Horn on Record
by Ian Zook
Volume 2—Georges Barboteu
For this installment of Horn on Record, we are exploring a recording that features repertoire for a unique and versatile chamber combination—horn and harp.
Our second album review, Cor et Harpe, features performers Georges Barboteu on horn and Lily Laskine on harp, both exemplars of the French tradition and aesthetic. While the album was released on the French label Erato, an actual recording date is not listed or cataloged. The educated assumption is that the recording was made in the early 1970’s. 
This recording includes selections by the well-known hornists and composers Louis-François Dauprat and Frédéric Duvernoy, and two pieces by a less well-known composer, Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. Significantly, this is the first recording of these pieces, and it is also the first recording of any repertoire for horn and harp.
Bochsa was a contemporary of Dauprat and lived in Paris from 1807-1817. He would have undoubtedly known Dauprat through their years together at the Conservatoire de Paris. Bochsa was a concert harpist and prolific composer, with a catalog of over four hundred opus numbers. He also helped to establish the Royal Academy of Music in London in 1821.
The hornist on this recording, Georges Barboteu (1926-2006), was the son of Joseph Barboteu, a professional hornist and professor at the Conservatoire d’Algiers. At nine years old, Georges began studies with his father and later played alongside him in both the Grand Casino in Biarritz, France, and the Radio Orchestra of Algiers. Georges then entered the Conservatoire de Paris in 1950, winning the Premiere Prix and the Geneva International Competition in quick succession.
Georges Barboteu held many prestigious appointments, including the solo horn chairs of the Opera Comique and the Orchestre de Paris. He was horn professor at the Conservatoire de Paris for twenty years and a founding member of the Quintette Ars Nova.
We are indebted to Barboteu not just for his consummate artistry in performing and teaching, but also for his contributions to the hornist’s repertoire. He wrote several etude books and composed over forty pieces for both solo horn and horn in combination with other instruments. His recording catalog is extensive and includes a range of concerti and chamber repertoire.
Frequently featured at symposia of the International Horn Society, Barboteu was a member of the Advisory Council from 1976-1979 and recognized as an Honorary Member in 1998.
As a chamber music pairing, horn and harp were a very popular combination for salon music in the early 19th century. The clear and rhythmic articulation of the harp strings, along with the rich and diffuse resonance of its sound, knits seamlessly with the horn. Of course, in the era of these compositions, it was the veiled and varied tones of the natural horn which would have balanced both melodically and texturally with the harp.
While Georges Barboteu is playing valve horn on this album, we are still treated to a light and fluid phrasing that is reminiscent of the vocal natural-horn style. As a French player in the mid-20th Century, we notice a considerable amount of vibrato by modern standards. Yet his sound his quite rich and full with broad articulations and noticeable delicacy in the softer dynamic range.
In the Allegro assai from Duvernoy’s Duexiéme Nocturne, we hear the harp’s present and effective articulations and how these textures provide clarity for the softer articulations of the horn:
In Duaprat’s marvelous Air Écossais Varíe, Op. 22, Barboteu plays with arching lyricism across the phrases and ends with delicate rubato:
Barboteu’s bel canto style and subtle portamento are beautifully captured in the Andante varié from Dauprat’s Sonate pour Harpe avec accompagnement de cor oblige, Op. 3:
Last, the lilting melody composed by N.C. Bochsa in his Fantasie, Op. 72 allows Barboteu to showcase his vocal vibrato and dynamic control across phrases:
Thank you for reading of Horn on Record!
If you would like this vinyl album for yourself, they are available here.
Fearless Performance
by Jeff Nelsen and Katy Webb
Are You Deliberately Practicing Fear?
Are you tired of walking onstage excited and offstage disappointed? We see you. We get it because we’ve been there, too. Practice and performance differ in so many ways, but here’s one way in which they’re similar: practice makes permanent. If you’re hoping to get better at performing by simply performing more often for more people, you might just be practicing (and solidifying?) the act of getting nervous in front of your audience. Yikes!
Are you ready to learn one way to be more deliberately constructive in your performance practice? This emboldening strategy from Fearless Performance will help you improve with every performance you give, build an empowering mindset, and learn what you need in order to share your best.
