Barry Tuckwell was the most recognizable name in solo horn playing in the latter half of the 20th century, but he was also revered as a conductor, educator, and author. He was present at the first horn workshops and was the first president of the IHS.

Barry was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1931 into a musical family. He learned organ, piano, and violin and had perfect pitch. He started playing horn at the suggestion of family friend Richard Merewether, who became his first horn teacher. At age 15, Barry joined the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra as third horn, moving to Sydney a year later to study with Alan Mann at the Sydney Conservatorium and play assistant to Mann in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

In 1951, at age 19, Barry arrived in London. Over the next four years, he played in the Buxton Spa Orchestra, Halle Orchestra, Scottish National Orchestra, and Bournemouth. In 1955 he became first horn of the London Symphony Orchestra, a position he held for 13 years. He was also on the board of the orchestra and chairman of the board for six years.

Barry left the LSO in 1968 to pursue a free-lance solo career. He had already begun that type of work, so the transition was smooth. "If you are the principal in an orchestra, in a sense you are playing in public more, because you have to come to the rehearsals, which are not just yourself playing. The other thing is that if you are playing in an orchestra, you are actually playing more. If you're not in an orchestra, you to be very careful not to under-play. You have to actually practice more – you have to, otherwise your lips go, you lose all your strength. It's not easier – it's just another set of problems." Barry was the world's most recorded horn player and received three Grammy nominations. He formed a horn trio and a wind quintet with which he toured and recorded.

Barry listed as inspirations Dennis Brain, Gottfried von Freiburg, Tommy Dorsey, the Chicago orchestra with Farkas, and the Cleveland Orchestra. He championed the double horn when the British tradition held to single horns, and he worked with Mark Veneklasen, Walter Lawson, and Holton in testing, analyzing, improving, and designing horns. He played the Holton Tuckwell Model 104 with a Lawson bell for his retirement concert in 1997. The Kruspe sound was his ideal.

Barry taught at the Royal Academy of Music in London for ten years, was artist-in-residents at Dartmouth and Pomona College, was a Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne, and led the Tuckwell Institute for several summers in the US.

Barry inspired many composers, including Thea Musgrave, Gunther Schuller, Richard Rodney Bennett, Don Banks, and Oliver Knussen, who have written concertos or chamber music for him.

Barry founded the Maryland Symphony Orchestra in 1982 as its conductor, was chief conductor of Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and conducted many other orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, and the Queensland Orchestra.

Major publications include:

Horn (Yehudi Menuhin Music Guides)
Fifty First Exercises for Horn
Playing the Horn; A Practical Guide
Great Performer's Editions
Mozart Concertos for Horn

In addition to serving as the first president of the IHS (1970-76), he served again as president from 1992-94, and then continued as a member of the Advisory Council until 1998. He was elected an Honorary Member in 1987. He was also Honorary President of the British Horn Society and a Patron of the Melbourne International Festival of Brass.

The Barry Tuckwell Scholarship was established with the IHS in 1997 to encourage and support worthy horn students to pursue education and performance by attending and participating in master classes and workshops anywhere in the world.

Barry was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1965 and a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1992. Among the many other awards he received were the Honorary Doctor of Music from the University of Sydney, Fellow of the Royal College of Music, Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America, the Andrew White Medal from Loyola College, the Harriet Cohen Memorial Award, the JC Williamson Award, and the Bernard Heinze Award for outstanding contribution to music in Australia. He was also an Honorary member of both the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music in London. In 2007 Live Performance Australia presented him with the James Cassius Williamson Award for performing excellence.

The May 1997 issue of The Horn Call is devoted to Barry and includes a discography and bibliography.

Lucien Thévet was the last of the horn players of the traditional French school and was called by one critic "Prince of the Horn." In addition to his orchestral playing, he performed all the major solo repertoire, premiered pieces composed and dedicated to him by Le Flem, Françaix, Passani, Landowski, and the Poulenc Elegie (accompanied by the composer), and gave the French premieres of the Britten Serenade (1945 with Peter Pears) and Strauss Concerto No. 2. (1950). He recorded the Ravel Pavane eight times and performed it in concert many more times. His style included vibrato, as was typical of the French school.

