Composer Spotlight—Odette Gartenlaub
by Caiti Beth McKinney
Hello all!
Happy Fall! This month I would love to share with you the music of French composer Odette Gartenlaub (1922-2014). Her work for horn and piano, Pour le Cour (1968) is quickly becoming a staple in our repertoire, and her accomplishments during her lifetime are well worthy of remembrance.
Not much is now known about Odette’s early years, other than the fact that she was an incredibly skilled pianist at a young age, winning a first-place performance award at the Paris Conservatoire when she was only fourteen. She continued studying at this prestigious institution until 1941, learning composition from Darius Milhaud, Olivier Messiaen, and others; however, in 1940, the Nazis occupied Paris and began enforcing strict bans aimed at anyone of Jewish heritage. As a result, Gartenlaub was no longer able to continue her musical education. After the war, Odette once again earned professional success and acclaim, becoming the sixth woman to ever win the famous Prix de Rome competition in composition. She even went on to become a professor at the Conservatoire in 1959, the very school which had once been forced to bar her access.
Pour le Cour follows in the grand tradition of French compositions for horn, with great technical challenges interspersed with lyrical lines. The piece begins with an eerie extended passage for horn alone, with the eventual entrance of an equally spooky piano accompaniment, all leading to a long, dramatic lip trill which propels the work into a frenzied second section. Filled with large leaps, glissandi, and movement up and down the horn’s register, this piece shows off just about every skill a horn player can possess, and it makes a great challenge for anyone looking to tackle such a satisfying work. Enjoy!
Step One-Two-Three
by Fokke van Heel
During my career as a player and teacher, I have increasingly come to realize how important and essential it is to involve my entire body in my technique. Among other things, I have benefitted greatly from Alexander Technique lessons to gain this awareness. Our instrument needs a balance between strength and flexibility, and in order to continue to develop myself, it was, and continues to be, necessary to try to explore that balance. Moreover, it makes practicing extra interesting and fun.
Below is a simple basic exercise that can be the start of new discoveries every day. Enjoy!
‘Step One-Two-Three’ – an exercise for all
In your practice room, you may want to add the following exercise, applicable to all levels of playing:
Step 1. Play a long tone, preferably a mezzo-forte note in the middle range.
Step 2. Ask yourself during this tone: “Can I relax anything in my body?”
The shoulders may be the easiest body part to begin with:
Your shoulders relax…great!
But…your intonation drops and your tone gets softer…not so great.
Step 3. Restore Intonation and Dynamic
Restore the intonation by lowering your soft palate a bit using the vowel E.
Restore the dynamic by intensifying the airstream.
Result: same good tone as in step 1, same pitch, same dynamic, but more relaxed shoulders and embouchure.
Simply said, you changed the energy in your playing: same quantity of energy, different quality. This is not the energy from the squeezing in your lips and the tension in your shoulders (step 1), but energy from more effort in your diaphragm and from singing in the back of your oral cavity.
What happened?
Obviously releasing the tension in your shoulders (or, in this exercise, any other part of your body) was helpful in step 1 to obtain a controlled and stable tone. But in step 2, we learn that these ‘helpful’ shoulders also cause tension in your lips and in your diaphragm, otherwise the pitch and dynamic would not have dropped.
Now both diaphragm and lips are more relaxed, but also less powerful.
To regain the steady tone you had in step 1, you need the new activity in step 3:
- In the embouchure: muscles towards and in your cheeks will be activated by saying the E-vowel in the soft palate. Challenged by the faster airstream, they take over the work of your central lip muscles.
- In the diaphragm: new, subtly different muscles will be activated to create a faster, less forced airstream.
Both new activities take a while to become strong and energetic enough, but when this has become your normal way of playing then this is your new step 1 and you can start over again…a never ending voyage of discovery!
A couple of tips:
- In a way, step 1 is the most important. Play your note like you always do, almost without thinking.
- Do not already compensate in step 2, let it happen and listen.
- If you find it hard to relax specific muscles (e.g. your buttocks or in your pelvis area), then first give those muscles even more tension, then relax, and now you feel where to relax even a bit further.
- Since, in step 3, you are using more of the vowel E, your sound may initially get too bright and lose a bit of warmth. After a while (day/days), you will regain the balance in your embouchure (between central and decentralized), and your sound will be back, with more overtones as a result of the relaxation.
- Direct the faster airstream to your soft palate rather than to your lips.
- At first, this exercise needs one long tone, but it can also be done in approx. 4 seconds.
- Once happy with step 3 (same pitch, same dynamic), try to stay in that position and challenge the new muscles. Make sure to take many pauses!
