John Burden (1921-2010)
John Harold Burden played in the London Symphony Orchestra (1946-1955), joined the Sinfonia of London (1955-1958), was a member of the Virtuoso Ensemble of London, founded the London Horn Trio, and was principal horn of the Menuhin Festival Orchestra, but he is also known for his association with the Beatles.
John’s father, a priest in London’s East End, wanted him to take holy orders, but John was more interested in music. He took up the horn at age 16 and won a place at the Royal Academy of Music two years later. His teacher at the RAM was Aubrey Brain, and Dennis, born the same year as John, was a fellow student. When World War II broke out, both joined the RAF Central Band. In 1953, they performed together in the orchestra assembled for the Coronation in Westminster Abbey, Dennis on first and John on second.
Management of the London Symphony Orchestra insisted on remaining solely a concert and recording orchestra, but a group of players, including John, resigned en masse, most joining the Sinfonia of London to record for films. John played on the soundtracks of many movies, including The Ladykillers, Hitchcock’s Vertigo, early James Bond films, and the Pink Panther franchise.
The London Horn Trio, founded in 1959 with violinist Lionel Bentley and pianist Celia Arieli, performed over the next twenty years. John also made a number of appearances with Dizzy Gillespie when his band toured Britain in the late 1960s.
EMI producer George Martin approached John in 1967 to play on the Beatles’ album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band along with hornists James W. Buck, Neil Sanders, and Tony Randall. “They didn’t really know what they wanted,” John later recalled. “I wrote out phrases based on what Paul McCartney was humming to us.” John can be heard on the album’s title track.
John’s daunting workload took its toll, and by 1979 his embouchure had been permanently affected. He retired from playing and became a professor at Trinity College of Music until 1998, then taught at Ballymena Academy from 1990 until his retirement in 2005.
Information for this biography came from John Burden’s son, Tim Burden, is his tribute, John Burden: Legendary Horn Blower. An obituary in The Times was written by Mark Walker, son of Gordon Walker, a flutist and friend of John Burden’s.
Jacques François Gallay (1795-1864)
Jacques François Gallay was the last great natural horn specialist in France, renowned for his quality of tone in both open and stopped notes, his certainty of attack and clarity in rapid passages.
He was born in Perpignan, France, the son of Marie Bertin and amateur horn player François Gallay. At age 10, he began to study solfège, the traditional French system for improving aural skills and sight-reading, and two years later he started horn lessons with his father, though he was largely self-taught. When Gallay was just 14, and the horn player at the Perpignan’s theatre went sick, he was already sufficiently skilled to be able to stand in for him. Musicians visiting the city recommended that he should move to Paris to study at the Conservatoire, but his father was reluctant to let him leave home.
Galley composed and performed a horn concerto around 1818 and finally, in June 1820, at the age of 24, he went to Paris to meet Louis-François Dauprat, the Conservatoire’s horn professor. Though Dauprat was keen that Gallay should study with him, special dispensation had to be obtained before he could be accepted at the Conservatoire because he was above the maximum age for starting there.
In 1821, after just a year under Dauprat’s tuition, Gallay won the coveted first prize for horn in the Conservatoire’s annual Concours, the competition to find the best player on each instrument there. Clearly, he was already regarded as someone special. He performed in the prize-winners’ concert in December, and a review said that though the piece he played was “rather feeble,” he managed to play his “rebellious instrument” with the facility of a flute. Three months later, after a performance of a Nocturne for horn and harp, Le Miroir des spectacles declared that his tone was beautiful, his playing sang sweetly, and the impression he made enhanced an already brilliant reputation. “Soon,” the author continued, he will earn a place “among the great masters.”
