Picture reproduced with permission of the University of Oxford

Reginald Morley-Pegge's book The French Horn (Benn, 1960) is one of the finest and most scholarly texts on the history of the instrument, although long out of print. His vast collection of wind instruments is housed in the Bate Collection (www.bate.ox.ac.uk) at the University of Oxford.

Reginald Frederick Morley Pegge was born in London in 1890. Morley, the name most used by his friends, was originally a given name that eventually muted into his surname. The family moved to Brighton and Morley-Pegge was sent to school at Summerfields in Oxford and Harrow, where he was a member of the school orchestra. Here he came into contact with Tom Busby and through him W.F.H. Blandford; correspondence with Blandford is a source of much horn lore.

France played an important part in Morley-Pegge's life. He was sent there to learn the language, spent a short time as an estate agent in Essex, and then returned to France at age 21 to study at the Paris Conservatoire. He studied horn with Brémond and hand-horn with Vuillermoz, laying the foundation for his tremendous control of the instrument. He was admired for the style and integrity of his performance, although he never had great physical strength or endurance.

In 1917, he married Anne Taylor of Paris, and his son was born in 1918. Morley-Pegge served in the British Forces in both World Wars. After World War I, he served with the army of occupation in France until 1919, then with the Reparation Commission until 1925, during which time he had leisure to play the horn and investigate its history. He then worked in the advertising department of Citroen in Paris until he secured posts as a professional musician in 1927. When the Germans invaded in 1940, the family fled to Edinburgh, leaving most possessions, including his instrument collection, behind. His son later returned to the house in France and found the collection mostly intact.

From 1927, Morley-Pegge played with the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris, then the Colonne (Paris) Orchestra, Association des Concerts Poulet, and the Paris Radio Orchestra. During world War II, he played for the Reid Orchestra in Edinburgh (while also working in military transport) and later for the Ballet des Champs Élysées and the International Ballet. While in Edinburgh, he developed a friendship with Lyndesay Langwill, and their correspondence is also a trove of lore. At this time, he became a historian of the serpent and of other brass and woodwind instruments in addition to the horn.

During all this time, Morley-Pegge added to his knowledge of the history and theory of the horn, examining, playing, and photographing every example that came his way. He built up an encyclopedic body of knowledge that was the basis for his authoritative book, articles for Grove, and a vast correspondence. In the 1930s, he was invited to recatalogue the wind instruments in the collection of the Paris Conservatoire, a mark of the esteem in which his scholarship was already held. He also became an accomplished photographer and frequently exhibited at the Paris Salon. He was known as a genial man, a wit, and a connoisseur of wine and food.

Morley-Pegge was friends with Philip Bate from 1939, first by correspondence and then in person. Most of his instrument collection and all of his papers went to the Bate Collection at Oxford. Morley-Pegge was a founder and active in the Galpin Society from its inception in 1946. This brought him into a wider musicological circle. He also had many correspondents, including many from the US, and he was meticulous in replying.

During most of his playing career, Morley-Pegge was faithful to the French type of horn on which his technique had been formed, although later he used a Kruspe double horn and finally a Berlin Schmidt B-flat horn with an added valve and supplementary slides. This last horn was bought by Harold Meek of the Boston Symphony Orchestra after Morley-Pegge's death (the two had corresponded but never met).

Morley-Pegge was elected an IHS Honorary Member in 1971. Tributes appear in the November 1972 issue of The Horn Call and at the Bate Collection website.

Louis Stout was a highly-regarded orchestral player (he never lost an audition), a revered teacher with scores of successful students, and a renowned collector of brass instruments. He had inexhaustible energy and curiosity, learned solfège early, memorized all the horn excerpts, and was always willing to share his expertise and stories. His teachers were Elaine Kessler, Marvin Howe, Mason Jones, and Robert Schultz.

Louis was born in 1924 in Hallisport NY, a village of 75 people with a two-room schoolhouse. There he studied piano with a fine teacher, learned solfège, and developed a love for literature and the arts that led to his vast collection of books, music, recordings, and instruments. He learned to play the trumpet, trombone, violin, clarinet, and guitar in high school, taking up the horn as a high school sophomore.

By the age of ten, Louis was listening to the Chicago Symphony on the radio. He vowed that he would one day play in the orchestra, a vow that he was able to fulfill. During high school, a friend died and the friend's mother asked Louis to play for her son. Many times over the years, Louis would face difficult solo passages with a sense of perspective that made the passages less important than other elements of life.

Louis graduated from high school at age 15 and spent most of the following year playing horn solos with a pianist friend. Then he enrolled at Ithaca (NY) College, where his horn teacher made a major change in his embouchure, which he later said was the best thing for his career even though it was difficult at the time. It was also at college that his teacher insisted he learn the B-flat side of the horn, and he became primarily a player of the B-flat horn. During his junior year, Louis borrowed money to buy his first "professional" horn, a 45-year-old Schmidt that he later said was the best horn he ever owned, and played an audition for first horn in the New Orleans Symphony. He had won the audition and signed the contract when it was discovered that he was not a union member; however, the manager wanted Louis enough to arrange the necessary membership.

