Book Release—Solo
Book Release—Solo
by Caroline Swinburne
Many years ago, I attended a concert of The Planets, in a large and prestigious venue, televised live to a global audience. Venus begins with a very exposed solo horn part, and I was sitting close enough to the stage to notice that the musician was visibly shaking. To my relief, the performance was, by no standards, a “disaster;” on the contrary, it was note-perfect, except that the player’s breath was trembling very slightly, resulting in the tiniest, barely perceptible, tinge of vibrato. I doubt anyone but a horn-player would have noticed. But I felt the performance was hovering on a knife-edge, and the story could have ended very differently.
The episode reminded me rather too pertinently of some of my own less-than-comfortable experiences on less-eminent stages; as every horn player will know, the instrument’s reputation as the riskiest in the orchestra is well deserved. And I started to wonder what would happen next, if things went wrong on an epic scale, for someone for whom the horn was not only their love but their livelihood.
The result was my debut novel, Solo, which tells the story of Cate, a fictional horn player with a top UK orchestra until a miscarriage causes an onstage panic attack and a famous solo goes disastrously wrong in front of a huge audience. Her contract with the orchestra isn’t renewed, and she’s too traumatised to audition for another one (especially when she discovers that that solo is on the audition repertoire list). Instead, she gives up the horn, reinvents herself online, trains as a language teacher, and travels the world trying to forget. Freed from the tyranny of the daily practice routine, and with no need to worry about the next concert, she tries but fails to persuade herself that she’s wasted all those years enslaved to a length of brass tubing.
It’s ten, arid years later before she’s drawn in to mentoring Sarah, a talented but under-educated teenage horn player with a local amateur orchestra. Like a younger version of Cate, Sarah has fallen in love with the horn and has ambitions to play professionally. But her family have no money and can’t afford a teacher or a decent instrument. Cate is her only hope if she is to achieve her dreams. When the orchestra announces that their next concert will include the work which was Cate’s undoing, Sarah’s big break is at stake. She offers Cate the chance of redemption—if she can finally face her demons.
Solo will be published by The Book Guild and available from all major retailers, both in ebook and print formats, from September 28, 2025. www.carolineswinburne.com
Composer Spotlight—Liana Alexandra
by Caiti Beth McKinney
Hi everyone,
This month I want to highlight Liana Alexandra (1947-2011), an incredibly accomplished and prolific composer, musician, and educator from Romania. She was a huge advocate for the performance of contemporary music and for understanding composers as individuals and not lumping them together in one category. She resisted labels like “traditionalist” or “avant-garde,” preferring to compose as her piece demanded. Alexandra composed in nearly every genre, including a substantial collection of pieces for large forces like orchestra and wind ensemble, as well as a wide variety of chamber music.
Luckily for us horn players, this includes several works that feature our instrument, including her sonata for horn and piano, Intersections. Available publicly on IMSLP (as are all the pieces I will discuss here), Intersections is a workout in timbral complexities and interpretation for both players. The piece incorporates elements of both Modernism and Minimalism, using repeated rhythmic motifs interspersed with moments of calm melody or dramatic glissandi and flutter tongue to create, to my ear, a sense of conversation between three parties—two sides of the horn player and the piano. Intersections is a piece that bears repeat listening to gain full understanding as there is quite a bit of depth to Alexandra’s writing in this work.
Alexandra also composed both a wind quintet, Images Interrupted, and a brass quintet, Collages. Collages plays with timbre and texture throughout the work, using extended techniques like stopped horn, glissandi, pitch bending, and mutes to create vivid imagery that alternates between ethereal calm and frenzied activity. Images Interrupted is another exercise in extended techniques and modern sounds. The first movement opens with an unmeasured, out-of-time feel, slowly stacking and unstacking the members of the quintet and incorporating dramatic dynamic shifts. The entire work calls for a true collaboration between players as well as a holistic understanding of the score. This under-recorded work would be an excellent project for a wind quintet with “new music” experience.