Gallay played in the orchestra at Paris’s Odéon Theatre for a short while, but in 1825 he moved to the Théâtre Italien as solo horn player, and it was there that he met Gioacchino Rossini, who dedicated his Introduction, Andante and Allegro for horn and piano to him. He was also appointed to the band of the Royal Chapel, and though this ended abruptly with the overthrow of Charles X in the so-called July Revolution of 1830, in 1832 he was appointed to the chamber music ensemble of Charles’s successor, King Louis-Phillippe. The excellent notices for his solo playing continued. In 1833, after a performance of one of his own compositions, Castil Blaze, the music critic for L’Europe Littéraire wrote “M. Gallay has outdone himself, which says it all. It would be impossible to combine more charm and vigour with more exquisite accuracy. Even the most rebellious and scabrous pitches emerged from M. Gallay’s horn like notes from an organ.”
Although Gallay’s teacher Dauprat is today held in great esteem for his comprehensive Méthode de cor-alto et cor-basse, it seems that by the early 1840s all was not well in the Conservatoire horn department. Someone, writing anonymously in La France Musicale on 10th April 1842, expressed his “astonishment” that Gallay was not yet a professor at the Paris Conservatoire, as “the horn school is completely neglected” and that “Gallay alone could restore its old reputation.” Six months later, the 61-year old Dauprat had retired, and on 25th November, La tribune dramatique announced that “M. Gallay has just been named professor of the horn at the Conservatoire.”
Pierre-Joseph Meifred had been in post as professor of valve horn since 1833, though it seems that the Conservatoire authorities regarded valve horn playing as something completely different from hand horn playing and there does not seem to have been any crossover of students between the two classes. Gallay could now, at least, stamp his own authority on the Conservatoire’s hand horn class; while Dauprat’s students only sporadically won first prizes (the prizes were awarded by a committee, and not by the individual professors), 1843, 1845, and 1864 (the year Gallay died) were the only years when a first prize was not awarded during his tenure.
His Méthode pour le cor appeared in 1845, and although a slim volume in comparison with the tutors of Domnich and Dauprat, it makes some interesting points, not least in that by contrast to his predecessors, he advocated a more open hand position, recommending that players should maximise the variety of tone colour while avoiding uneven volume, by blowing less hard on open notes and harder on stopped ones. The Méthode also includes a chart showing different hand positions required to produce all notes through the range of the instrument and detailed descriptions of his preferred mouthpieces: his “model no. 1: for high horn players had an internal diameter of 16.5mm, his “model no. 2” for low players 18.5 mm. He recommended a rim width of 2.5mm, a total length of 72mm and a diameter at the “tail” of the mouthpiece of 7mm.
Gallay was a “first horn player,” a term he preferred to Dauprat’s “cor alto,” though he tended to use only the middle register for solo performances. His preference for horns with a relatively small bell throat influenced French design long after his death.
Gallay’s compositions include caprices and studies for solo horn, numerous fantasies for horn and piano, duets, trios and a Grand Quartet, Op. 26 for horns, each crooked in a different key. Although the fantasies use the era’s characteristic theme and variation form, they are musically more significant than most, and the Préludes mesurés et non mesurés retain their value both musically and as study material.
Among his most distinguished students were Jean Garigue, who played at both the Opéra-Comique and at the Paris Opéra, Pierre van Haute, who played principal horn in Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra, and Jean Mohr, who succeeded Gallay as professor at the Conservatoire. In June 1843 he married Julie Elêonore d’Hebercourt in Paris’s Basilica of Notre Dame des Victoires, a woman 21 years his junior who ran an antiques shop at Place de la Bourse, no.6, and in 1854 they had a daughter, Pauline Marie Thérèse. Gallay was made a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in 1845.
After his appointment to the Conservatoire, Galley played at the Société des concerts aux Conservatoire and with the King’s chamber music ensemble until at least 1844, but rarely elsewhere, and he seems to have suffered poor health; towards the end of his life he obtained permission to teach from his home at Rue Chabannais no. 14, as he could no longer get to the Conservatoire easily. Within days of his death in Paris, Mohr was announced as his successor.