With a comfy cozy cup of coffee or tea, sometimes it feels like we can conquer the world! But if you’re reading this, it means you’re thoughtful enough to seek out more information on your passions. You know that closing yourself in a practice room with your tasty beverage of choice will not lead to practice gains simply because you put in more time.
Instead, whether you’re fully aware of it or not, you’re making improvements through principles of deliberate practice, like setting clear intentions, collecting feedback on what you’re doing, and making strategic changes. Well, those strategies don’t just work in the practice room. We can make massive improvements when we deliberately practice performance as well.
Behind the technical abilities and musical knowledge that we share with our audience lie our performance abilities. Even though the audience doesn’t get to see these skills, they can greatly impact the musical experience. Among the many magical performance powers you get to bring with you into performance, the top five we suggest that you practice and track are:
self-trust, self-talk, energy, recovery, and fearlessness.
Ultimately, these performance abilities combine to create your quality gap: the difference between what you just did in performance and the best you know you’ve done before. When we are deliberately practicing performance, we are working to identify patterns and make improvements within these five areas so we can enjoy as small a quality gap as possible—basically, so we can play our best in performance, every time.
What gets measured gets managed. Keep performing as much as you can…even serenading your dog with a C-major scale in your kitchen counts! It’s all about how seriously you take it. Then, after each performance, fill out your Performance Scoring Checklist (click the link for your free download). Start collecting your thoughts and data, then use our simple prompts to make adjustments, re-shape your mindset, and start collecting what helps you perform your best.
Cheering you on!
Houghton Horns: The Building of a Business
by Dennis Houghton
Houghton Horns began very humbly nearly four decades ago in 1985. My wife Karen and I had arrived in Texas after studying in Germany on a Rotary foundation scholarship in 1982-83. We had two kids, no money, and no resources, but we loved to play and teach young students about the horn.
During my college years in California, I used the services of Atkinson music for repairs to my horn. I admired what Bob Atkinson and his son Mark were doing. They specialized in horn repairs, maintenance, and customization for the top studio musicians of the time. A visit to their shop in Burbank was always interesting—and you had a good chance of meeting a famous horn player or two!
We came to the Fort Worth area in the fall of 1984, and I quickly began building a studio of about 50 horn students. Things went well, and many local directors liked my teaching, but I didn’t know what I would do for income during the lean summer months when schools were closed and the number of lessons dropped.
About a month before the school year ended, one of the band directors asked if I could clean some horns for him. I knew how to disassemble and clean my instrument, so I figured that might be a fun task. Cleaning horns with basic chemicals and my available tools was effective, and I enjoyed the work, but I had much to learn.
That first summer, I contracted work from about six schools and cleaned a total of 50 or 60 instruments. I’d had no training in soldering or dent removal, so I just stuck to what I knew. I also knew what local music stores were charging for similar services, and I felt like there was business potential—and as a horn player, I felt I could do a better job than most repair techs.
I enjoyed the opportunity to work out of my own home and to be near my wife and kids. My teaching schedule kept me away from home for over 50 hours a week, so being home was a very nice benefit.
Did you know that you can make a full-time living teaching a horn studio in many parts of Texas? The band programs are quite competitive in the large metropolitan areas, and the directors generally encourage the kids to sign up for private instruction. So, for about 20 years I was a full-time horn teacher during the school year but also doing repairs and cleanings out of my home on evenings and weekends. When the spring semester finished, the school programs would take quotes to clean and repair their brass inventory. By the third year, I was taking in hundreds of instruments over the summer and delivering the repaired horns just in time to start teaching again in mid-August.
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| Houghton Horns at IHS 54 |
As my reputation grew, my family grew too, and I needed more income. I would hire horn students part-time during summer to help with the cleaning work, and I continued to do all the high-level repairs, those involving soldering and dent removal, myself.
Brass instrument repair isn’t really rocket science. If you use some common sense, and if you care about nice results and quality work, you can be successful. I did have high standards for my repairs. I considered Caldwell Music in Abilene, Texas, to be the ideal. They operated from the former Conn factory that had been in town, and they had wonderful facilities for rebuilding, lacquering, and plating all wind instruments. Their overhaul shop took in beat up band instruments and made them look new again.