Student Column—Communicating the Soft Skills of Studying Music
by Inman Hebert
As we begin another year of university, music students prepare to learn vast amounts of music theory, history, and pedagogy. In mentally preparing for yet another busy semester, I considered how to respond to the questions naysayers ask about the value of studying music.
For music majors, we possess a passion that drives us to study, understand, and practice music in developing our skills to turn our pursuit into a career. However, skeptics often point to statistics that suggest many of us, particularly as performance majors, may never reach these goals, or at least not to the extent once thought possible.
As musicians, we all inherently recognize the philosophical and esoteric beauty of music. Even if it is difficult to verbalize, music provides us with a universal language with which to express ourselves. With an instrument, we can convey the spectrum of the human experience. (For me, the unique power of music solves any Kafkaesque existential crises inherent in proclaiming myself a music major.)
While we could endlessly discuss the philosophy behind music’s power, many critics would argue that philosophy cannot solve the real-life struggles of the performance aspects of being a music major. For our families, we need to discuss the social and emotional benefits and creative opportunities found in music; however, how can we respond to those who only speak the language of business to question the study of music? Focusing on the soft skills increasingly valued by employers allows us to communicate how music study prepares students to contribute to any work environment.
Nearly all music majors know the experience of managing a busy schedule. We often take more classes than students in other majors, all while handling ensemble, chamber music, and individual practice schedules. Our lifestyle requires a great degree of dedication, adaptability, and time management skills which prove valuable in the workplace and elsewhere. Our schedules require a strong work ethic that prepares us for the responsibilities all professionals must juggle.
To develop virtuosity in music, students must adopt a mindset of accepting and responding to constructive feedback in lessons and apply that input in our practice to facilitate growth. Playing an instrument with a variety of difficult intricacies, we must learn to constructively problem-solve the horn’s unique challenges. All this effort leads to the additional challenges of addressing, at some level, the burdens of performance anxiety. Years of honing these skills provide us with the adaptability to perform well in any professional environment.
Music also teaches us about collaboration. Even the most famous soloists in the world work with conductors and pianists. We often collaborate in both large ensembles and chamber groups. Orchestras can only be successful when all members fill their roles under the conductor’s vision. Chamber music teaches us to cooperate with our peers, often compromising to reach a musical vision. These interpersonal skills serve as the foundation for professional success.
To those who doubt the viability of our major—including even ourselves at times—learning and communicating the soft skills we acquire as music majors can silence the naysayers.
Composer Spotlight—Elsa Barraine
by Caiti Beth McKinney
Hello everyone!
This month, I want to share with you just a little about the outstanding compositions of an incredibly accomplished but seldom remembered French composer, Elsa Barraine (1910-1999). In addition to her music, Barraine was also a fierce anti-Nazi activist during the German occupation of France in World War II. Of Jewish heritage herself, Barraine used her music and her skills with the written word to resist the atrocities occurring in her country and abroad.
Barraine was born to a musical family. Her father was the principal cellist of the Parisian Orchestre de l’Opéra until he was ousted by the Nazi regime in 1943, and her mother was a skilled pianist and chorus member of the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. Elsa enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire at the very young age of nine. There, she studied with famous composer Paul Dukas alongside other notables of her generation, including Yvonne Desportes, Claude Arrieu, and Olivier Messiaen. In 1929, when she was only 19 years old, Barraine won the prestigious Prix de Rome for her cantata about Joan of Arc entitled La vierge guerrière, making her only the fourth woman in history to win the award.
There is so much more to say about Barraine’s life and career that is beyond the scope of this column, but I would strongly encourage all readers to learn more about her outstanding achievements and her dedication to making a difference in the world. When it comes to the horn, Barraine wrote several excellent works for orchestra, including a tone poem entitled Pogromes she wrote while residing in Mussolini’s Italy. In addition to these larger scale works, Barraine composed a short piece for horn and piano, Crépuscules and Fanfare, which is becoming increasingly popular as a recital piece. This short, four-minute work is evocative of the “twilight” after which it is named. The lyrical and melancholy melody of the first movement is richly chromatic while remaining firmly within the world of tonality. The fanfare is joyful and technically challenging. It moves through the full register of the horn and showcases the performer’s ability to perform a repeated high B!
