by Jason Ayoub, United States Navy Band

I have a confession to make: I really like to play loud…deafeningly loud! I’ve liked to blast since I started playing the horn. I grew up listening to the Chicago, Berlin, and the Vienna symphony brass sections in addition to film scores that highlighted the powerful sound of the horn. My models were wonderful, but I focused only on one aspect of what they could do. As soon as I could, I began blaring in every register and playing as many ear-splitting excerpts as possible. My first professional job was in a brass quintet, and my goal was to never let the horn’s sound be covered. Soon after, I won the United States Navy Band horn audition, and we prided ourselves on being the loudest military band in Washington D.C. For nearly 16 years I sat Principal and made sure I was always heard over the rest of the section (and sometimes over the entire band). As you might have guessed, all those years of loud playing finally caught up to me as I started to age. I began to get an occasional sting in the upper lip, but I reassured myself it wasn’t anything significant, and I would ease up a little in the next show. Unfortunately, I allowed myself this habit of playing too much, feeling pain, backing off, then starting the process again. I knew something had to change last summer when the pain didn’t subside, my endurance diminished, and I couldn’t keep up. I made the most difficult decision of my life and gave up playing in the band and moved into the IT office. Because the horn was a huge part of my life, I wouldn’t let this setback end my career. I rested a lot, received help, and started implementing new warm-up techniques in my everyday playing. Nearly a year and half later, I now play with more ease, and I am almost to the level I was before I started to notice problems. The reflection process throughout my healing was just as important as the rest and new warm-up routines. Everything that happened was avoidable, especially my perspectives on how great horn playing should sound. I would like to share those with you.

Listening to orchestra and movie recordings where the horns had a distinct characteristic encouraged me to emulate what I heard. No matter what horn I played—from an L-series Conn 8D to a large bore Lawson and a Schmid double—I wanted to create a powerful blend of those big Hollywood and European sounds. I spent countless hours working to create my ideal color, particularly in the louder dynamics. You’re probably wondering why that’s a problem: aren’t we supposed to work on those aspects of our playing? We are, but I was never satisfied with the sound I made while trying to achieve my concept. I felt I had to prove that I could bury the horn section, the brass section, and the band. What started as a desire to produce a powerful sound turned into a source of pride. It was this pride that kept me from backing down…and that even created an unbalanced ensemble.

Such a mentality can produce problems within a section. Instead of working together for uniform tone and dynamics, colleagues may end up doing just the opposite. Because section members want to match the principal's dynamics, they play so loudly that a characteristic sound and good pitch are sacrificed, and overdone dynamics produce an imbalance that loses blend. Injury, resentfulness, and unmusical sections are a negative result of these approaches. In the end, players don’t work well together, and the result is individual sounds rather than a united section.

My desire for the Navy Band section to sound larger than life was also hindered by another aspect peculiar to military bands.  

Most orchestras have the luxury of performing in the same venue for the majority of their performance season. Those players learn how to play in their hall and produce the section sound they desire in that space. In the Navy Band, we perform in a different venue for almost every concert. On national tours, we encounter a variety of acoustics, from concert halls to high school gymnasiums. In most concert halls you can hear yourself, your section, and the rest of the ensemble. Unfortunately, gymnasium performances create situations where it is incredibly difficult to hear your section, the ensemble, and sometimes even yourself. Not knowing whether we are projecting or not creates the desire to play louder and louder. I would often feel like it was my job to make sure that the horns were heard. Instead of trusting my section mates to carry the load with me, I would play even louder to compensate for my inability to hear my colleagues. My friend Jose Sibaja used to say that you can’t save the band by playing louder to keep the ensemble together; it always causes more problems than it fixes. Yet I was trying to save the section instead of trusting them as the fine professionals they are. This becomes a vicious cycle which can lead to injury and section members inadvertently working against each other.  

