by Mike Harcrow, Editor

I hear too many players—mostly, but not always, students…and certainly not always just horn players—do a half-hearted warm-up or practice session, one in which breaths are not full and in which distractions are present (primarily cell phones with social or streaming media running), one in which “noodling” is allowed to count for something more productive. I will confess that I have been guilty of falling into cycles of these things myself, and I do make the conscious effort to resist such temptations.

What quickly creeps into disengaged playing are bad habits: inaccuracy, poor energy, erosion of the ability to concentrate, and possibly even the loss of positive gains made—not to mention the time we are stealing from our own good learning.

Keep phones and laptops separate from productive time. Most of us have useful tools on our devices (tuners and drones, metronomes and rhythm generators, audio-visual feedback, model recordings, etc.), so this is a difficult demand to make of ourselves. I understand this; but we must be disciplined to use only the app[s] necessary for a particular practice session and for a specific reason, then silence the device and put it out of sight. Designate “viewing time” or “listening time,” apply what is being studied, then be done with it for the time being. Thorough maintenance (or, if needed, restoration) of the sensory engagement required to make the best music is crucial just to maintain our standards…and all the more so to continue advancing them.

The flute professor at the university where I teach plays an incredibly beautiful warm-up. She will isolate herself as best she can, just herself and her flute, and play a variety of long tones—just long tones, often with her eyes closed…and they are truly gorgeous sounds, whether high or low, loud or soft, straight-tone or with vibrato. She is focused, intentional in breathing and production, and deeply mindful of her tone. It is so simple yet truly inspirational.

Cloak yourself in the music! Work for performance-quality playing at all times. Create your best sound with ease and energy. Eliminate the onset of tension in any part of the body. Engage your ears. Imagine a connection between the tongue and fingers in tricky articulated passages. Concentrate happily. Find a willing and well-disciplined accountability partner who will help you keep yourself in check.

Mentally- and sensorily-engaged playing shows excellent discipline. Much more can be accomplished in 20 minutes of complete and intentional awareness than in an hour of perfunctory swipes at a passage or technique.

by Katy Carnaggio

You are asked to do something extraordinary. Across the full spectrum of human performance, very few domains demand both precise, real-time execution in front of an audience and the transmission of meaning. Not just visible success, but emotional impact. In sports, emotion is a byproduct. In music, it’s the point.

Throughout this series, we’ve explored how musicians develop the ability to anticipate sound and sensation before playing by building internal models through imaginative, preference-based practice. It’s execution with feeling built in.

In music, sound is the measurable, verifiable outcome. You play the written pitch. You follow expressive markings. You stay within stylistic norms. Or you don’t. You can train this endlessly, but it only gets you partway. Because at the same time, you’re asked to do something immeasurable: make people feel something.

Other artists manage the task of creating meaning through process. They draft, delete, and revise. They can pick up a pencil, draw a white chair, and change it until it speaks.

But musicians perform in a single, irreversible moment where every choice is final and every outcome witnessed. In those conditions, certainty can become more tempting than creation. Instead of making the leap to believe a white image will emerge from graphite, we search for a white pencil—something to guarantee the result, but in doing so, forfeits connection.

No amount of technical preparation replaces the leap of belief required when the audience arrives. To train the other half of the ask, you have to practice the leap. You can do that through relational surrender: the act of releasing self-protection, outcome management, or overcontrol to allow authentic connection with the music, the moment, or another person. It’s a conscious choice of yielding in service to something higher than self.

Relational surrender is not the absence of control; it is the calibrated transfer of control from conscious monitoring to internal models built through disciplined preparation. It’s a skill initiated deliberately, developed through practice, and integrated through performance over time as the nervous system learns to meet uncertainty without bracing.

It means:

• Choosing sincerity over self-presentation
• Remaining open to being shaped
• Allowing love, rupture, or disconnection without forcing a narrative
• Risking loss for the sake of integrity
• Withholding in spaces that demand self-erasure

To explicitly train this skill, you must first develop an internal model you can trust. It starts by developing a vivid, compelling musical intention. So, let’s imagine you’re in the practice room, trying to find a quality of sound that sets Brahms apart from Mozart and from Strauss. And while it’s not yet clear, the sound you’re looking for reminds you of one of your favorite traditions: Saturday morning pancake breakfasts with your family. Maybe it was the way sunlight streamed through the window that brought it back. The warmth in a place that felt familiar and full. But you also remember looking down at your plate and watching the butter melt into every edge. And you realize that’s exactly how you want each phrase to feel: rich, connected, and saturated with warmth. Then, with each bite, there’s structure, yes, but the texture is fluffy. Like a centered core to a sound that’s full but never heavy. And of course, the syrup. Golden, bright, and alive on your tongue. The sparkle of overtones that adds lift and complexity without losing warmth. All qualities of a Brahmsian horn sound you can distill into one word: pancakes.

Training the model means tracing the mechanics backward from your now clear musical intention to sensation. Starting from sound, you imagine how it would feel to produce in your body and bring that guess to the horn. Observe, adjust, return. Through this process, you try on breaths and discover what’s too shallow, too generous, or too cool until you find the one that enables your intention. You notice where you still grip for control through your right shoulder or throat or legs, and you learn to surrender even those places to your intention.

Just as you know valve combinations and when to use them, anytime you want to create the precise sound you’ve mapped, you can scan from head to toe until your body, mind, and breath are primed accordingly. You find what needs to release and what needs to support until you have embodied your intention so completely that it radiates from all of you like the moment Beast transforms into a prince in Beauty and the Beast. The horn simply amplifies what’s already present.