Pedagogy Column—Comedy Hour: Impressions
by Nikolette LaBonte, Principal Horn, Calgary Philharmonic
I’ve been a somewhat regular SNL viewer for most of my teenage and adult life. Throughout the years watching it, even as casts and writers change, one role has remained a constant presence on the show: the Impressionist. Often featuring heavily in political sketches, the Impressionist can recreate the presence of the most recent headline-making figure and bring them to whatever sketch has been prepared for that week’s cold open. Behind the scenes, I imagine these performers spending time in front of their computers, pulling up clips of the person they are trying to emulate. The actors take notice of hallmark features: tone of voice, inflection, hand gestures, body language, etc. Then they work out how to mimic them: what shape their oral cavity needs to have, how their tongue should move, into what physical shape they need to contort their bodies, and so on.
I’m not a comedian, despite how funny I might think I am. But I’ve been thinking a lot about impressions on the horn. Go to www.hornexcerpts.org right now and click on an excerpt you like. Listen to the first reference recording and think about how you could “do an impression” of that horn player. Just like a comedian, think about the shape of their oral cavity, their air, how they are articulating, their phrase shapes. Then take those ideas and try to incorporate them into your own playing. You might not sound exactly like they do; but do you sound more like them than before?
Impressions are the building blocks of exploring new colors, phrasing points, and inflections. Here’s an example: I am listening to a recording of the Beethoven 6 third movement excerpt, and I hear that the sound is wide and round, and the articulation is minimal. If I want to sound like that, I’ll modify my oral cavity to use an OH vowel, increase my air support to accommodate the larger space, and keep my articulation as low and back as possible. If I do all those things, I can sound a lot like that player’s rendition of Beethoven 6. Do I personally like that approach to that excerpt? Not entirely. But I do like the idea of that floaty sound, so I might try to modify my default oral cavity so that it’s a bit more open than usual…maybe with an AW vowel. But even if I don’t like everything about that approach to Beethoven 6, I LOVE it for Brahms 1. I’ll take the impression over to that excerpt and try it out there—and now my sound is rounder and broader, and it fits the character of Brahms perfectly!
Not sure where to start? Try something! Through trial and error, you’ll find you get better, just as comedians master their abilities over many years. You’ll notice which variables you can change in your own playing to be able to sound like any recording you might hear. And slowly, you’ll discover how to use these variables to create your own musical identity pieced together from various impressions, with varying tone colors, articulation styles, and interpretations. And maybe someday, other players will be working on impressions of you!
Chamber Music Corner—Tsontakis’ Dust for horn, violin, and piano
Chamber Music Corner—Tsontakis’ Dust for horn, violin, and piano
by Layne Anspach
George Tsontakis’ Dust for horn, violin, and piano will be the focus for this edition of Chamber Music Corner. George Tsontakis (b. 1951) is a Grammy-nominated American composer of Cretan heritage. He received his doctorate from The Julliard School in 1978 where he studied with Hugo Weisgall and Roger Sessions. From 1976, Tsontakis was a composer-in-residence at the Aspen Music Festival and founding director of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble. He has received the international Grawemeyer Award and the Charles Ives Living Award. He is the Distinguished Composer in Residence at the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Dust for horn, violin, and piano (1998) was commissioned by the Fontana Concert Society and subsequently premiered at the Fontana Music Festival in Kalamazoo, Michigan USA in 1999. In 1995 and 1996, Tsontakis wrote two works as homage to Olivier Messiaen centered around his Quartet for the End of Time. This trio is a continuation of that process, featuring aspects of both Quartet for the End of Time and Canyon to the Stars. At its core, the work is a spiritual one, focusing on lifespan, "from dust to dust," and the associated existential frailty of humanity. Between each movement, "sacred duos" serve as "reflective reverence for that which is sacred from within."