By John Humphries (with thanks to Anneke Scott for her input.)
Henri Kling (1842-1918)
Beyond duties as solo hornist and educator, Henri Kling was a composer, conductor, organist, and writer whose publications still occupy considerable shelf space in our libraries. His reputation however has diminished to the point that few know who he was or what we owe him, and the current online edition of the prestigious Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart has deleted his entry entirely.
Henri Adrien Louis Kling was born in Paris in 1842 to French native Claudette and Ludwig Christoph Kling, who hailed from the southwest German Grand Duchy of Baden. The Klings’ Paris sojourn presumably did not provide adequate employment for Ludwig, an Hautboist (military musician). In 1844 the family left Paris for Ludwig’s hometown of Carlsruhe, where he found employment in the wind bands associated with the local military garrison. Soon after the move, Henri’s mother died. Ludwig remarried, but he was a problematic father, and a devastating fire and political and military upheaval made for a difficult childhood for Henri.
Henri blossomed as musician in his teens, applying himself to violin, piano, and organ and being influenced by Eduard Devrient (manager of the court theater) and Carlsruhe Music Director Josef Strauss. The horn section of the Carlsruhe Court Orchestra enjoyed a fine reputation, and Henri studied with members of the section, including solo hornist Jacob Dorn. Students of orchestra members had free access to performances, which comprised more than two dozen operas in one season. Members of the section also gave advice on instruments; for Henri an initial cor solo (natural horn) was followed by a clockspring rotary-valve F horn built by Friedrich Wilhelm Schuster, one of the earliest makers of instruments with valves.
Henri left Carlsruhe in 1861, after the death of his father, settling in Geneva, Switzerland. He soon won the solo horn post in the Geneva Theater Orchestra, married in 1865, and had three children. His Méthode pour le Cor appeared in manuscript in 1865; it was printed in 1879 by Breitkopf & Härtel and a second, expanded edition was published in 1895 and remains in print today. Kling was elected Professor of Musical Theory and Horn Playing at the Geneva Conservatoire in 1866 and remained at the post for more than fifty years.
Geneva’s Grand Théâtre was opened in 1879, providing a venue for many opera and symphony concerts with Kling as solo horn with a brilliant reputation. At the same time, he began to develop as a conductor and was also famous for his teaching and adjudicator of band contests. Over his lifetime, he composed more than 550 pieces with opus numbers and many more without, including a concerto and sonata for horn as well as shorter solos, etudes, and ensemble works. His compositions were published by established publishers in Germany, Switzerland, France, England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, and the US.
After two decades as solo hornist in Geneva, Kling resigned from the orchestra to devote himself to composition, writing, and teaching. He considered teaching at the Geneva Conservatoire his primary responsibility. He taught both hand horn and modern valve horn and stressed the importance of the hand in the bell. Among his many solo horn pieces, etudes, arrangements, and editions, Kling was the first to provide piano transcriptions for the Mozart concerti and the Weber Concertino. Compositions were dedicated to colleagues Alphonse Stenebruggen in Strasbourg, Henri Dubois in Brussels, and Friedrich Gumpert in Leipzig. Articles and books included topics such as the intersection of music and literature, contributions of women in music, local music history, and methods for composition, orchestration, conducting, and transposition.
World War I meant a blockade of Switzerland with attendant shortages and the personal tragedy of the war between his mother’s France and his father’s Germany. Kling’s fifty years at the Conservatoire was celebrated in 1916. He still hiked every Sunday morning more than 10 kilometers round trip to play the organ, donating his time and talents without pay. Kling died in Geneva at the age of 76 in May 1918, not living to see the end of the war.
Summary by Marilyn Bone Kloss of William Melton’s “Henri Kling: A European Musician." The complete article was first published in La Revue du Corniste, the journal of the Association Française du Cor, and then in The Horn Call, in the February, May, and October 2018 issues.