- Preferably, do not do this exercise before a performance but rather at the end of the day. Give your developing muscles time to recover overnight.
If you do not like to reflect on your playing through this exercise, I completely understand; it comes with temporary instability and your embouchure will change.
However, with curiosity you will discover and improve endlessly!
Fokke van Heel has served as principal horn in the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra/Netherlands Chamber Orchestra since 1998. He was professor at the Artez Conservatory in Zwolle and is currently teaching at the Sweelinck Academy of the Conservatory of Amsterdam. He has been a member of the faculty of the Prisma Festival in British Columbia, Canada, since 2015.
Research to Resonance—Direction Beats Location
by Katy Carnaggio
Sometimes, the only thing standing between you and your best performance is asking, “What if I could?”
Each day, we carry assumptions about what we can and can’t do, often shaped by past performances, insecurities, or judgments. These thoughts can quietly hold us back, keeping us in a box of “I’ve never done that before” or “I’ve never been great at that.” But what if you flipped the script?
Each day, separate yourself from your memories and judgments about who you are, the sounds you make, or what you can do. Instead, look to the part of you that simply can. Ask yourself, “What if I could? And if I could, how would I?” What would that look and feel like today?
- If I could play with a massive, ringing sound, what would I do to create that?
- If I could stay cool, calm, and collected under pressure, what would I do in that moment?
We often have such fixed ideas of what our abilities should be that we become disconnected from what they could be. But when you assume, today, that anything is possible—that you can—you start finding ways to make that assumption true.
And if you can train yourself to walk closer and closer toward that person who can, where you are matters far less than where you’re headed. Direction is more important than location. So, choose a direction and walk towards the you that can!
Chamber Music Corner—Rimsky-Korsakov’s Quintet
by Layne Anspach
Hello musicians!
The next quintet for piano and winds that we will explore is Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Quintet in B-flat major for Piano and Winds (1876). As a well-known composer, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s (1844-1908) biography is easily accessible, and so I will only highlight a limited biographical background. He was part of “The Five,” a group of Russian composers which was strongly against formal training. Rimsky-Korsakov derailed his relationship with “The Five” when he accepted a position at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1871. He wrote a wide range of works and composed several notable transcriptions and arrangements.
In 1876, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote the Quintet in B-flat major for a competition, in addition to his Sextet for strings. While the sextet received an award, the quintet did not fare as well. Rimsky-Korsakov, as he noted in his autobiography, claimed that the musicians assigned to perform his work were inferior to those who were assigned to the winning piece. To back up his claim, he noted that a later performance of the quintet at a St. Petersburg Chamber Music Society concert was to “the pleasure of the audience.”
The first movement of the Quintet is marked Allegro con brio and is in sonata form. The movement starts with a repetitive eighth note pattern in the piano with bassoon playing the melody. After an ensemble tutti, the piano carries on alone, building momentum. The second theme features winds alone, eventually incorporating the piano. The development features the first theme in various keys, first with horn then followed by other winds. The recapitulation begins as expected, but the second theme is altered, featuring only the piano, then the bassoon enters to replace the flute. The Poco piu mosso pushes the coda to an energetic conclusion.
The second movement, Andante, features a typical Russian compositional technique where a melodic phrase is repeated while changing the harmonic background. The horn presents the theme throughout while the winds and piano provide the harmonic variations. This technique results in a fair amount of repetition, but a close listen to the changes is a rewarding experience. In this movement, Rimsky-Korsakov incorporates an attractive fugue in b-flat minor.
The third and final movement, Rondo: Allegretto, is supported by a bassoon ostinato throughout which gives a bouncing, playful feel. Atypical of the other movements, Rimsky-Korsakov includes a lengthy fugue for piano alone. An Agitato follows, led by the clarinet and then horn, adding a brooding character which contrasts the more playful sections. If there wasn’t already enough happening in this movement, Rimsky-Korsakov features cadenzas for all voices except bassoon. The bassoon brightens the mood with the final return of the primary theme. Piu vivo and the subsequent Vivace push the entire work to a dramatic conclusion carried by the piano.
The reference recording features hornist Radovan Vlatković.
Hornscapes CD (Parte 2)
por Ricardo Matosinhos
Uau, setembro passou num instante! Agradeço a todos que contribuíram para a minha campanha de crowdfunding, que superou largamente o objetivo inicial.
Nasci em Portugal e divido as minhas atividades musicais entre o ensino, a performance e a composição. O chamado "triângulo da plenitude musical", tal como descrito por Douglas Hill, é também complementado pela investigação. Consequentemente, várias das minhas composições são inspiradas em aspetos pedagógicos. Sou também autor de vários artigos e livros, incluindo um livro infantil que adaptei para um musical. A criatividade está sempre presente, e, no fim de contas, as minhas atividades são sustentadas por um polígono com uma infinidade de lados.
