductor is Oskar Fried. To say he lived a very interesting life is a huge understatement.

Fried was raised in a large family by his shopkeeper parents. Money was a problem, so he was apprenticed to a suburban band at the age of nine. There he was overworked, not just playing light music, but doing manual labour between gigs. A hard school, but he came out of it a decent percussionist and an even better horn player. Shoestring tours took him east as far as Russia, but he jumped ship in Frankfurt at age 19. There he was destitute, living on occasional employment with the Palmgarten Orchestra, when he came face to face with one of the nicest human beings you could meet: Engelbert Humperdinck. As his biographer wrote, “Fried met him and took instruction from him. At least what one could call instruction in Fried’s case. His early unstable life, which had treated him roughly, had not left him with much desire to be a model academic pupil.” Humperdinck did better than that, giving Fried meals and lodging when needed and charging no fee for lessons (it’s no mystery why a gang of young composers, including Hans Pfitzner, gravitated to Humperdinck’s house at the time). Fried was grateful; his Lieder Cycle, Op. 3 is dedicated “in unqualified devotion to his teacher Engelbert Humperdinck.” But with his sketchy background of music study, all his talent and imagination were sunk by his impatience to create something immediately. So he wandered from Frankfurt to Düsseldorf, from Munich to Paris. In Berlin shortly before the turn of the century he left music behind and turned to breeding dogs (work in a stable and as a clown have also been rumored).

He could have disappeared off the map then. Instead Fried was acclaimed suddenly as a conductor of genius. But his life remained a roller coaster ride. This 1928 photo with Ravel and Gershwin at Ravel’s birthday party in New York shows him at a high. Fried is standing left, Gershwin right, and Ravel seated. A deep low occurred just a few years later when Fried, a Jew, fled Germany after murderous National Socialist thugs took power in 1933. He headed east, unfortunately exchanging one dictator for another when he landed at the Tbilisi Opera in Soviet Georgia. He died in uncertain circumstances in 1941.

For the above recording 1905 was the most important year in Fried’s biography. It was then that Fried had a fateful meeting with Gustav Mahler, and conducted a Berlin performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony that made him a podium star overnight. Bruno Walter was the closest of Mahler’s lieutenants, but Oskar Fried and Otto Klemperer also remained loyal disciples through Mahler’s death. It is no accident that Fried’s version was the first complete Mahler 2nd ever to be recorded.

Now for the horns. Fried’s Berlin State Opera hornists in 1923 or 1924 included the talented Paul Rembt (a star pupil of Würzburg Conservatory’s Josef Lindner, an influential B flat horn fan) and quite possibly Willem Valkenier on 1st and 3rd (uncertain because Valkenier left for Boston after the 1922/23 season), and hornists by the names of Böttcher, Einsel, Mössert, Stengl, and Viek filled out the section (if you want more detail on the recording than just the horn section, you can view David Pickett’s fine discussion at http://www.fugato.com/pickett/mahler2-fried.shtml )

Just one more hornist left to name. The conductor of the choirs on this recording, Hugo Ruedel, was another former horn player. He’d studied with Fritz Lehmann at the Berlin Conservatory before stints on first horn with Cologne’s Guerzenich Orchestra and the Court Opera Orchestra in Berlin (where he was also Professor of horn at the Conservatory). Having picked up piano and conducting skills along the way, he began conducting the Berlin Opera Chorus in 1899 and took over the Bayreuth Festival Chorus in 1906. But, like they say about Marines, once a horn player, always a horn player. His conducting boss at the Berlin Opera was Richard Strauss, and together they published editions of Franz Strauss’ Posthumous Works for Horn in 1905 and 1909. Ruedel would have been a very interested listener to his former colleagues in the horn section when the old hornist Oskar Fried gave the downbeat for this first Mahler 2nd recording session. And if you’re willing to ease yourself into the nearly 90 year old sonics, you can listen in, too.

