by Daniel Grabois
I had the good fortune to spend an hour on Zoom with British horn legend Frank Lloyd, asking him as many questions about horn playing as he would answer. He was in Kent, England, in sweltering heat, preparing to go on a 500-mile, 10-day bike ride to celebrate his 70th birthday. He began pursuing physical fitness in 1976, soon after having been appointed principal horn in the Scottish National Orchestra—after just having left the Royal Marines Band, and actually in need of a fitness plan. He began running to get in shape, switching to cycling 15 years ago when he suffered a slipped disc. The benefits and overwhelming “feel-good factor of training” helped him tackle stress and keep his mind clear, he explained.
I asked what goes through his head when he’s having a great performance. “The head is usually concentrating on what I’m doing,” knowing that losing one’s concentration for even one second can lead to mistakes. He has never really struggled with technical issues as far as fingers go, so his mind focuses primarily on the music and on the performance as a whole.
Frank grew up in a very rural part of the U.K. where employment opportunities were few. He joined the school brass band on the advice of a close friend, playing trombone (the school was out of cornets, his first choice of instrument), and then joined the Royal Marines Band at 16 by auditioning on trombone. He was accepted but missed the intake of new recruits owing to his school exams. By the time he had re-auditioned, they no longer needed trombonists, but they were in need of horn players, so he switched. He was immediately comfortable on the horn, winning an internal competition after his first year, performing Strauss’s first concerto.
I asked him about technique, about air and embouchure. He said that, as a young player, he was not made aware of the underlying principles of good air flow and support. Because he could play with great facility, his teacher never really focused on the fundamentals. At the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied after leaving the Royal Marines, his teacher, Ifor James, concentrated more on repertoire than fundamentals. Only after several years playing principal horn professionally did he realize that he needed to work more on fundamentals. Having to learn unconstricted air flow and support as a professional horn player was neither an easy nor enviable undertaking, but it became an easier task when he moved to 3rd horn in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London a few years later.
I asked him to define air support, since every horn player seems to have a different idea of what this means. He replied, “As far as the air is concerned, the lips don’t understand anything else: they’ve got to have good air to function correctly.
He attended some breathing classes while teaching in Essen, Germany, some years ago, where the theme was “air and sound.” The presenter spoke about the muscles we use to cough and to laugh, explaining that we use the same muscles to support the sound on the horn. Coughing and laughing are natural human functions, and we need to incorporate this natural muscle contraction into our support structure when playing the horn. Simply visualizing a method like this (or, say, a yoga pose) can be difficult, since demonstrations and first-hand experience are necessary to appreciate exactly how to emulate the process and implement the muscles involved. Using these coughing/laughing muscles ensures that there is no tension in the throat, allowing a free and uncompromised air flow. This is just as important in the high register as in the low. The throat stays completely open; the more you restrict the openness, the more you compromise the all-important airflow.
I asked Frank if he was talking about what we call our “core,” the muscles we use when doing a sit-up. He said it may well incorporate the same muscles, but, as in the yoga analogy, it’s easier to concentrate on the muscles that react when you laugh (for example) than on a lengthy technical explanation of intercostal muscles vs. diaphragm. Bring that feeling to your horn playing, not the sit-up feeling—as this would “lock” the muscles—and use this basic and natural feeling to develop tension-free playing.
When I asked about embouchure, he talked first about mouthpieces and the need to be able to play in all registers. We need a mouthpiece that enables all registers by not compromising one in favor of another. So, as teachers, we must make certain that students have the right equipment. It can be complicated since there are so many mouthpieces on the market. Students need help in finding the optimal mouthpiece, one suited to their embouchure and muscle structure, one that does not compromise their strengths but which at the same time helps their weaknesses.
You build your embouchure, Frank said, by working on flexibility (ease of moving between registers), endurance (stamina to play for longer periods), and power (playing a sustained fortissimo). He talked about how hard it can be to switch styles (playing an orchestra concert with a light piano concerto and then a heavy symphonic piece, for example). We must be aware of all these “different disciplines” which each demand a solid technique.
I asked about a player who might be a freelancer, playing principal horn one day, 4th horn the next, then onto a chamber orchestra performance the next. He replied, “Do your homework” and know what you’re going to have to play. Be prepared for anything, and train for all of these facets of horn playing.
It is equally important, though, for all players—but especially for freelancers—to be able to sight-read. Otherwise, you will embarrass yourself and hold your colleagues back. This includes being able to transpose at sight. An ensemble will not wait around for YOU to learn your part.
I asked him to talk about each register of the horn.