Raoux Family
Raoux narrow bore natural and piston horns were sought after by horn players in the 19th and early 20th century as being the best and were played by both Aubrey Brain and his son Dennis. The Raoux family members who manufactured horns were:
François (1695-1749)
Brothers Pierre (1723-after 1789) and Joseph (1725-1787)
Lucien-Joseph (1752-1823)
Marcel-Auguste (1795-1871)
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| Lucien-Joseph Raoux (1752-1823) |
The Raoux story begins in 1663 when Louis Raoux moved to Nancy in the Lorraine region of France. Louis and his son François were chaudronniers; i.e., coppersmiths and pot and pan makers, the most highly skilled of which were organized in guilds in major cities and made high value objects, including timpani and trumpets. François became a master chaudronnier and was later described as Warden of His Royal Highness, the Duke of Lorraine’s Hunt and, after a move to Versailles, as Horn Maker to the King’s (Louis XV of France) Hunt, a position he held until his death.
Two of François’s sons followed him in the business. Pierre remained in Nancy, listed as “merchant-maker of cors-de-chasse” and also was among the artisans who made a fountain in Nancy in 1756. Joseph moved to Paris and joined the Guild of Luthiers, Organ Builders, and Musical Instrument Makers in 1754. Before this, the cor-de-chasse was not considered to be a musical instrument as such, but, like trumpets and timpani, classified as “instruments of war and the hunt.”
Both guilds manufactured horns from 1759, an important development as it reflected the growing interest in the horn as an orchestral instrument in France. These orchestral horns were triple-wound (introduced around 1814), following earlier designs of single-wound trompe (favored by the Marquis de Dampierre) and double-wound trompe Dauphine. The Raoux atelier developed two ranges of instrument: trompes-de-chasse for the hunt and cors-de-chasse for the orchestra.
Joseph seems to have made mainly hunting horns despite his entry into the Luthier’s Guild. He was the exclusive supplier of trompe-de-chasse to the king. His son, Lucien-Joseph, apprenticed to his father, left to work with a former shop workman and competitor, Jean-François Corméry, but later returned to work with his father, possibly concentrating on orchestral horns while his father took care of hunting horns.
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| Raoux cor solo for Dauprat |
Lucien-Joseph developed a new form of cor d’invention in 1781, the cor solo. He made a beautiful example for an award to Louis-François Dauprat, winner of the first Premier Prix for horn at the Paris Conservatoire in 1797. Over the years, he made horns for Giovanni Punto, Domnich, Duvernoy, Kenn, and Lebrun. His workshop included a lathe.
Marcel-Auguste worked with his father and was a horn player as well as maker. Among the changes in industry and manufacturing at this time was the introduction of valves, arriving from Germany with trumpets in 1826. Following a revolution in 1830, royal patents were cancelled, competition increased, Adolph Sax won a competition for military band instruments, and the Raoux business went into decline. After years of litigation, Marcel-Auguste was forced in 1857 to sell the company’s assets to Jacques-Christophe Labbaye, the horn-playing son of a maker.
In 1878, François Millereau, who started his own shop in 1861, bought Marcel-Auguste’s patterns and the rights to the Raoux name from Labbaye, who continued to work in his employ. Millereau was succeeded by his son-in-law, Herman Schoenaers. The firm went bankrupt in 1931 and was bought by H. Selmer, who continue to use the Raoux name until around 1938.
Marcel-Auguste Raoux had a son, Auguste-Ernest (1826-1889), who became a government inspector; Auguste-Ernest’s only child, a daughter, died in 1930, the end of this Raoux family.
Chris Larkin’s article, from which this summary is drawn, was published in the Spring and Autumn 2018 issues of The Horn Player, the journal of the British Horn Society.
Gebr. Alexander
Gebr. Alexander manufactures musical instruments in Mainz, Germany, the city on the Rhine River where the company was founded in 1782. It is still owned and directed, through seven generations, by descendants of the founder.