Bill Melton
http://www.william-melton.com/

Horn Repertoire Week 1: The Resume, What to Prepare for Professional Auditions, and Your Audience

John Ericson
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As we begin this look at orchestral playing, it is important to take a bit of time and step back and look at professional orchestral playing from several angles.

You need a good resume

One of the projects this semester is to develop a great, professional resume. To prepare this document there is an excellent guide put out by the American Federation of Musicians (available to members only), and I would also point to this reading in the great Douglas Yeo trombone website as our first assigned reading of the semester:

universityHM-logo-improvedWhat music should you practice in general?

As to what to practice to prepare for auditions, besides cross training your technique in every way possible (solos/etudes/etc.) I have developed two different lists that will be of use for reference. First up are the

These would serve well to guide basic horn study toward the goals of reaching the next level for the advancing student. Next up is the the

This list of excerpts for study are based on the results of a survey I did of major orchestra audition lists. For the complete results see John Ericson, “A New ICSOM Audition List Survey,” The Horn Call 33, no. 1 (October, 2002), 53-55. In short, if you know every major excerpt in every work on the left side of this PDF list very well you are getting towards where you need to be to win a job.

Horn Matters has a large online resource of orchestral horn parts, keyed to the list above, and a three volume PDF excerpt book as well, all accessible from the link below:

What about excerpt books?

For the initial learning of excerpts, standard published excerpt books can certainly be quite useful.

While I currently mostly use my PDF excerpt books, I still recommend to my students highly the Anthology of French Horn Music by Moore and Ettore, published by Mel Bay. The Anthology is to be especially noted for not only presenting well thought out and laid out excerpts, but for also giving good solid suggested metronome markings and other tips for every work, information that is alone well worth the cost of the volume. The only major shortcoming is that this publication has no Shostakovich, Strauss, Mahler, or Wagner excerpts.

For introductory versions of excerpts from those works my suggested resource is the Horn Player’s Audition Handbook by Arthur LaBar, published by Belwin. Published in 1986, this book includes in addition to Shostakovich 5, major excerpts from Strauss, Mahler, and Wagner. Combined with all the other standard works included and the list of terms at the back it is a great resource for initial excerpt study, although in some cases it does not give you quite what you need from the works included (such as only half of the excerpt at the opening of Tchaik 4).

A final book to mention that is also a good, comprehensive resource is Orchester Probespiel (Test Pieces for Orchestral Auditions) published by Peters. It is very European in relation to what works were selected and has some quirky choices in editing (such as missing the first bar of the third movement excerpt from Beethoven 6), but covers a good selection of major works that are in the public domain (no Shostakovich), including a number of operatic works and a long section of Wagner tuba excerpts (!) at the back.

The Mel Bay Anthology and the LaBar make a good combination for introductory excerpt study, but any of the above books can work well with an advancing horn student, especially when supplemented with the actual orchestral parts such as found in the Horn Matters online resource.

Those pesky foreign terms

Mahler-1-snipWhile you are at it, if you are serious about playing the horn at a high level you must know what the foreign terms in the music mean! Below is a handy checklist that was also referenced last semester, with terms that are especially worth learning as they show up often in real life. Never ever walk into a lesson or rehearsal not knowing what the foreign musical terms in a work mean!

Who is your audience at an audition?

As to who your audience is at an audition is another part of the discussion this week.  It is a topic that students rarely consider.

The short answer is your audience changes from round to round of a professional audition. Ultimately in a final round you are playing for the conductor to win an orchestral job, with the audition committee serving only in an advisory capacity. Initial rounds are in the hands of the audition committee, the composition of which will be dictated by terms spelled out in the master agreement that the musicians have with the orchestra. But, again, eventually you are playing for the conductor, and you need to have that in your mind in relation to your approach to many performance elements.

The final two “Hornmasters” readings, on conductors

Related to that thought, the final two articles in the Hornmasters series are the last required readings for this week.

For some flavor as to what you will read in the above links, I offer this from the second article above, a favorite of mine from all the quotes from the Hornmasters.