The first movement, Softly Expansive, starts with dyads in the piano and a sustained horn line. The violin enters like the horn and presses the movement forward until Dynamic, which expands with piano chords reminiscent of Messiaen. The movement slows to a soft close and is followed attacca by the First Sacred Duo. The second movement, With a sense of urgency, gives the piano the lead with a rhythmically energized section. When the violin and horn enter together, they are strong and rhythmically synchronized. A second section is characterized by stopped horn and violin interwoven together. The first and second sections return with alterations. The final seven measures have the violin and horn take over the rhythmic motif from the piano, but the piano has the last word as the Second Sacred Duo begins.
The piano flows gently forward in Elegant and Transparent while horn and violin maintain the melodic interest. There are interruptions to this flow, such as Suddenly forceful. An even more sedated section follows, with "chirps" in the violin and piano. The score indicates "as if the movement has ended" before another interruption, more violent than the first, Suddenly Explosive. The final section, Mysterious and Liquid, recalls fragments of prior material. Unlike the first two duos, the Third Sacred Duo is not performed attacca.
The last movement, Scherzo, starts with an introduction in which the horn seems to hold the group back with elongated lines before joining the others as the movement shoots forward. The opening section continues until Soliloquy, a horn solo, alters the flow. Following this, there are melodic quotes from previous movements, including an untitled sacred duo. In the final section, Slower, the elongated horn lines return but with ostinato piano and violin eighth notes. The work concludes with an ascending motif passed from piano to horn and finally to violin.
The reference recording is from a concert at the 33rd International Horn Symposium (2001), at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan. The hornist is David Jolley, to whom the work was dedicated.
Student Column—Sound Models
by Inman Hebert
As students of the horn, we will inevitably acquire musical role models. But how can we move beyond viewing successful horn players as unapproachable icons and learn to translate their experiences into unlocking our potential? We ought to examine the performances, skills, and traits of role models and apply these to our own musical development.
Listening to the recordings of great horn players connects us to sound models. For example, generations of horn players have attempted to emulate the sound of Dennis Brain on his recordings of the Mozart horn concerti. While very few living horn players knew him personally, his legacy continues through those recordings, influencing our ideas about the proper sound and style with which to perform Mozart. Other great players have made recordings which are easily accessible on YouTube or Spotify, and we have only to explore to discover the spectrum of interpretations that exists.
For artists who can be considered sound models, listen to their recordings, then consider the nuances in their phrase structures and emulate the subtleties. Additionally, research their published pedagogical materials. Many players have written articles or books outlining their philosophies on aspects of horn playing. Consider exactly what in their playing you admire, and incorporate their ideas as part of your quest for improvement. From those who have not written about sound concepts, many have been interviewed and so have recorded thoughts. (The IHS YouTube channel and website are repositories of many of these.) With proper research, we can learn a great deal from horn players with whom we have never had the privilege of interacting.
Our definition of musical models, however, should not be limited to elite performing artists of the horn. We should not neglect the lessons other instrumentalists and vocalists have to offer. From studying the breath support of singers, to how blowing relates to bowing, to the phrasing of concert pianists, other musicians’ ideas can powerfully inform our horn playing.
Teachers serve as role models but also mentor and guide us through challenges to help us accomplish our goals. They already know our weaknesses as players, so we should never allow pride to prevent us from asking questions. As students, we must keep an open mind and listen to the diagnoses and solutions they offer and follow through with persistence to solidify improvement.
We interact with horn players in school and at symposiums, workshops, concerts, and music festivals. Taking the time to learn from role models in the horn community may shift our ideas. With curiosity, we will become more observant, ask more questions, and open ourselves to new possibilities.