The founder, Franz Ambros Alexander (1753-1802), established a small workshop for making musical instruments. He was from a French Huguenot family and relocated from the town of Miltenberg am Main, Germany to Mainz, about 100 km away, where he was accepted into the Craftsmen’s Guild.
Manufacture of woodwind instruments took on importance with the second generation, which established the sale of Alexander's own products. After the death of Franz Ambros, his widow and her sons Claudius, Martin, and Philipp (1787-1864) took over the business. Kaspar Anton Alexander (1803-1872) trained in woodwind instrument building and in 1826 returned to the company.
Manufacture of brass instruments became more important with the third generation. Franz Anton Alexander (1838-1926) worked for the company beginning in 1864. The younger Georg Philipp Alexander (1843-1897) spent five years in Saxony, Vienna, and Prague learning the art of brass instrument making. Richard Wagner contacted Gebr. Alexander in 1862 while searching for a new tone color; the Wagner tuba was developed in cooperation with Gebr. Alexander. In 1872 Georg Philipp joined the company alongside his brother.
The development of the first full double horn, the Model 103, marked an important milestone in company's history, the 1903 patent signaling the beginning of rapid development in horn design. The leaders of the fourth generation, Friedrich Sebastian Anton (1873-1913) and Georg Philipp, Jr. (1879-1916), who fell at Verdun] did not survive the First World War. Their widows and their father, Franz Anton, piloted the business through the war and the difficult years that followed.
The years of worldwide financial catastrophe following the stock market crash as well as the Second World War destroyed everything that the previous generations had built. Philipp Johann Christoph (1904-1971) had taken over the company as the fifth generation in 1925; he and the employees who survived the war and returned from detention enabled the company to recover its former significance.
As brass instrument master craftsmen, the sixth generation traveled across the globe and gained new knowledge through contact with leading musicians. Anton Julius (1935-2013) became director of the company after the death of his father in 1971. The quality of the manufactured instruments was improved by Anton Julius and his skilled team, including his brother, Hans Philipp (1948-2005).
New technologies and their potential in the development and design of brass instruments are currently shaping the third century and seventh generation of the company's history. Georg Philipp (born 1969), son of Anton Julius Alexander, joined the business in 1992 and became its director in 1999.
The Model 103 double horn continues to be a mainstay of the company while single, triple, natural, and descant horns, as well as Wagner tubas and other instruments and accessories, are also produced. Although the company headquarters remains at the building in downtown Mainz where manufacturing had taken place since 1909, a new manufacturing facility in the Mainz industrial park was opened in 2011.
Kruspe Horns
Anton Horner introduced Kruspe horns to America in 1902, but the name has been associated with brass instrument making much longer. Friedrich (Franz) Carl Kruspe (1808-1885) was apprenticed to Heinrich Gottlieb Streitwolf in Göttingen and opened a workshop in Mühlhausen, Germany about 1829. His older son, Eduard (1831-1918), established his own shop in 1864, taking over the shop of Carl Christian Zielsdorf, to whom he may have been apprenticed. The business has carried his name, as Ed. Kruspe, to the present day.
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| Eduard Kruspe | Georg Wendler | Rudi Schneider | Peter Heldman |
In 1861 Eduard's younger brother, Friedrich Wilhelm Kruspe, took over the woodwind workshop of their father.Carl Kruspe was named Hofinstrumentenmacher (Instrument Maker to the Court) in 1865. The two brothers jointly issued a catalog of brass and woodwind instruments c. 1870; the instruments were apparently intended primarily for military bands. In the last decade of the 19th century, the business shifted from mass-produced instruments for the military to higher-quality instruments for orchestras and soloists.