The eminent violinist, Isaac Stern, said jokingly, “There are only six conductors in the world. All the rest are bums!” An exaggeration of course, but we all know what he meant.

Next week the focus is on Orchestral Auditions.

Continue to Week 2 of the Repertoire Course

This is week 1 of a fourteen week course in horn repertoire, the second semester of a broad overview of horn repertoire, performance, and pedagogy. The introductory article is here, and the series is presented for the educational purposes of our readers.

Tip of the Week: Play to the End of Time

Bruce Hembd
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Many years ago (in a location I cannot remember) I attended a concert of the Munich Philharmonic while they were on an American tour. The legendary Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache was on the podium, and I was curious to see the man behind the reputation.

What I had mainly heard was that the Romanian Maestro typically demanded a high number of rehearsals for each concert.

By the time I saw him in action, he was in his 80’s and he was moving in very slow motion. His walk from the backstage door to the podium reminded me of a Tim Conway skit of the world’s oldest conductor.

The program was Ravel’s Rhapsodie Espagnol, Strauss’s Don Juan and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

The fact that I still remember this program is fairly outstanding, given that it was many years ago and I do not even remember in what hall or city it was. The program however is etched in my permanent memory banks.

The most outstanding features of the concert  – as I remember it through the cloud of time – were the solo and section playing from the winds and brass, and the tempos taken by the Maestro.

Slow and steady can ‘feel’ fast and frenetic

roy-lichtenstein-parody34To say that Celibidache’s tempos were broad and stately would be an extreme understatement.

Each piece and each movement was intensely deliberate.  The Don Juan, for example, was the slowest that I had ever heard in my life. There was no note-cheating for the violins.

The beauty of Celibidache’s Don Juan for me was that every note had its own time and space. Even though the tempo was slow, the music was intense and exciting to hear. The bravado of the Don Juan character came from an intensity of the details, rather than from a speedy tempo.

I was astonished at this revelation of thought. I was equally impressed at the musicians in the orchestra who were capable of sustaining those giant tempos, all its energy and all those giant notes in between.

This recording of Celibidache conducting the finale of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition on YouTube will give you an idea, although I swear that the tempo I heard in concert was even slower.

Play to the ends of your notes

claaamThe main lesson that I walked away from that day was that, generally speaking, musical notes have four acoustic parts: a beginning, a middle, an end and then, the echoing silence afterwards.

A tendency for some players and students might be to focus too much on the beginnings of notes. In working on long tones and other sustained studies over the past week, I was reminded again of this valuable lesson.

Committing attention towards the ends of notes and phrases can not only be a great way to psychologically circumvent potential pitfalls with accuracy, but it can also be an excellent challenge in terms of working on breath control.

A means towards an end

Some of the best phrases and long tones for myself are the ones that spiral towards an end – where an inhaled, gasp of air is immediately required upon finishing the phrase.

In cases of conductors like Sergiu Celibidache, it is always a good practice to be able to play as well at the end of your air as you can at the beginning. In practice, it can be both fun and practical to regularly push your breath to its extreme end.

Give yourself an occasional breath-control challenge and try skipping a typical breathing spot. Push the unbroken line for another turn of phrase — you might just surprise yourself.

Hornmasters: Cousins and Reynolds on Conductors

John Ericson
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For this final post in the entire “Hornmasters” series we have two perspectives on the conductors we will be working with.

Three categories of conductors?

Farquharson Cousins has quite a lot to say about orchestral playing and about conductors specifically in On Playing the Horn. He notes for example that

A really fine conductor is a joy and a godsend; he will be much loved by all; music will take on a new and undiscovered dimension; St. Cecilia will smile and the players will go home with singing hearts and a sense of destiny fulfillment. However, mention the word ‘conductor’ to the average professional musician and he will spill his beer. Nudge him gently with a fresh pint, and, as the nasty look in his eye subsides, eh will tell you that there are three categories of conductors: good ones, nonentities, and wreckers.

