by Harriet Conant Foltinek, retired

During my university years in Alabama, I spent summers in Washington D.C. and took lessons from Mason Jones, principal horn in the Philadelphia Orchestra. After one of my lessons, Jones suggested that I go to a certain music store (which, I recall, seemed to specialize in horns) to buy a mute. When I entered the small store, there was an older gentleman lounging in front of the counter. I proceeded to discuss mutes with the clerk, and after trying a few mutes in my horn, the older gentleman commented that one particular mute seemed to him to sound the best in my small-bore horn. I agreed and proceeded to purchase it. The clerk made a quiet comment to me—I had just chosen a de Polis mute on the recommendation of the legendary Anton Horner!

A few lessons later, Jones suggested that a different mouthpiece might help my sound, and he offered to loan me one on trial. It was well-used, in need of replating, but a nice mouthpiece. There was no marking on it, so it obviously was hand-made. I decided to purchase the mouthpiece (perhaps for $10.00), and I used it from that day on.

Harriet with her Berv mouthpiece, 2004

After graduating as the first horn major at the University of Alabama, I was offered a job in western Canada with the fledgling Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. I had 2 weeks to get there for the first rehearsal of a short season. This was a community orchestra which was just beginning to import players in their efforts to become a fully professional organization. Over the following 20 years of growth, many more highly-skilled players were brought in, and as the orchestra grew, I had the opportunity to play each position in the section under a wide variety of conductors.

After a few years in Calgary, I purchased an older model Conn 8D that would blend better with the section, but my de Polis mute was too small for it. When I sold my old horn, I included the mute; but some years later, I learned that the mute was a rather rare one.

Having married and raised a family in Calgary, we moved in 1997 to the beautiful Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. After attending concerts by the area orchestra for a few seasons and chatting with the musicians, I was persuaded to get my horn out and attend an area workshop that summer. During all my years of playing, I had never been to a workshop, so I decided to do it. Lots of hard work and much practice time later, I took part in Horns a' Plenty in Salmon Arm, BC, in the summer of 2004. That led to some casual work locally as well as ten years supporting the area youth symphony horn section. In 2015, after some 65 years, it was finally time to pack up the horn for the last time; but my commitment to music did not wane, and I remained involved by doing volunteer work for the orchestra.

Fast-forward to 2022: the world is slowly opening up again after COVID, and the IHS is able to hold live workshops once more. I took out a membership again just to have a look, and while reading the August issue of Horn and More, I found an article on Dick Martz's huge collection of horns. One link on his site caught my eye: Mason Jones' Mouthpieces. Curious, I opened the link, scrolled down, and found a photo of a couple of scrawled notes in Mason Jones' handwriting with the names of students to whom he had loaned mouthpieces. Bingo! A long-mysterious connection was finally made: I am the Conant to whom Mason Jones loaned a mouthpiece back in the 1950's, as noted in the photo. What a thrill to read this story on the R.J. Martz website and finally learn that I had played my entire career on a marvelous old Berv mouthpiece from Mason Jones' large collection!

b‍y Saar Berger

The School

Black Forest, Baar, and Heuberg—these three names are synonymous with breathtaking landscapes, a flourishing economy, down-to-earth culture, and high art. And right in the center, almost as a heart, is the Trossingen State School of Music, the only German university of music in a non-urban area. Additionally, as the only German music school in the Euregio Bodensee (in southwest Germany near several international borders), the State School of Music enjoys an international reputation, manifest in numerous cross-border partnerships. The geographically diverse region provides a vital network for artistic activities and educational experiences. With more than 400 events annually, the School of Music assumes responsibility for a wide range of performances at its location and, in partnership with local organizers, in the greater Euregio Bodensee. 

Tradition and Innovation

Courses at the Trossingen State School are characterized by intensive practical relevance and individual opportunities for professional preparation. The School of Music offers traditional instrumental training while cutting-edge applications bridge the gap to the digital age. 

During the Second World War, training courses from various German music colleges were relocated to Trossingen. The town proved to be attractive, and the State School of Music finally emerged from the provisional arrangements. The school has given hundreds of students the tools for a career in major symphony orchestras, choirs, or as soloists, music teachers, or conductors.