Low register: A lot of students are reluctant to be flexible with the jaw. You must open the embouchure (he demonstrated dropping his jaw). Practice descending interval exercises, teaching the lips and jaw to open to accommodate the lower notes. Teach your lips, training them through muscle memory to build a stable low register. He brought up the idea of shifting for the low register. He used the example of middle C. He used to play that pitch much stronger using his lower setting but had to teach himself (or rather his lips) to play it strongly on his higher setting. When you demand something of yourself over an extended period (like training for a marathon), your body, through repetition, will become stronger, eventually giving you what you want. You must keep asking—don’t quit! It’s a training element that will bring results only through perseverance.
In an audition situation, if you call yourself a “high player,” you have to be able to play a strong high C with ease. Conversely, if you consider yourself a “low player,” you must be able to play a powerful pedal G, no questions. These skills are NOT negotiable: you absolutely must learn to do them if you want to be successful in your chosen or strongest area/register.
Middle register, with reference to difficulty in starting notes: It helps to be able to start notes with a breath attack, without having to rely on the tongue. It’s all the same air after all, whether you use your tongue or not. It comes down to support in starting the note by setting the embouchure and then releasing air. The tongue is NOT the starter: setting the air in motion is. The art of playing quiet entrances without the tongue can help enormously with problems of articulation. However, ideally one should be able to do both.
High register: It’s all about training. By increasing the demand on your lips, especially using flexibility (gradually extending the range), you build strength in the embouchure. Don’t pull the mouthpiece into your face, using undue pressure; use your support instead, and a free airflow. This helps build the strength you need. The quiet dynamics are the ones you really need to practice and are the hardest to master. Practice by making a diminuendo as you move higher in the flexibility exercises, for instance. Without support, the tendency is to increase the dynamic as you get higher by pushing faster (faster = louder) air through the horn (to attain faster vibrations in the lips). The key points here are good support, strong embouchure, and clean air (not squeezed or “choked off” with the tongue or throat).
Don’t try to progress too fast in your development—train wisely. The way to the endpoint is a long staircase! Start with a good foundation and work up gradually from there.
Frank is a brilliant performer of multiphonics (playing and singing at the same time). He offered three different ways of practicing them:
- You can start with the horn sound, and then bring your voice in. For example, play a middle C, and then bring the voice in on the G a fifth above.
- Or start with your voice, and bring the horn sound in.
- Likewise you can start by playing and singing a unison (choose the pitch based on finding a comfortable note to sing). Then move the voice up a 5th, then slurring to a 6th above the played note, which remains constant, and stable.
Once you can master this separation of the two notes, work on achieving stability with good intonation, keeping both the played and the sung notes in focus and in tune. Frank also warned that multiphonics involving dissonances can be damaging for your vocal cords, so be careful.
We finished the interview by covering a few more technical ideas.
Legato playing: The beauty of the horn lies in its capacity to slur effortlessly between notes. Controlling the larger intervals so that slurs do not “slither” or become messy is important. Avoid a glissando effect by moving quickly between the two notes, as slurring too slowly increases the tendency to play more of the harmonics in between. Experiment with different types of slurs depending on repertoire: cleaner slurs for Mozart, warmer slurs for Strauss, for example.
Help to clean up your slurs by using a very light tongue on the note to which you are slurring in order to attain a clean arrival: in practice, the second note starts where the first note ends as we use an almost inaudible “da” syllable on the arrival note. Dennis Brain used this technique often.
Staccato playing: A clean articulation is paramount in attaining a clean, pure note in staccato; any note that makes a sound like “BL” or something similar is not optimal. Maintaining support through the note ensures that resonance is maintained. Don’t shut off the resonance by stopping the note with the tongue. If you feel you need to do this, it could indicate that you are not supporting correctly, as that is what controls the length of the note, not the tongue. Think: a short note is a short version of a long note, “da” as opposed to “daaaaaa,” and it is always open ended (with no artificial “stop”). Every note must speak with beauty, no matter how fast it is.
Frank likes sporting analogies, like building strength through training, and there are many sporting analogies where maintaining flow and follow-through are crucial to efficiency—golf swing, tennis stroke, and so on—in which we keep the energy going after we have done the required action. In our case, this means keeping the support active through and past the end of your phrase.
Attitude: Enjoy what you are doing. In the end, what is most important is the music. Always respect what the composer has written, interpreted in the style expected of the period, with your own personal musical interpretation. A competition jury will always forgive a few missed notes but will not forgive a lack of musicality.
Tone color: Sound concepts are steeped in tradition around the world, with preferred choice of instrument manufacturer and mouthpiece playing important roles. Two contrasting examples would be the USA and Germany, where in the USA a big, warm, dark sound is preferred to the brighter, more centered sound common in Germany.
Please join me in wishing Frank Lloyd a happy 70th birthday! And if you haven’t heard him play, seek out his brilliant recordings and videos.