Later he notes (in one of my favorite quotes in this entire series) that

The eminent violinist, Isaac Stern, said jokingly, “There are only six conductors in the world. All the rest are bums!” An exaggeration of course, but we all know what he meant.

Among the most interesting elements in his book is the system he proposes for rating conductors. They are to be rated in the categories of musicianship, stick-technique, personality, rehearsal ability, and rhythm (sense of pulse), and in each category you are given a group of choices. For example, in the category of stick technique you have the following choices: “quite delightful (flowing), good (flowing), workmanlike but clear, meandering but not interfering, labored (choppy) and disconcerting, destructive” and in the category of rehearsal ability “makes excellent use of time, makes good use of time, accomplishes something, accomplishes something but boring, time largely wasted (boring)” and finally “time wholly wasted (utterly boring).”

Prevent issues by conveying a message of cooperation and reliability to your conductor

To close out our survey of the Hornmasters, Verne Reynolds has a few pertinent thoughts on conductors in The Horn Handbook.

Unfortunately, we are not always conducted by the finest musicians or by the finest human beings during our training and young professional years. The podium does not invariably attract people with both of these exemplary qualities. We have all heard conductors say unfortunate things, have witnessed their inadequate preparation and skill, and have been the target of their ill-conceived comments. For these and other negative experiences, attitudes are formed. Though inevitable, these experiences should not dilute our desire to learn during the training years, or lower our standards of conduct and performance during the professional years.

Not uncommonly, young players complain that their conductor tried to tell them how to play, or told them that they were sharp, flat, ahead, behind, too soft, too loud, too short, too long. If one of these comments were offered shortly after the conductor had beaten incorrectly, we can understand that the young player will question the conductor’s qualifications and right to evaluate. The conductor’s right to evaluate and comment are inalienable; the conductor’s competence to do so is another matter. The student will be confused and angry. The professional will remember the times that the orchestra rescued the performance from the clutches of the conductor’s inadequacy….

Our relations with conductors will be more positive if our preparation, attention, receptivity to suggestions, and general conduct convey a message of cooperation and reliability. Our preparation must not be confined to works we have not played. How embarrassing to misread one of the transpositions in the last movement of the Dvořák “New World” Symphony because we neglected to review such a standard work. Impressions made at first rehearsals of a new program are important because they ratify or repudiate that we are experienced and always prepared. From these impressions, reputations are built for better or worse.

Reynolds48Thinking a bit further, elements of the above relate to any job situation.

Build your brand (reputation) carefully

Conductors in the end think of themselves being the boss and tend to favor players who are steady and reliable. In a modern situation steady and reliable also involves such things as turning around E-mail and supporting the orchestra on social media. Everything we do creates an impression, and “from these impressions, reputations are built for better or worse.”

One very last quote, on the subject of employment

Those that studied with Reynolds in the time frame I did know he had a few things he liked to say about conductors that you might not be able to put in a book. From that study and his book a final quote comes to mind, passed on by oral tradition in the studio. “There are two types of horn players, overemployed horn players and underemployed horn players. Which type do you want to be?”

With that dose of speaking the truth we conclude the Hornmasters series in Horn Matters! It has been a wild ride but has given many perspectives on horn playing from (mostly) classic horn texts. Thank you for following along in this huge survey of all things horn, and get back to practicing.

Return to Week 1 of the Repertoire Course

Return to the beginning of the Hornmasters series

Introducing the University of Horn Matters Horn Repertoire Course

John Ericson
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This horn repertoire class is a companion to the University of Horn Matters Horn Pedagogy Course, launched initially for the fall semester of 2012, and is also fully organized as a hybrid, online class. Readers interested in all things horn playing, but just now discovering this course, may wish instead to go back and work through the pedagogy course first, which starts here.

This course by design continues on the concepts of the pedagogy course and integrates an overview of the solo repertoire and horn history with the topics of orchestral horn playing, the natural horn, descant horn, triple horn, and Wagner tuba into the flow of the course.