I was proud of my repair work on school instruments, but I wanted to do higher-level projects. Around 1995, I realized that I needed to learn about acoustics, and if I was to take my skills to another level, I should also understand metallurgy and machining.
Around this time, I saw the need for a full-time assistant. I began to train Chris Reddick in 1998; he learned dent removal techniques, soldering, and other skills. Early in 1999, Chris and I began to explore electroplating techniques for rebuilding valves. There were only a few shops in the country who were skilled at rebuilding rotary valves, and I felt we had a real opportunity. Chris and I started valve rebuilding together, but it quickly became apparent that he had a better aptitude for the work. He is mechanically oriented, naturally analytical, and tends to look at problems from a different perspective, so he quickly became the valve specialist in the shop.
All of this work was still happening out of my home…from a 400 square-ft. garage! In the summertime, we might have hundreds of instruments to repair. I rented storage units for added space, and we got very good at the logistics of rotating batches of work through the different repair stations and back into the van for delivery.
We all have our individual quirks and insecurities, and I certainly made my share of mistakes. I have a music degree and was never interested in the business world. But one thing I did understand was that the quality of my work was my best advertisement. Many times, I spent far too long on repairs to get them completed to my satisfaction. If a customer had a complaint or was unhappy about something, I would redo a project at no additional charge. This is costly in the short term, but the practice continued to build my reputation.
And did I mention that I was still teaching a full student load through these years, averaging 65 or 70 students per week? I taught in numerous north Texas public schools for 20 years while I built my business. This allowed me to have personal contact with music teachers on dozens of campuses, and it helped build my customer base. In the same way, Karen and I built relationships with each of our private students. Most of them moved on after high school to careers outside of music, but several of them became music educators. As they moved around the state, our reputation continued to grow.
Ben Allen began working with us part-time around 2002. Besides horn cleanings and repairs, I also contracted work on the big brass: tubas, euphoniums, Sousaphones, and all the other marching brass. Although we still had seasonal high times and low times, this extra work helped buoy us along. Each horn repair is unique, but after you remove around 10,000 dents you gain insight. Ben got his experience by working on hundreds and hundreds of school horns. I don’t think there’s a better brass craftsman in the country! Chris and Ben aren’t just employees; they are my trusted colleagues and friends. That doesn’t mean that we always get along—they are happy to point out when I make a poor decision—but I appreciate that they challenge me.
Our first Horn Society show was IHS Bloomington in 2002. I was excited to show my modest selection of custom leadpipes and repair services. Chris accompanied me on the drive to Indiana. On arrival at IU, I got butterflies when setting up in the exhibit room with all the big shops: Bob Osmun, Mark Atkinson, Alexander, Paxman. Our table was between Dietmar Dürk and Steve Lewis…not a little intimidating! Needless to say, we had much to learn about selling; in fact, I actually don’t remember selling a single thing at that show.
Chris and I did become very good at restoring and flipping horns over the next several years: eBay was still rather new, and there were good values if you knew what to look for. We would find an old 8D or Holton and often do a complete restoration: a valve rebuild, full overhaul, and lacquering. I don’t know how many horns we restored between 2002 and 2022, but it’s certainly in the hundreds. This work also gave us experience with nearly every brand and model of horn: Alexander, Paxman, Kruspe, Hoyer, C.F. Schmidt, and of course Conn, Holton, and Yamaha. This type of education can’t be purchased—we lived it!
Our entry into actual retail sales wasn’t until 2006, and it began in a small way. I received an email invitation from Engelbert Schmid who was looking to expand to additional dealers in the U.S. I had ordered a few spare parts and some bell rings at different times, but I was surprised he was even aware of Houghton Horns! My first thought was “I can’t afford to be a Schmid dealer,” but then I thought, “We can’t afford to pass up this opportunity.”
Karen, our son Mark, and I pooled our funds, and in July of 2006 we formed Houghton Horns LLC. The initial investment for inventory was daunting, so we recruited the help of Sterling Procter and Aaron Pino of the Ft. Worth Symphony. Wiring $20,000 to Germany was a huge leap at first, but it now seems commonplace.