In New Orleans, Louis learned to fly an airplane and found his wife, flutist Glennis Metz. The orchestra season was only 20 weeks, so Louis toured with the North Carolina Symphony and played with the Virginia Symphony for additional income. After two years, he went to New York City and joined the orchestra at Radio City Music Hall. In 1950, when a new conductor took over and brought his own players, Louis went back to Ithaca College to finish his bachelor's degree. During his senior year, he taught all the horn students plus other brass students and became a flute major (since he couldn't teach himself), playing his wife's flute.

Ithaca College wanted Louis to continue teaching, but he need more income to support his family and took a job with Kansas City. After four years, with a growing family, Louis was looking for an orchestra with a longer season. He auditioned for Chicago and got a contract as associate principal for a 36-week season and a salary of $100 more per week. He asked to take lessons from Philip Farkas, the first horn and his idol. He was refused but felt that he got his lessons by sitting next to his "teacher" in the orchestra.

Louis played in Chicago for five years (1955-1960) under Reiner, then applied for a position at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. At the audition, he played from memory for two hours and was accepted in spite of not having a master's degree. He taught at Michigan for 28 years, and was known as a demanding teacher, with a thorough and tough regimen, combined with fatherly concern. Even after retirement, he taught privately.

During his Chicago and Michigan years, Louis acquired an amazing collection of instruments, with which he toured the US and Europe in a lecture/demonstration called "The Horn: from the Forest to the Concert Hall." The collection is one of the largest private collections in the world and is now in the Franz Streitweiser's Trumpet and Horn Museum at Schloss Kremsegg in Linz, Austria. Louis's interest in historical horns led to his pioneering use of natural, single B-flat, and descant horns for early music performance.

Louis served on the Fulbright committee, and he and Glennis taught in Taiwan for two years on a Fulbright grant after his retirement. Louis participated in many IHS symposiums, often surrounded by adoring students. He was given the Punto award in 1991 and was elected an Honorary Member in 2005.

A tribute to Louis appears in the October 1989 issue of The Horn Call and a remembrance in the February 2006 issue.

photo courtesy of Holton

Valkenier is recognized as one of the "founding fathers" of horn-playing in the United States. He came from the European (Czech and German) tradition, and his tenure in Boston influenced players and his many students.

Valkenier was born in 1887 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He had piano lessons as a child and started horn with a military clarinetist, who, when Valkenier was 14, sent him to Edward Preus. Preus was a natural horn player from Bohemia (Czechoslovakia) who had played first horn in a German opera company in Rotterdam and settled there. He was a strict taskmaster, sparing with praise, who taught the Czech cantabile tradition.

After two years studying with Preus, Valkenier started playing in a vaudeville theater orchestra. In the summer, he played in a Civil Guard symphonic band with Preus playing first horn, a continuation of his education. His first major professional job was third horn in a symphony orchestra in Gronignen (Netherlands), then a year as first horn in Haarlem. Wanting a better living than he could attain in the Netherlands, he found a job as first horn in the Collegium Musicum in Winterthur, Switzerland. After a year, he saw an advertisement for first horn in Breslau (Silesia, later part of Poland), a larger city, where he won the job and got an excellent grounding in opera.

Valkenier applied for a summer engagement in Bad Kissingen, Germany, where the Konzertverein Orchestra from Vienna played. After he had performed the Aria from the Bach B Minor Mass, Valkenier was offered the permanent first horn position; the orchestra bought out the remainder of his Breslau contract. In Vienna, Valkenier played a lot of Mahler (Mahler had died the year before) as well as chamber music. World War I wreaked havoc with the orchestras in Vienna, so in 1914 Valkenier found a position as first horn with the Berlin State Opera, where he stayed nine years and played under Furtwangler and Richard Strauss, among others.

In 1923, Valkenier, a pacifist and still a Dutch citizen, began to see that conditions in Germany were going to "go wrong" in response to the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I. He was friendly with cellist Pablo Casals and considered settling in Barcelona, but finally decided to try America. Valkenier talked with conductors in New York and Chicago, but both had six-month union waiting periods, so he went to Boston (a non-union orchestra until 1942) as first horn of the second horn section.

Valkenier was a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1923 to 1950. His first year was under Pierre Monteux, then Koussevitsky took over for 25 years. Around 1950, Valkenier started having trouble with his teeth and so decided to stop playing. He had not liked playing under Koussevitsky, so he stayed long enough to play a season under Charles Munch.

While in Boston, Valkenier delighted in performing chamber music, in both professional engagements and informal pick-up sessions with his colleagues in the BSO or with visiting artists such as Arthur Schnabel, Arnold Schoenberg, and Paul Hindemith. He also played viola and cello parts on his horn.

Valkenier taught many students at New England Conservatory during his BSO tenure and others on Cape Cod during his retirement. He had high standards and insisted on everything being played correctly, but he was also gentle and encouraging, and he was an advisor and confidant to his students, taking a paternal interest in them.

Valkenier started playing on a hand horn, then a Slot single horn. His first double horn was a Kruspe, and the second a Schmidt. Later he used a Kruspe single B-flat horn for operas and a Schmidt single high F horn for high Bach cantatas.

Valkenier was elected an Honorary Member in 1971. A profile of him appears in the October 1983 issue of The Horn Call, a memoriam in the October 1986 issue, and a transcription of an interview in the February 1994 issue. Additional photos of Boston Symphony Orchestra sections appear in the April 1988 issue.