Neste CD estão incluídas seis peças compostas por mim. Tocar a minha própria música é sempre especial. Quando era estudante, comecei a compor logo que iniciei o estudo da trompa, mas apenas para outros instrumentos, principalmente para piano. Demorei dez anos até ter a coragem de compor uma peça original para trompa (os meus 12 estudos jazzísticos), e desde então tem sido uma jornada fantástica. Há três peças a solo (Pastoral, Mirage e Improviso) que são opus consecutivos, mas apresentam diferentes carateres, já que foram compostas para diferentes intérpretes. Depois, há duas obras para tuba wagneriana e piano, Siegfried e Fafnir, com um caráter heróico, e a Song Without Words, que apresenta este instrumento dos deuses de Valhalla com um toque jazzístico. Esta última peça foi estreada por Robert Palmer no IHS 51, em Ghent, e aqueles que assistiram ao IHS 54 talvez se lembrem de me ter ouvido tocar esta peça numa trompa. Há ainda uma peça para trompa e piano, Song for Emma, que foi escrita para a trompista e compositora australiana Emma Gregan, como forma de agradecimento pela sua aceitação em escrever a peça Rose-Colored Glasses.
Com o lançamento deste CD para trompa (tuba wagneriana) e piano, decidi criar um pequeno concurso online para os subscritores da "Horn and More", a newsletter da International Horn Society. Já ofereci dois CDs na edição de setembro a Veronika Redfern e Wendy Anne Bartel. Se não foirápido o suficiente, ainda há esperança! Vou oferecer mais dois CDs às duas primeiras pessoas que responderem corretamente às perguntas fornecidas nas edições de outubro e novembro. Se foi um dos vencedores da edição de setembro, pode competir novamente, mas, se ficar nos dois primeiros lugares, o CD será atribuído ao próximo da lista.
Hornscapes CD (Part 2)
em portuguêsby Ricardo Matosinhos
Wow, September flew by! I want to thank everyone who contributed to my crowdfunding campaign which far exceeded its initial goal.
I was born in Portugal, and my musical activities are divided between teaching, performing, and composing. The so-called "triangle of musical wholeness," as described by Douglas Hill, is also enriched by research. As a result, many of my compositions are inspired by pedagogical concepts. I am also the author of several articles and books, including a children's book that I adapted as a musical. Creativity is always present, and ultimately, my work is supported by a multifaceted approach.
This CD includes six pieces which I composed. Performing my own music is always special. As a student, I began composing as soon as I started playing the horn, but only for other instruments (and mainly the piano). It took me ten years to have the courage to compose a piece specifically for the horn (my 12 jazzy etudes), and since then, it has been a fantastic journey. There are three solo pieces (Pastoral, Mirage, and Improviso), which are consecutive opus numbers but which exhibit different characters, as they were written for different players. Then, there are two works for Wagner tuba and piano: Siegfried and Fafnir, heroic in nature; and finally, Song Without Words presents this instrument of the gods of Valhalla with a jazz vibe. This last piece was premiered by Robert Palmer at IHS 51 in Ghent, and those who attended IHS 54 might remember hearing me perform it on a horn. Additionally, there is a piece for horn and piano, Song for Emma, written for Australian horn player and composer Emma Gregan, as a token of appreciation for her acceptance to write the piece Rose-Colored Glasses.
To celebrate the release of this CD for horn (including Wagner tuba) and piano, I have decided to organize a small online contest for subscribers of Horn and More, the newsletter of the International Horn Society. I already gave away two CDs for the September edition to Veronika Redfern and Wendy Anne Bartel. If you missed it, don’t worry! I will offer two more CDs to the first two people who correctly answer the questions in the October and November editions. If you were one of the September winners, you can participate again, but if you place in the top two, the CD will go to the next person on the list.
Transitions—Bon Voyage, Dan Grabois
Transitions—Bon Voyage, Dan Grabois
For the past two-and-a-half years, Dan Grabois has provided the anchor piece of Horn and More, our Pedagogy Column. Now, we say farewell to Dan who took over the Pedagogy Column from Ab Koster. Additional responsibilities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison prevent him from continuing in this significant role. The Column took on a very different look during his tenure with Horn and More, but it held the same gravitas as all that Ab had done for the International Horn Society through the Newsletter. We will miss you, but we are grateful for the legacy you have left the horn community through your many solicitations, personal contributions, and informative interviews. Thank you, Dan!