Around 450 students are enrolled at the School. The traditional subjects of a music college are offered with a special focus on orchestral instruments. The brass and percussion section, with its Positively Brass & Percussion Institute, is particularly strong, and the aim of the institute is to provide chamber music and orchestral training of the highest quality.

The Horn Studio

The Trossingen Horn Class is a group from around the world. Between 12 to 15 students per semester—from the United States, Spain, Italy, Costa Rica, Switzerland, Israel, China, Slovenia, Finland, Japan, Malaysia, and Germany—study with Prof. Saar Berger in a variety of degree programs. They participate in weekly horn lessons, natural and baroque horn lessons; studies in the chamber music, orchestral, and solo repertoire; audition preparation, horn ensembles, and workshops and masterclasses with various guest artists and orchestra players. A large number of Prof. Berger's recent graduates have won positions in orchestras across Germany.

Enjoy the Trossingen Horn Class 2021 performances of the Scherzo movement of Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 10, arranged for them by Bruce Richards, and Fanfare for Barcs, by Kerry Turner.

Professor Berger

Saar Berger has been Professor of Horn at the Trossingen State School of Music since 2019. Born in 1980, he studied horn at the Rubin Music Academy in Tel Aviv before joining the Israel Opera and Symphony Orchestra. He has been a member of the international soloists’ group Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt since 2007. Thanks to scholarships and awards from the Zvi and Ofra Meitar Family Fund and the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, he completed his studies in Berlin with Prof. Marie-Luise Neunecker and in Frankfurt with Prof. Erich Penzel and Prof. Esa Tapani. Prof. Berger works closely with many young and internationally established composers and has been able to enrich the already extensive horn literature by performing many world premieres of concerti and solo pieces. He has been part of the teaching team at the Lucerne Festival Academy since 2017, and he teaches at the International Ensemble Modern Academy and at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt. He is regularly invited to present masterclasses and performances around the world. During the pandemic, when live concerts were prohibited, Prof. Berger engaged twelve composer friends to create a new video production cycle of 12 World Premieres for Horn Solo. You will find many of Saar Berger’s recordings on his YouTube channel.

by Félix Dervaux

I have adhered to the following principles since the beginning of my career. They are the foundation of my horn playing: the way I achieved the quality of my sound, the accuracy, the resistance, etc., follows these tips. I have written a brief summary of these principles. (The complete list is very long, so I won’t list everything.)

Know yourself. It is very important that you get to know the strengths and weaknesses of your horn playing as accurately as possible before anything else, so be honest with yourself. This will help you to know where you are starting before moving forward. Each bit of progress is like a long trip, and not knowing yourself is like booking a flight without knowing which airport you are leaving from.

Have very precise goals. Once you know your starting point, it’s time to decide exactly where you want to go. In your journey to become a better horn player, it’s important to know which airport you are leaving from, but it is crucial to know where you want to go. If you are uncertain about this, you won’t get anywhere—you will be a rudderless ship. This means, for example, you must know what kind of sound you want to produce (that’s why it’s important to listen; knowing what is already out there can give you a clear idea of what is possible and thus a clear target to set for yourself). If you don’t establish that as a goal first, you will never actually get to it (the same goes with all your personal goals). You also need deadline goals: concerts, exams, lessons, etc., anything with a deadline. Once you have goals and deadlines, it will be much easier for you to identify if you are on the right path or not. And this leads to the next tip….

Always be in progress. Every evening, at the end of the workday, ask yourself, “Did I make any progress, no matter how small?” And the answer should be yes. Thinking this way will force you to discover your own reference points, and it will teach you to focus everything that is blurred. This may sound like a trivial task but remember that there are only two possibilities: at the end of each day, you improved, or you didn’t. As a horn player, there is no middle ground, no “neutral progression;” your level is always evolving, either for better or for worse.

Stay healthy. Since the horn is a very demanding instrument both physically and psychologically, be healthy! Exercise is good for your posture, your concentration, your resistance, your morale, etc., so don’t ignore this.