During my recovery, my mindset has changed. Playing with a full, loud sound will always be part of my playing, but I choose my moments. Many years ago, my teacher, Dr. William Scharnberg, had a great comment concerning dynamics that always stuck with me. He said that playing loud is like the peak of a mountain and soft is like the valley below. Your peak only looks impressive if there is also a deep valley. If mezzo forte to fff is all the same, then you are really existing on a dynamic plateau without any peak. Every player and ensemble needs to have the ability to perform all the dynamics and not just soft and loud. Loud playing is only as impressive as the soft dynamics which help them to stand out. For too many years, I was caught on a dynamic plateau, and I needed to experience greater depth.  

My advice for all my students and future horn players would be to focus on creating a quality sound that will project in any performing space and always to work for a controlled and blended dynamic range. Horn players should not only be the muscle in the ensemble but also have the versatility to work as a woodwind player who creates lyrical melodies with delicate precision. Always treat the quiet sounds with as much care as you do the great climactic parts of a work.

Chamber Music Corner—John Harbison’s Twilight Music

by Layne Anspach

This month’s Chamber Music Corner focuses on John Harbison’s Twilight Music for horn, violin, and piano (1985). John Harbison (b. 1938) is an American composer, conductor, and academic. He is an Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his output amounts to nearly 300 works, including operas, symphonies, a ballet, and chamber music. Harbison has served in residencies with the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in addition to several festivals. Among many awards, he has received a MacArthur Fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize. Harbison has also served as the President of the Copland Fund.

Twilight Music for horn, violin, and piano (1985) was commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, which hosted the premiere on March 22, 1985. The piece is a single movement work divided into four distinct sections. The first section, Con moto, flessibile, begins with violin and horn serving as counterbalances to each other. Harbison writes in his program notes, “The horn and the violin have little in common. Any merging must be tromp-l’ Oreille and they share material mainly to show how differently they project it.” As the dialogue progresses, the piano enters as support to the narrative. A momentary peak in the phrase leads to the first iteration which horn and violin perform together. The two part when the horn abandons the violin only to re-enter with a separate melody. The section ends with piano alone but moves directly into the second section, Presto, in which most of the technical skills needed to perform the work, with its fast tempo and quick darting figures, is required. The horn and violin eventually come together again, made all the more striking by disparate passages leading to the merger. The section begins to break down when the texture becomes more sparse, with each performer playing on their own.

Antiphon, the third section is, as Harbison describes, “the crux—the origin of the piece’s intervallic character.” The violin and horn play rhythmically together for much of the section—in contrast to the two prior sections. The character shifts when the violin initiates a long chromatic line which separates the two until a sweeping jump reunites them. A descent into the horn’s low register and sparse violin and piano writing signals the end of the section with a grand pause preceding the finale, Adagio, cantabile. Here, both violin and horn again play separately with piano underpinning long passages. The two instruments do not play melodic content together for the entire section (making the contrast in the third section more meaningful). Upper range in the violin and continued piano support brings the work to a calm finish.

The reference recording comes from a performance at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Music Masters series from February 18, 2010. The hornist is Robert Ward.

by Ian Zook

It’s exciting to resume writing these articles after a long pause while organizing and hosting IHS 57! This month’s album is one I have wanted to write about since the series began, and it feels fitting to resume with a record that ties together so many fascinating aspects of early horn repertoire and our instrument’s lengthy heritage. Released on Golden Crest Records in 1960, let’s dive into Horace Fitzpatick plays Music for Hunting Horn 1561-1840 on instruments of the period.

Horace Fitzpatrick (1934-2020) authored one of the mostly deeply researched and respected histories of our instrument, his 1970 publication The Horn and Horn-Playing and the Austro-Bohemian tradition 1680-1830 for Oxford University Press. While his focus and research was very euro-centric, Fitpatrick was actually born in Kentucky and studied with Philip Farkas at Northwestern University, followed by a Master of Music degree from Yale. The following phase of his career takes an unexpected turn, as he relocates to Austria to pursue studies at the Music Academy with Gottfried von Frieburg, solo horn of the Vienna Philharmonic. It is during his subsequent employment with the Vienna State Opera and Palazzo Pitti Chamber Orchestra in Florence that he develops a deep interest in historical horns and their performance practice. Fitpatrick became one of the leaders of the early instrument revival, presenting several recitals and lectures on the topic and, notably, taught natural horn at the Guildhall School and aided in establishing the Bates Collection of historic musical instruments at Oxford University.

