The Mozart French Horn Concertos – what awesome works they are. I am accompanying a very fine French Horn player from the local symphony this weekend. We will perform the Third French Horn Concerto. It’s interesting to be on the other side of the tracks as an accompanist. I studied the Mozart french horn concertos when I was in High School and college, especially the third concerto.
I was an ok French Horn player, not terrific. I had first chair in Jr. High and Interlake High School, but in the big scheme of things that’s not saying much. Two of my bad memories of high school are playing a wrong note on French Horn at the year’s end state competitions for band – and the band director at the time, Leo Dodd, felt really let down. He didn’t mention it, just gave me “the look”.
And at district solo competitions I performed the Third Concerto and got a “good” marking. At the time it was devastating – I had assumed it would be an excellent. And family consoled me, but I knew they didn’t understand the depth of my pain – to be “good”. Reality was I spent about two hours a week practicing the horn away from band, to be “excellent” I should have practiced ten hours – but my heart wasn’t in it. I loved the SOUND of the French Horn, the boldness of the instrument, everything about it – except practicing. And French Horn is a hideous instrument when not played well.
So now I avenge my past – the horn player I am accompanying – Jim Gaudette – is an incredible horn player with impeccable tone. He’s heard all the Barry Tuckwell recordings (in my youth Barry Tuckwell was the #1 player to fashion after). Jim will conquer my past defeats with his bold horn playing, and I will accompany him with the fire of a Viking raid.
To those listening it will just be a beautiful performance, but for me it will be making up for past blemishes I created for Mozart and the French Horn.
It’s interesting the things we remember, and the things we hold onto.
Information on the French Horn
Early horns were much simpler than those in current use. These early horns were simply brass tubing wound a few times and flared into a larger opening at the end (called the bell of the horn). They evolved from the early hunting horns and, as such, were meant to be played while riding on a horse. The hornist would grip the horn on the piping near the mouthpiece and rest the body of the horn across his arm so that only one hand was needed to play and the other could be free to guide his steed. The only way to change the pitch was to use the natural harmonics of that particular length of tubing by changing the speed at which the lips vibrated against the mouthpiece; but by using a long tube and playing high in the harmonic series, considerable melodic variety was possible. The best-know example from this era is the Quoniam from JS Bach’s Mass in B minor.
Later, horns caught the interest of composers, and were used to invoke an outdoors feeling and the idea of the chase. Even in the time of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, however, the horn player (now a part of the early orchestra) still had a much simpler version of the horn; he carried with him a set of crooks, which were curved pieces of tube of different length which could be used to change the length of the horn by removing part of the tubing and inserting a different length piece.
The player now held the horn with both hands, holding the tubing near the mouthpiece with one, and putting the other into the bell, which was either rested upon the right knee of the player or the entire horn was lifted into the air. Now the pitch played could be changed in several ways. First the player could change the harmonic series which the instrument as a whole had by removing and inserting different sized crooks into the instrument, changing the length of the horn itself. Less globally, given a particular crook, the vibration of the lips could be varied in speed, thus moving to a different pitch on the given harmonic series. Finally, now that the player had his hand in the bell, the hand basically became an extension on the length of the horn, and by closing and opening the space available for air to leave the bell, he could bend the pitch to interpolate between the elements of a harmonic series. This interpolation finally made the horn a true melodic instrument, not simply limited to a harmonic series, and some of the great composers started to write concerti for this new instrument. The Mozart Horn Concerti, for example, were written for this type of horn, called the natural horn in the modern literature.