Absorb. Never forget that your brain is like a sponge. That means that for each of us, whatever we do, experience, or think, our brain will record it somewhere in the subconscious—even if it doesn't feel like it. Your “brain recorder” is kind of stupid and will not, most of the time, register the difference between something that is wrong and something that is right—it merely records what happened. If you practice a piece of music, and you don’t care about the mistakes you make when you play, you can be sure your subconscious will remember the good as well as the bad, and that will lead to confusion in future performances. Think of it this way: the level you can expect each time you play a piece is the average level of all the previous times you played it, whether you are practicing at home alone or performing on stage.

Remain lucid. Practice with a crystal-clear mindset. Be in control of your thoughts and of your playing. If you think, “I can’t do that, this will never work, I’m bad, etc.” every time you arrive at a specific place, your subconscious will note: “OK, I’m here,” and this will slowly become reality. Instead, try to keep your thoughts in control and try to replace negative thoughts with positive ones.

Build new skills. Start with something that is easy for you. You can only master new skills (have a better tone, clearer articulations, more nimble fingers, etc.) if you build them on top of the those which have already been mastered—on top of the things that are now easy for you. You actually can decide to practice pieces that are too difficult for you right now, provided your work can be broken down into smaller steps that are easy (by practicing slowly or in small sections, for example).

Learn from your mistakes, especially the little ones. The default mindset when something little happens—a wrong note, for example—is: “Oh, that’s too bad, but that was just something meaningless. Let’s move on…that won’t happen next time.” When those little things occur, this is the best time to stop and think again about what happened. There is so much to learn from those tiny accidents! Was it poor airflow? Are you playing too timidly? or too aggressively? Did you hear the melody before you played it? Are you thinking too vertically? How consistently are you phrasing? Are you tired, and should you take a break? Each little accident can be seen as a mini riddle you have to solve before moving to the next riddle.

Visualize. Contrary to what the word implies, visualization does not only involve sight—it can include all the senses. Visualization is the act of being mentally conscious of as many parameters as possible, away from the horn, just in your mind. I used to learn all my new pieces this way, from memory, and then only afterward play the piece on the horn. This forces you to imagine as accurately as possible, in advance, how you want to play, from the sound to the style to the mastering of technical difficulties, while saving practice time on the horn for later. Visualization is also important even when you are actually playing. Before I play each note, I am mentally playing it. That way, when I begin to play for real, it’s like playing for the second time, except nobody heard the first one but me. If there is such a thing as “horn technique,” to me it would be this visualization process. This can’t be replaced by any other technique and is one of the most important aspects of horn playing. Many of us do it naturally some of the time but being aware of it all the time is even better. Think about it next time you must play a big solo or a dangerous entrance; visualization will make you much more efficient!

Simplicity. Contrary to what you might think, becoming a more skilled horn player does not mean making things more complicated. Keeping it simple takes time and real skill. The biggest difference between a beginner and a seasoned professional is that for the former, every element of an interpretation will be a novelty; every tiny indication, fingering, nuance, articulation, technical parameter (lips, air flow, posture, tongue, breathing, etc.) will be something new and overwhelming that the beginner will have to think about. Professional horn players, on the other hand, will have learned to simplify their thinking and playing. This does not mean that you should play as blandly as possible: everything is in the nuance. Two quotes summarize this principle very well. The first is from the abstract expressionist painter Hans Hofmann: “Simplifying is eliminating the superfluous in order to let the indispensable speak for itself.” The second quote is from Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to subtract.” This is what you must aim for. Horn playing is so perilous that you must learn to think more simply, and the good news is that simplicity will serve your artistry.

Don’t go it alone. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of having someone at your side who can give you feedback, even if you have been a professional for many years. Believe me: I know what I’m talking about. There are things I would never have achieved without my teachers and friends, but also things that could have gone even better if I hadn’t decided to go it alone.

Be open to new experiences. Read, go out, go to concerts and shows, and explore the world. In the end, your job as an artist will be to entertain people, to make them think and dream. You have got to find inspiration somewhere!