As you will see from reading the reverse album jacket, the album track list presents a chronological account of traditional hunting calls from the 15th-19th centuries performed on both fox horn and trompe de chasse. In addition to the very detailed and illuminating historical notes Fitzpatrick provides on the album jacket, he also records several of the hunting calls in multi-track and is performing all of the harmonized parts together himself.

This album is truly fascinating as an inception point for recorded performance-practice on the horn. Fitzpatrick was a well-trained hornist and passionate reasearcher of early horn history, especially the development of the instrument and its pathway from forest hunting calls to its use as a true concert instrument. Let’s listen to two examples of these early calls:

“To Uncouple the Hounds”—from the "Muse's Delight," 1754

“Marseilles Hunting Flourish,” French 18th Century.

In both of these examples, Fitzpatrick captures the compound meter cadence and spirited nature of these calls. However, he was likely unaware of the deeply rooted performance techniques of trompe de chasse performers in France, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg—these include the “blowing in” of first-phrase notes and a very pervasive vibrato, expertly coordinated between players when there are harmoninized parts.

This album also very notably appears to be the first recording of Beethoven’s Horn Sonata Op. 17 featuring a performance on natural horn. There are certainly earlier interpretations of this sonata, with the first being Fitzpatrick’s teacher Gottfied von Freiburg’s recording from 1937, followed by Dennis Brain in 1944 for Columbia and Miroslav Štefek in the late 1940’s for Supraphon. But Fitzpatrick’s is the first attempt to truly showcase Beethoven’s use of open and closed notes melodically on the natural horn.

The opening of the Sonata sounds that well-known opening horn call. Fairly deft hand-stopping by Fitzpatrick then captures Beethoven’s use of closed notes to voice-lead to stronger cadential open notes:

The next excerpt is the opening of the development section—here Fitzpatrick is not subtle with the interplay of closed and open notes, and the usage rate of closed notes is much higher here than in any other section of the piece. We notice a stylistic use of vibrato that would have been informed from his research as well.

The final selection comes from the coda of the Sonata’s third movement. Fitzpatrick serves up a penetrating open B♭ and tackles the following athletic arpeggiations with verve.

This recording of Beethoven’s Sonata is perhaps not the nuanced musical journey that many more modern natural horn performers and recording artists are able to produce. However, if we imagine back to 65 years ago, before the likes of Tony Halstead or Lowell Greer started to embrace the true range of technical and artistic capabilities of the natural horn, we can see Fitzpatrick’s work as a revolutionary endeavor worthy of appreciation and respect. Certainly if you have not read his 1970 publication and are interested in horn history, it is an absolute cornerstone of our research literature.

As a last note, I left the pricetag on the album cover—I found this album in mint-condition for $1 about 20 years ago! You never know what you’ll find when you’re treasure hunting!

Thanks for reading Horn on Record!

South Asia—Re-Discovering Haydn’s Il Distratto

by Vidhurinda Samaraweera

Not many composers ignite my passion quite like Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809). Dubbed the “Father of the Symphony,” his long tenure as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family forced him, in his own words, "to become original." This originality shines brightest in his demanding and virtuosic writing for the natural horn.

Haydn’s High-Flying Horns

Haydn’s relationship with the horn is very special, to say the least, contributing challenging orchestral passages and influencing later composers like Mozart and Beethoven. The Esterházy court prized the horn for its strong association with the hunt, a feature Haydn brilliantly exploited to please his patrons.

His horn sections often enjoyed unusual prominence; in works like Symphonies Nos. 13, 31, 39, and 72, four horns constituted roughly a quarter of the entire orchestra of sixteen or seventeen musicians.

A key characteristic of early Haydn writing, particularly in the festive C major symphonies, is the continuation of the Baroque clarino tradition, demanding specialization in the high register (cor alto). This contrasts sharply with the contemporary trend, where Mozart generally wrote safer, mostly harmonic parts for his concertos.