Thévet was born in 1914 in Beauvais, France. He studied with his father, an amateur musician, from the age of six, and by age 13 was a soloist with the local band. He studied with Raymond Carlier (not a horn player, but well-rounded musician who played several other instruments) and later with Fernand Reine and Edouard Vuillermoz at the Paris Conservatory, receiving a first prize in 1937, and was appointed principal horn of the Paris Radio Orchestra.

Thévet was also principal horn of the Paris Conservatory Orchestra (1938-1967) and the Paris Opera Orchestra (1941-1974). Charles Munch offered him the principal horn position with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, but Thévet declined.

In a famous incident at the Paris Opera, Thévet was called to the stage for numerous curtain calls after playing the off-stage solo in Wagner's Siegfried, an event that was reported in the press. The press also praised his solo playing: "Mr. Thévet gives the impression of perfection with his confidence, incredible flexible phrasing, and beautiful sound." Thévet made many solo recordings in addition to recordings with the Paris Conservatory Orchestra and Paris Opera Orchestra.

Thévet taught at the Paris Ecole Normale de Musique, the Nineteenth Arrondissement Conservatory, and for 34 years at the Versailles Conservatory. Students came from all over the world to study with him. Thévet would take students at any level. He taught beginning students in concert pitch, and he taught transposition by clefs rather than intervals.

Thévet played a Selmer horn with piston valves and an ascending third valve (described in the Autumn 1973 issue of The Horn Call). In 1950, he became technical advisor for the Selmer company, and in 1964 he designed a new model of horn for them.

Alphonse Leduc published Thévet's Méthode Complète de Cor (1949). Other publications include Sixty Studies for Horn, Fifty Transposition Exercises for Horn, Sixty-five Sight-reading Studies for Horn, One Hundred Rhythmic Exercises in Two and Three Parts for Instruments in the Treble Clef, and Transposition: A Method for Conductors, Players, and Arrangers.

Thévet was made a Knight of Arts and Letters, was Honorary President of the French National Association of Horn Players, and was elected an IHS Honorary Member (1978). The November 1995 issue of The Horn Call contains an homage to him on his 80th birthday as well as an article by him. Two tributes appear in the October 2007 issue.

Hand position picture courtesy of Pete Exline.

Norman Schweikert was one of the founding members of the IHS and its first Secretary-Treasurer. “Without Norman Schweikert,” stated first IHS President Barry Tuckwell, “there would be no International Horn Society.” Norm was a member of the Chicago Symphony for 26 years and on the faculty of Northwestern University for 25 years.

Norm was born in 1937 in Los Angeles. His parents were both amateur musicians (mother a pianist and father a violinist). He started on piano at age 6, then gravitated to the violin in order to play in orchestras. He studied first with his father, then with Joseph Kessler, whom he credits with giving him a good musical foundation.

Norm played violin in the Pioneer Orchestra under Joseph Oroop (working his way up to concertmaster) and the California Junior Symphony under Peter Meremblum. He switched to horn and played with the California Junior Symphony until he got his first job at age 18. He credits his experience playing the standard symphonic literature in the youth orchestra with preparing him for his first audition. He studied with Odolindo Perissi (father of Richard) and Sinclair Lott in Los Angeles and with Joseph Eger on scholarship at Aspen. While studying with Lott and still in high school, he played eighth horn in Rite of Spring and Wagner tuba in Bruckner 7th with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He was also a member of the Horn Club of Los Angeles in its first years.

In 1955 Norm auditioned for the Rochester Philharmonic at Music Director Erich Leinsdorf's hotel room in Los Angeles and won the fourth horn position. He remained with the orchestra until 1966, playing fourth horn (1955-59), second horn (1959-61 and December 1964-65), and third horn (1961-January 1962 and 1965-66), with three years out for military service with the US Military Academy Band at West Point (1962-64). He earned a bachelor's degree and Performer's Certificate in 1961 at the Eastman School of Music while playing in the Philharmonic, studying with Morris Secon and Verne Reynolds. Reynolds wrote his Partita for Norm's senior recital, and the two had been close friends until Reynolds’s death in 2011. Norm played second horn to Reynolds for two years. Norm also enjoyed playing in the Eastman Wind Ensemble with Frederick Fennell (1957-61), including taking part in more than a dozen recordings.