We had these expensive new horns in stock, but they weren’t jumping off the shelf. Our company was so new that most hornists didn’t know about us, and we still had much to learn about the internet and retailing. Fortunately, we had also become dealers for Hoyer horns. These were quality instruments that we could sell to Texas students. The Hoyer 6802 was an excellent Kruspe-model horn, and we could sell it at or under the price of an American horn. Sometimes our distributor, B&S USA, would have discontinued models or damaged horns. I was good at introducing these models (or repairing damaged ones), and we quickly flipped many of these horns. This gave us some added cash flow and the stability to increase the stock of Schmid horns and other premium brands.
Sterling and Aaron weren’t our only investors. Over the years, we’ve had the help of Jim London and Greg Hustis of the Dallas Symphony, Greg Umber of the Phoenix Symphony, and many others. We also worked closely with local university professors and their studios. My friend Mike Harcrow was doing doctoral study at the University of North Texas, and he financed much of his degree by selling several horns he had acquired while working overseas using our repair services and consignment contracts. We have had countless opportunities like these to build relationships with people in the horn community. I don’t have a customer—repair or retail—that I don’t also consider a friend. This is the basis of our business: you would not cheat or mislead your friend. Good business gives value and is good for all parties.
In 2012, Derek Wright began to be involved with Houghton Horns. He had finished his doctorate at Arizona State University and was in the Dallas area freelancing and teaching a private studio. Derek had done tech support while working himself through school, and he had great computer skills. I first asked him to rebuild my repair shop website. We later had Derek take over design of the retail site as well, and ultimately, we merged both sites into one. Derek became a partner in 2015, and with his help we continue to grow. He enjoys the business aspect of the shop and has great insights and a knack for marketing.
If you’re outside of Texas, you may not know about the Texas Music Educators Association. TMEA is part of the reason that Texas school music programs are so strong. Their annual convention is held in San Antonio each February, and it’s always a big showcase for Houghton Horns. Our first time to exhibit there was in 2007 when we showed a few new instruments and some consignment and pre-owned horns. We were a very small shop, but we had more French horns than any other exhibitor. Our presence and our popularity at TMEA have grown each year.
My fascination with brass instruments started when I was fifteen, and it’s taken me to wonderful places and allowed me to meet extraordinary people. Through the years, my repair services brought business from many of the principal brass players in Fort Worth and Dallas Symphonies. Those connections have now grown and multiplied across the country. In 1991 when Dizzy Gillespie was playing his Caravan of Dreams show in Fort Worth, a friend brought him by my shop one afternoon. This bebop legend came through the door and quietly introduced himself as “John Gillespie!” I got to give him a brief shop tour and then polished his signature “bent bell” trumpet, a gold plated Schilke. Before he left, I got a photo of him with my crew. I still have the photo, but since I was holding the camera, I’m not in the shot!
I could go on with so many stories, more than we have time for. But the bottom line is that Houghton Horns was born out of a passion for music and brass playing. It’s about providing unique services and great instruments for the brass playing community. It’s more of a lifestyle than a business. I enjoy working with my hands and making a difference for horn players, but in what other field would someone voluntarily work sixty hours a week?
And ultimately for me, it’s not about making money. It’s about making friends, building relationships, and sharing the joy of music.
Composer Spotlight
by Caiti Beth McKinney
If you are looking for an inspiring tale of a woman who could do it all, look no further than 19th century composer Louise Farrenc. Originally trained as a pianist, by the age of fifteen she was also studying composition with renowned composer Anton Reicha. However, because female students were not allowed to study at the Paris Conservatoire during this time, she was required to acquire her instruction via private sessions.
After her marriage to flutist Aristide Farrenc, the couple traveled Europe performing concerts together, and they eventually opened a publishing house. Farrenc achieved great acclaim as a performer, earning such respect that she was eventually appointed Professor of Piano at the very same conservatory which had previously barred her entrance.