Haydn’s most spectacular horn writing, such as the fortissimo fanfares in Symphony No. 31, “Hornsignal” (1765), featuring four horns (two originally crooked in D and two in G), showcases this high-flying requirement. The brilliance of his C major symphonies, like the Maria Theresia (No. 48), often required horns in C-alto, sometimes functioning as "replacement trumpets" due to the absence of trumpeters at Esterházy.

The Comical Demands of Symphony No. 60, Il Distratto

My experience playing Symphony No. 60 (composed c. 1774) is a vivid memory of navigating brilliance and hilarity. This six-movement work, adapted from incidental music for a comedy about an absent-minded gentleman, was described by conductor Kenneth Woods as "possibly the funniest and most modern symphony ever written."

Jude Fernando and Vidhurinda Samaraweera performing Haydn’s Symphony No. 60 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, with the Gustav Mahler Orchestra of Colombo (September 9.2025)

The horn parts, scored for two horns (and optional trumpets/timpani), contribute greatly to the celebratory and chaotic atmosphere. The players are required to transition seamlessly from supporting stately Baroque passages to executing sudden, jarring fanfares that anticipate the work’s many jokes.

My favorite passage—and one that requires utmost interpretive precision—is in the 2nd movement, where the horns and oboes blast a sudden forte fanfare mid-phrase in a mellow andante passage. This is the perfect embodiment of “the distracted.”

Figure 1

Another passage is in the finale (6th movement) where the energetic prestissimo comes to a spectacularly discordant halt, allowing the strings to noisily retune their strings—a pure moment of musical comedy. The horns must blast through the fanfare passages that precede this moment of absurdity, setting up the comic tension Haydn intended.

Figure 2

Compared to the adventurous, lyrical chromaticism found in Beethoven works, Haydn’s writing in No. 60 generally adheres to the strict natural harmonic series, emphasizing clarity and fanfare.

Period Instruments and Modern Adaptation

Haydn wrote for the natural horn (or Waldhorn), a valveless instrument that utilized a series of interchangeable tubes (crooks) to change keys. The tone quality was brighter and more penetrating, suitable for its origins as an outdoor instrument. The ability to play notes outside the harmonic series relied on hand-stopping (i.e. inserting the right hand into the bell in varying degrees).

When adapting these parts to the modern valved horn, we must strive to emulate the natural horn's sound characteristics:

1. Timbre: The modern horn tends toward a rich, dark sound. To honor Haydn, we must prioritize clarity and brightness. We can achieve this by adjusting the hand position (simulating the open bell sound) and using a conical mouthpiece.
2. Articulation: Haydn’s passages, restricted largely to the harmonic series, often evoke hunting calls (like those used in Il Distratto). We can use a crisper tonguing technique ("toh") and maintain the energetic esprit inherent in the original style. This is, however, open to discussion and may be a matter of personal preference.

Filling the Gap in Il Distratto

A persistent and consequential ambiguity in Haydn performance involves the notation of B-flat horns (whether alto or basso), as Haydn himself rarely specified. However, a related interpretive gap exists in how conductors treat the C horns in C major symphonies like No. 60, especially when optional trumpets and timpani are involved.

Despite scholarly consensus (led by H.C. Robbins Landon) that the C horns in Haydn’s festive C major symphonies must be played C-alto (high horns), modern conductors frequently default to C-basso, fundamentally changing the character of the music.

Haydn’s Symphony No. 60, Il Distratto, requires the horns in C to be performed C-alto. This decision is necessitated by both the context and the composition:

1. Programmatic Context: The symphony is built on dramatic wit, humor, and the notable fanfare passages. The high clarino register produces the requisite brilliance ideal for these fanfares and the C major solemnity.
2. Aesthetic Intent: Critics such as Antony Hodgeson note that performances using the lower octave horns "invalidate" the work because the horns "lumber along an octave too low" and the fanfare-like passages make "no sense at all." It is generally accepted that the upper octave is essential for the horns to function as the brilliant brass component, particularly since the work often includes optional trumpets and timpani.

To best preserve Haydn's inventive genius, modern performances of Il Distratto would need to restore the C-alto horn register. The brilliant, high sound seems to be not a mere detail; it might very well be the defining feature that allows this comic masterpiece to truly come to life.