As with the fall semester pedagogy course, the starting point of the content was an abandoned writing project, which I felt it made more sense to break up and present to the horn world as an educational resource. To that I also added content from couple draft articles which were never published, materials from my dissertation, etc.

In short, this online content parallels the content of my courses at Arizona State, but was not specifically developed for those courses. In reality, I make use of additional materials from multiple sources, altering the course content somewhat every year. Because there is …

Too much to cover in so little time

There is a lot to cover in the context of a single year, especially as roughly every two weeks of material in this class could easily be expanded into an entire semester of a physical class with real students. This is why, in reality, what you see online here is absolutely overkill in relation to what can actually be covered in one semester of an horn repertoire class at the college level. Which is why I don’t follow this exact course with my students at Arizona State.

Overall, the goal of this entire course remains to introduce a total overview of horn pedagogy and repertoire clearly, but please don’t feel that you have to read every word on every topic.

This half of the course has some lengthy readings, but less than in the pedagogy course, as listening and performance are also important to this course. Hopefully readers following online will find interesting works they were not aware of as they follow the course.

Just looking for a repertoire list for reference?

For those finding this course online who just want something for quick reference, I might suggest this PDF list:

When I created this list of solo literature around 2002 and posted it on Horn Articles Online, my method involved looking at what had been recorded, what pieces showed up on student and professional recitals, what I saw in library holdings, and probably some other factors. I tried to make it a fair survey of what was being played. Updates leading to the 2014 version presented here pushed some pieces in and out of the list.

As today I would consider this at best a list of “old standards,” and a quirky one at that. Something that it is still valuable to have, but it really could be updated. For example, I think the Gordon Jacob is not nearly as often performed today as it once was, and of course it is very problematic that there are no works by women composers on the list. Topics that are addressed in the actual courses I teach.

Three supplemental texts

Besides the online readings posted this semester in the University of Horn Matters, anyone wishing to follow along very closely online may want to purchase these three texts:

These books are available in print or as Kindle ePublications. For those taking the live course at ASU, I just give you copies of these, no need to buy a copy.

A comprehensive overview?

For any online reader that wants a REALLY complete view of all horn rep, check out this recent publication:

Kicking things off with a bonus reading on ensemble dynamics

The first topics of this semester are on orchestral horn playing. As a bonus reading to kick things off I would offer this quote from Philip Farkas from The Art of French Horn Playing, where he gets at the topic of how dynamic markings really work and vary by musical context. Farkas wrote

Most students go through years of indecision before finally coming to the realization that in ensemble playing there are, in effect, two distinct types of dynamic marks. One set is for accompaniment passages, and the other is for solos. Piano in an accompaniment means just that—play softly. However, the same mark in a solo passage might require much more volume. A solo passage must carry, even though the dynamic mark indicates softness. Your first duty in playing a soft passage is to make it audible….

Although solo passages can often be a degree louder than the dynamic indicated, the opposite is true of accompaniment dynamics. Here it is our duty to keep down sufficiently to let the soloist come through even though it means playing piano when mezzoforte is indicated. Thus the orchestral player might make a simple rule for observing dynamics. Solos should be played a little louder than indicated and accompaniments slightly softer

With that thought we bridge over from pedagogy to Week 1 of the University of Horn Matters Horn Repertoire course, with an initial focus on topics related to orchestral horn playing.

Continue to Week One of Repertoire Course

This is the introductory article of a fourteen week course in horn repertoire, the second semester of a broad overview of horn repertoire, performance, and pedagogy. The series is presented for the educational purposes of our readers. 

Hornmasters: Farkas on Conductors

John Ericson
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Philip Farkas recognized a practical reality; ultimately, in orchestras, conductors are our bosses.

Make a point of knowing what your conductor values musically

He makes a point in The Art of French Horn Playing that we need to learn what the conductors we work with want so

…that, even though you may mentally disagree with him entirely, he will be inclined to think of you as his kind of musician. To have a modern conductor think of you this way is not ungood!

