The French horn and the Wind Ensemble: My Random Thoughts
Hello all! This site for now will be a venting source for me and a space to write my thoughts on playing French horn in different settings. Let's start on today's thoughts: the horn in the wind ensemble.
Military bands of the Sousa day, such as the Marine Band (which is considered one of America's premiere bands), were not exactly given the best licks to play. Upbeats in marches compare more to a timpani part, which was intended to originally coincide with trumpet parts of older symphonies such as Beethoven on their Vienna trumpets. Nowadays, the horns are being provided with high, soaring melodic ideas that overshadow the horn's true potential as one of the most versatile instruments, but the progress is certainly there. For example, many horns players can remember the time they first played La Fiesta Mexicana and noticed that the pedal D was not written in old notation. What a rush! Those notes are not necessary, but we can dual as a low brass instrument, not just a high brass trumpet. Composers need to remember this if the horn is going to continue being evolved in the wind ensemble form.
The problem with the low horn notes is that the instrument is much smaller than a euphonium and tuba, so the sound will naturally be less present in that register. However, when doubled with those instruments, there can be an excellent blend. I dread the day that a composer reads this blog and decides to give a double tonguing passage written all in bass clef, but luckily I haven't seen the light of THAT day yet!
Let us give credit to today's composers, however. They have provided us with real gems in Whitacre's band transcription of Sleep, Maslanka's Symphony No. 4, Steven Bryant's Ecstatic Waters, (when I played this in high school, I actually thought it sounded NEW; I definitely laugh at that now!), and many others. The repertoire for potential military band audition excerpts is definitely building, despite the fact that they use orchestra excerpts for many of them. Judges should consider the progress being made (and experimented on) in the college realm and use that to progress the military bands. Military bands are mostly playing tributes, not new music, which should be played in my opinion.
On a final note, playing on stage right is so hard when you want to be heard, ugh. It doesn't even sound that much better in my opinion. The military band that I heard did place the horns stage left fortunately, so they were heard well. Trumpet and trombone are direct instruments but still get a reflected sound because there's only so many people directly in front of a trumpet. The arguments that the horn belongs in the reflective realm are old and correct, but the horn need not work so hard. Our endurance is suffering because of it and orchestral recordings are suffering because horns are not mic'd well. Micing is a huge issue when it comes to French horn; the great recordings of the past suffer because the horn is a primarily reflective instrument, so the treble-y instruments such as trumpets and violins are most heard. For the best recordings, one needs to mic each section and go through the trouble of hearing all the parts VERY clearly for CDs that are going to be released. That's the only way I want to hear it.
I will end on a light note. The future of the horn looks bright in terms of our repertoire. Simple as that. =]