Norm then spent five years as Instructor of Horn at the Interlochen Arts Academy and a member of the Interlochen Arts Quintet (woodwind). During that time, he also played in the Moravian Music Festival (1966), the Chicago Little Symphony (tours of 1967 and 1968), and the Peninsula Music Festival (1968-70),l and was soloist with the last two. He has been curator of the Leland B. Greenleaf Collection of Musical Instruments housed at Interlochen (1970-71).

In June 1971 he joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as assistant principal horn, taking part in the orchestra's first European tour at the end of the summer. He moved to second horn in 1975, where he remained until retiring in 1997. He continued to play as a substitute or extra until June of 2006. In 1977 he and Dale Clevenger, Richard Oldberg, and Tom Howell performed and recorded the Schumann Konzertstück in Chicago, then, while on an orchestra tour in June, played the first professional performance of it in Japan with Seiji Ozawa and the New Japan Philharmonic. He taught horn at Northwestern University from 1973 to 1998.

In his retirement, Norm continued research into the lives of US orchestra musicians, a project which he started when he was studying at Eastman. His collection of material on this subject was probably the largest private collection anywhere. He answered letters and emails from all over the world.

Norm’s contributions to the IHS were considerable. He chaired the IHS organizing committee in 1970 and was the first Secretary-Treasurer, handling most of the organizing work. He wrote the first several newsletters on a typewriter, folding, stuffing, and stamping them. He continued on the Advisory Council for six years (1970-76), and contributed many articles to The Horn Call, notably ten articles in the first two years of publication. He was elected an IHS Honorary Member in 1996.

Photo by Peter Hastings, Cleveland Orchestra

Myron Bloom was a distinguished performer and teacher, known particularly for his tenure as principal horn with the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell. He was professor of music at Indiana University from 1985 until his death.

Bloom attended a concert with his parents at age 12, under protest, with no interest in music, and walked out of the concert featuring Emanuel Feuermann playing the cello knowing that he wanted his life to be in music. All his life, he was imitating Feuermann and Casals, and his true love was the cello. However, Myron's father encouraged him to play the horn as the war was coming and he needed to get in a band or be shipped to Japan. Myron first began on trumpet, then studied horn with Marty Morris (Cleveland Orchestra), who later was in the section with Myron.

Myron studied with Arkady Yegudkin at Eastman for one year, then went to New York to study with James Chambers. He played in the Navy Band in Great Lakes, Illinois during the war, where he met cellist Frank Miller (always the cello link!).

Bloom was principal horn in the New Orleans Symphony (1949-1954) before joining the Cleveland Orchestra (1954-1977). In 1977 he was principal horn of the Casals Festival Orchestra in Puerto Rico and then at the invitation of Daniel Barenboim became principal horn of the Orchestre de Paris (1977-1985).

In addition to his teaching at Indiana University, Bloom has taught at the Curtis Institute (1982-2001), Carnegie Mellon University (1993-2001), Cleveland Institute of Music (1961-1977), Oberlin Conservatory, Juilliard School of Music, Boston University, and the Conservatoire National Superieur de Music de Paris.

Bloom has been a member of the Marlboro Music Festival from its inception. He has been a jury member at the International Geneva Horn Competition and juries in Canada. He has performed with the Budapest Quartet. His recordings include Strauss Concerto No. 1 with Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, Schubert's Auf dem Strom and the Brahms Trio, along with Cleveland Orchestra and Marlboro Music Festival recordings. He influenced the design of Hans Hoyer horns and Houser mouthpiece rims.

Bloom received the Punto Award at the IHS symposium in Bloomington IN in 2003 and was elected an IHS Honorary Member in 2014.