Farkas-MusicianshipThis topic is expanded upon greatly in The Art of Musicianship, where Farkas presents entire chapters on the “Psychology of Good Relationship with Colleagues and Conductor” and “Ensemble Deportment.” In the following passage he expands on the topic of the real world of orchestral horn playing, at least back in his performance era.

The conductor must, of necessity, be the “boss”—a dictator. In the final analysis, his opinion of you and your performance ability will lead to your continuing or not continuing with the group. So it makes very good sense to cooperate as fully as possible with him. It has always puzzles me to observe the attitude of some of my orchestra colleagues toward the conductor. Why do they have such an obvious “chip on the shoulder”? They frown when asked by the conductor to play in a certain manner. The laugh when the conductor makes a mistake…. Off the stage they ridicule or make derogatory remarks about the conductor. Probably what puzzles me most is the fact that they practice so hard to become proficient on their instruments—partly, I presume, to please or impress the conductor—and then proceed to alienate that conductor with every negative gesture and attitude they can make evident….

If you find it impossible to work effectively with some particular conductor, I presume you have two choices: you can hope that so many others in the group also believe the conductor to be tyrannical or inept, or both, that in due time he will be relieved of his post and a more acceptable conductor will take his place. This could require a long wait! The other choice would be to leave, and go to another organization, where you and its conductor are more compatible (and your fine talent better appreciated).

The object of this discourse is to consider how to avoid these two distasteful choices by studying the ways in which one can maintain a happy and successful relationship with the conductor. There are two important facts (at least!) to remember about any conductor: 1) He is subject to the same foibles as all other humans—he has his likes and dislikes, his opinions and beliefs, his strong points and his weak points. 2. In his desire to have the finest possible ensemble he needs good performers. He needs you (I am presuming you are a good performer) just as much—or more—than you need him!…

I think some orchestral players reading today this will feel that Farkas is a bit dated in his commentary, but still the perspective is useful as conventional wisdom. When we return for the (no!) last post in the Hornmasters series we close with two more perspectives on conductors.

Continue in Hornmasters Series

 

Ask Dave: Why you should NEVER try to fix a bent bell flare

Bruce Hembd
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crunchIt is very easy to crease the large part your bell flare. The rim is very large and exposed in comparison to the rest of the tubing, and the flare is thin and soft. Any kind of bump, drop, or undue pressure on the bell flare can cause it to bend and crease.

And if that happens, you should never try to undo those creases by yourself.

It is tempting to grab that flare and try to fold the metal back in place, but do NOT do it. Live with it until you can get it to a competent repair tech.

Once you crease that flare, the metal becomes hardened along the creases. If you try to undo the damage the harder metal at the crease will not give way and unfold. The softer metal near the crease will bend first, actually causing a secondary crease. Both the creases will be hardened, now. Your technician will not only have a more difficult time fixing the bell flare, but the bell will have a larger area of hardened metal than necessary.

Your technician will use tools to flatten and unfold the creases right along the crease lines. The metal may become hardened at those folds, but that will be held to a minimum and the result will be optimal if repaired correctly.

From the Mailbag: Practice Space

John Ericson
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Another recent question that came in had to do with the acoustics of the ideal practice space. More specifically, what acoustics I would prefer in a practice environment.

For me personally I prefer “medium.” Not a real big or small room, not very live or very dry. More important to me really is that it be a fairly quiet place with no major distractions.

Continuing that thought, in a sense my office is pretty ideal except that there are distractions such as lessons going on in neighboring studios. Early in the morning, when things are still quiet, I do enjoy practicing in my office.

At home my favorite practice space is our family room over our garage. It is good sized and acoustically pretty neutral. On the down side, I can’t really “set up shop” there as it is the family room. The stand goes back into a corner when not in use.