Practicing the leap means surrendering to your internal models. Performance stops being proof of your preparation and becomes a question. What does this sound mean here? in this hall, with these people, in this unrepeatable moment of your life?

Relational surrender is performance at its most complete. It’s what allows performer, colleagues, audience, and music to become co-participants in a shared experience.

You can surrender in an audition and discover the hall is adding delightful nuances in your tone and projection that no practice room has revealed. Now your Brahms may always carry a bit of a great concert hall.

You can surrender in an orchestra and hear a colleague phrase differently than expected. You respond without hesitation, and suddenly a well-worn passage reveals new emotional terrain. Now your phrasing will always remember that person, that moment of shared breath.

You can surrender in a recital and sense the audience’s focus is sharpening your own, allowing you to lock in a tricky rhythmic passage. Now that phrase will always pulse with the energy you borrowed from the room.

But stop at execution, and you miss it. Connection is not extra. It’s the reason you showed up.

by Layne Anspach

This month’s Chamber Music Corner will focus on Carl Czerny’s Premier Grand Trio, Op. 105. Czerny (1791-1857) is mostly known for his pedagogical piano exercises, but he was also a composer and pianist. A pupil of Beethoven, Czerny is credited with preserving Beethoven’s legacy, and he was known for his interpretation of Beethoven’s piano pieces. Czerny had pupils of his own, including Liszt. Although largely forgotten today, he composed a wide variety of works totalling 861 unique opus numbers, ranging from sacred to secular, mostly for piano.

Carl Czerny’s Premier Grand Trio in E-Flat Major, Op. 105 was written in 1827, likely owing to Czerny’s friendship with Czech hornist Johann Janatka. The work was performed privately by Czerny, Janatka, and violinist Joseph Mayseder several times prior to its publication in 1830. At the behest of the publisher, Czerny included a cello part to substitute for the horn to help boost sales. The edition that is commonly performed today is from Amadeus Verlag, edited by Peter Schmalfuss, which has reworked the horn part based on both original cello and horn parts.

In the first movement, Allegro in sonata form, the violin performs the A theme with the horn and piano following in quick succession. After an ascending scale shared by horn and violin, the B theme in the dominant is presented by the violin. The B theme continues with some harmonic variance, ending with a short cadential statement before immediately moving into the development. A protracted development, with the expected various key areas and motivic fragmentation, is heard prior to a descending scale in the piano as retransition to the recapitulation. Following the return of the A and B themes is an extended coda, carried at first by the piano but which later melodically involves the violin and horn.

The Adagio middle movement presents two melodies. The first is played initially by the violin, but the horn enters eight measures later with the second melody. Czerny changes accompaniment style and adds ornaments to both melodies as the movement unfolds.

The final movement, Rondo: Allegro scherzando, starts with an introduction of melodic fragments from later in the movement. The first theme in its full form is heard in the piano and then taken over by the horn. The second theme is presented by the violin and includes a characteristically defining trill figure. Czerny alters aspects of the melodies in addition to the changing keys throughout the movement. Tempo giusto precedes a slow Poco sostenuto in B major which has the second theme played by the horn. The key is short-lived as the violin and piano bring the movement back to E-flat major prior to the final Presto which energetically concludes the work.

The reference recording is a live performance from 2022 in Iruma, Saitama Prefecture, Japan. The hornist is Sekitoshi Nobusue.

by Caiti Beth McKinney

Hello all, and happy Symposium month! This June, I want to draw your attention to the orchestral music of an outstanding composer whose music we almost completely lost—Julia Perry (1924-1979). Born in Lexington, Kentucky USA, Julia was a skilled singer, pianist, and violinist. She studied composition with Nadia Boulanger and won two Guggenheim Fellowships. In 1951, Perry wrote a work for solo contralto and string orchestra to the text of Stabat Mater and was subsequently rocketed to international fame. It was an experimental work for the composer, playing with dissonance and quartal harmonies while remaining inside the realm of tonality.

Over her lifetime, Perry shifted away from vocal compositions toward more instrumental works. She composed twelve symphonies, at least one of which was written for concert band. The piece I want to introduce to you today, however, is not a symphony but a standalone orchestral work Perry titled A Short Piece for Orchestra. To my ear, the opening sounds straight out of a score for an Alfred Hitchcock film, with jagged, angular motifs and dissonances. However, as the piece evolves and slows, a satisfyingly challenging horn solo (2:11) briefly soars above the strings and woodwinds. As this work becomes more and more mainstream with symphony orchestras, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Short Piece appear on audition lists.

A quick warning: Perry’s experience is an example of what can happen to music after composers die if the rights to their scores is unclear. After she suffered a series of strokes in the 1970s, Perry lost all mobility in the right side of her body and was forced to teach herself to write with her left hand to keep composing. She continued sending scores off to publishing companies who dismissed her efforts, despite her earlier fame and success. One even claimed they were simply “too busy with inventory” to accept her submissions (although it may well be that they were being casually racist and/or sexist). Perry, unfortunately, passed away far too young at the age of 55, and her mother died soon after, leaving no immediate descendants to care for her manuscripts. Her compositions subsequently became tied up in probate court with questions over copyright, and it is only in the last 5 years that advocates for Perry’s works have been successfully publishing and performing her pieces.