Although many of her compositions are for piano, Farrenc composed several symphonies and concert works, as well as two chamber works which include the horn, Nonet in E Flat, Op. 38 (1849) and Sextet in C Minor, Op. 40 (1852). The sextet is incredibly important to the history of horn repertoire because it is the first combination of piano and woodwind quintet, paving the way for Poulenc’s famous sextet eighty years later. The work itself is heavily influenced by the Classical style but incorporates harmonic and tonal characteristics of the Romantic era. The nonet is another showstopper, a substantial thirty-minute piece which combines the beautiful timbres of woodwind quintet and string quartet to great effect.
While Farrenc achieved substantial success and renown during her lifetime, her works were largely forgotten until recently; they are just now beginning to receive the attention they deserve.
To learn more about Louise Farrenc and other underrepresented composers, visit www.caitibethmckinney.com.
“Your life begins only after you graduate….”
by Austris Apenis
One of my teachers said that to me once, and it stuck. Until then, graduation had been the destination to me, but he was right. Absolutely right!
I decided to study the horn professionally when I was 16. The notion I had at that age was, “You need to get a job in an orchestra! If you don’t, what are you going to do then?” I think many professionals can relate to that. It is a great goal to work for and to be motivated by, but we all know how difficult it is to win an audition. And let’s be serious for a moment: how many of us will actually get a job in an orchestra? Even though it is a hard truth, don’t put your head down…and don’t give up yet! There are many other things that we can do. The last couple of years proved this to me.
Young professionals can have it pretty hard. We need to compete with everyone, no matter their age. Building up a network takes time but rent still needs to be payed. I lived that life for several years, and then something unexpected happened. The pandemic….
Without a doubt, no one expected that, and no one could have predicted how much it would change the world and, subsequently, the music business. Personally, I have to say that it was not all for the worse. At the beginning, I was sitting in lockdown with almost no work and only thinking of what to do. I am a person who constantly needs to work, make progress, and better myself. One thing led to the next, and I started learning how to build a website. It was very exciting, and my dopamine level was off the charts! I love working with computers. I was watching YouTube tutorials and studying 11 hours per day. Maybe it was my way of dealing with the pandemic. Who knows? But I learned something about web design, WordPress, SEO, marketing, and all kinds of useful skills that can be handy for an entrepreneur.
After the website was built, I started having doubts if anyone would even be able to find it, but then the next idea hit me: create a YouTube channel!
Since I am quite a shy person and sometimes have problems with stuttering, I could not have imagined a couple years ago that I would consider standing in front of a camera making tutorials about learning how to play the horn. But at that point, I was already outside of my comfort zone and in a nice flow. This seemed like a logical next step, and it really paid off. When I started, I already had a good amount of teaching experience. But also, you can upload anything to YouTube: teaching tutorials, music videos, orchestral excerpts…whatever you want to show to the world, and so this next adventure began. I had to learn video editing, filming, standing in front of the camera and talking. As a professional horn player who has already performed for 24 years, I am not a stranger to being on stage, but you won’t believe how difficult it was at first to talk to a camera! (I have gained so much respect now for television news anchors.) I pushed the record button and then started to panic. “Wait, what did I want to say again?” Memorizing lines was extra difficult, and I would stop after every sentence. Because of that, some magic needed to happen in the editing phase. That went on for a while, but then I got more and more comfortable with the process and realized that this is just another skill—quite different from playing the horn, but still a skill—and eventually, I got the hang of it. By the way, I think that we musicians are very good problem solvers and skill learners, even outside of our comfort zones.
This enterprise has taught me a couple of really useful things: recording horn ensembles is incredibly fun and satisfying, YouTube is a very effective way of getting your ideas out into the world, and listening to yourself playing is crucial if you want to improve.
If you are interested in seeing what I have made, you can click this link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCPnrJpHIakA20s_AOsj2cA
But why am I telling you all of this? Maybe you already know where I am going with it: graduation is not the destination but the beginning. There are more things to do than just playing. Constantly get out of your comfort zone, learn new things which are not related to playing the horn, and, above all, be creative and genuine. That is what people like and will respond to well.
I think this is not said often enough, but I believe that we as a horn community have a responsibility to inspire the future generations, to show people how beautiful, inspiring, and impressive the horn can be, and to evolve with the times and use the most modern tools available to us. We can do so much more than we think!
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Pedagogy - Frank Lloyd and Training
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.