When my kids were small I often practiced inside a walk in closet. It kept the noise way down (so I could practice when they were sleeping) and there were no distractions but was very dry acoustically. I rarely practice there at this point, the kids are in high school (!) and a closet is just way too small given any other options.

Going back a few years, one of my favorite practice spaces ever was along the stream that runs through the campus of the Aspen Music Festival. The mountains, the stream … great memories, but not a practical space to duplicate.

But going back to the beginning, probably my favorite practice space ever was the basement at my parents’ house. The space in the big room was fairly large and I could comfortably practice there day after day with no distractions, which I did!

It is the type of space that won’t work for everyone. I once had a student who never practiced at home unless her parents were not there. The comfortable acoustic space probably was available, but it was not good in terms of people and their distractions.

A couple years ago Bruce Hembd posted a nice photo essay of his home practice space, which may be seen here in full (the photo above is from his article). It looks like a comfortable space! Wishing you all good practice over the holidays.

From the Mailbag: Not Kruspe, Not Geyer …

John Ericson
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The topic of Kruspe or Geyer was a prior “From the Mailbag” question, but what if a horn is not a Kruspe or a Geyer type horn?

There are a lot of ways to bend and arrange the tubing of a French horn that will produce good acoustic results. The question that came in specifically asked about Schmidt and Lawson wrap horns. These are both seen in use in the professional world in the USA, and having tried pretty much everything I have tried both a number of times.

To begin, the first note is that Schmidt horns in terms of tone and such are similar to Geyers but are to a point ergonomically challenged due to the piston valve used as the change valve. A section of Geyer horns with a Schmidt or two in the mix was/is not uncommon and the perception again would be that they are from a similar tonal and design world. And don’t confuse Schmidt with Schmid! A Schmid horn in overall look is a Geyer type horn, but very light in weight, where a Schmidt horn is simply a classic design, C. F. Schmidt being an active maker of brass instruments producing one of the best double horns available before WWII. For a gallery of photos of classic Schmidt horns this article in the Dick Martz website is a great place to start, and the Schmidt horn image above is linked from that site.

Lawson horns come from a bit different place and are also fine professional horns. The biography of Walter Lawson in the IHS Online has a good overview of the development of his horn over years, with the production of the first Lawson horn in 1981. Right or wrong, the perception is they have a somewhat unique sound and are for sure among the heaviest double horns ever produced, so they feel pretty different in the hands. Some professionals love them, and they tend to be played in full sections. In Nashville I played in an almost all Lawson section, feeling my blend was the best when I switched back to my pre-letter 8D but with a Lawson flare and leadpipe. These are custom horns and they have made many variations on the basic design over the years in terms of materials, tapers, and weight. So while the perception I have is a Schmidt is sort of like a Geyer, a Lawson horn is unique but also Kruspe inspired to a point. This perception in the field is reinforced by their use of one unique alloy. From a FAQ that used to be in their website,

A search for the alloy that the famous Kruspe nickel silver horn was made from yielded another new alloy to the musical instrument world: Nickel-Bronze. This is the closest alloy available now to the pre-WWII German nickel silver used by Kruspe.

Sadly, these horns are no longer produced. They were beautifully made, but heavy and generally large horns, unique sounding, of a type not likely to catch on with many professional players again any time soon.

Turning back to the Schmidt horn part of the question, I have always felt the Schmidt was a beautiful looking and playing design (potentially very smooth) except for the challenged ergonomics. I considered purchasing one at one point, which leads me to a final note for this article, there are makers still working with the Schmidt design today. While I always think of him playing a Geyer style horn (by Lewis), Chicago Symphony Principal Horn Dale Clevenger at one point endorsed the new Schmidt model horn made by Lewis & Duerk. I don’t know that I tried the final version of this design, but I did try a similar Duerk horn on a table at an event, and the thumb valve modification they have done is an excellent redesign on that first impression. Instead of the thumb directly moving the piston they have a system of levers connecting to a much more easily moved paddle for the thumb. So maybe at some point they will make a comeback, only time will tell.

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