Eduard’s son Friedrich (Fritz, ca. 1862-1909) took over in 1893. His daughter, Ilse (1873-1949), married Georg Wendler. When Fritz Kruspe died in 1909, his widow oversaw the business until their son-in-law, Georg Wendler, who had played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra for 20 years, took over in 1920. Rudi Schneider took over in 1936. Obtaining materials became ever more difficult under the East German regime after 1945, and Schneider was the only master craftsman for 20 years. Peter Heldmann eventually apprenticed at Kruspe and took over the company in 1979, retiring in 2012.
IHS Founder and Honorary Member Anton Horner (1877-1971) played in the Philadelphia Orchestra (1902-1946) and taught at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia from its founding in 1924 to 1942. He played Kruspe horns, starting with the Gumpert double. From 1902 he had the Horner model made to his specification, which he imported and sold until World War II. The design was copied by other makers, notably the Conn 8D. A letter in 1956 from Horner to Osbourne MacConathy (a Boston Symphony Orchestra hornist) describes his involvement in the development of the Horner model.
To go a little farther with the development of the double horn, I must tell you that in 1900 I was engaged to go to the Paris Exposition, and to tour Europe with Sousa's Band... So even in Berlin, my reputation had spread, and Schmidt, the horn maker, who was first in Weimar, and now had his factory in Berlin, came to talk to me. He had invented a new B-flat valve for a double horn, but could not decide what kind of mouthpiece tube was best for his new instrument. He asked me to come to his factory to help him decide. I went to his place, and after long trials of several mouthpiece tubes, I approved of one which he used on his first instruments in F an B-flat. His B-flat valve was a piston, like on a cornet, which I found very awkward to operate with the thumb.
After the Sousa tour was over, I stayed in Europe for a month to visit … my teacher, [Friedrich] Gumpert, in Leipzig. He was delighted to see me, and when I told him that I was playing one of his nephew's inventions, he told me that he had retired two years before. … Then I went to Erfurt to see the man who made my double horn. Krüspe had heard of Schmidt's new patent, and since his two valve affair was rather temperamental in operation, he got busy and invented the valve that is on his horn today − with minor changes. Then I ordered a new horn with his new valve, and told him that I preferred a much longer bell, and also string valves. I liked this new horn.
Later, Krüspe wrote me that he was experimenting with an all-German silver metal horn; also gold brass metal horn − here we call it copper brass. He wanted to know whether I was interested. I ordered one of each, and the first German silver horn he sent me was the one I used until my last day in the [Philadelphia] Orchestra.
The copper brass horn was also a good instrument, but for my embouchure it lacked some brilliance; for a hard and harsh embouchure it was very good. For me, the German silver was best, and that horn with a large bell with small rim, and string valves became the Horner model, which Krüspe himself named, not I.
Tatehiko Sakaino studied horn in Japan with Richard Mackey and Kaoru Chiba and in Germany with Erich Penzel and played third horn in the orchestra in Hof, Germany. After retiring from professional hornplaying, Tatehiko exported instruments from Europe to Japan and his son Katsushi eventually trained as a brass instrument builder. Subsequently Katsushi apprenticed at Kruspe under the direction of Peter Heldmann.
In the mid-2000s, under their own label, Curia Bavaria brass instruments, the Sakainos began production of two double horn of their own design, natural horns, Vienna F-horns, and rotary-valve trumpets.
Kruspe folded due to a combination of the economic issues of transitioning to the new economy after German reunification and competition from subsidized brass instrument giants in Germany as well as multi-national conglomerates. The Sakainos, father and son, bought the Kruspe name, materials, and equipment. The company makes the Horner model, the Wendler compensating double, the Leipzig single-F model, and a B-flat/F-alto horn. In the early 20th century, the Horner and Wendler models were also known as the Philadelphia and Boston models. Kruspe horns are all made in nickel-silver, brass, and gold-brass.
The workshop is in a converted barn in the village of Prienbach, near Passau in Bavaria, Germany, now with modern-day precision machining. Katsushi Sakaino builds the instruments on order only.
Material for this article was taken from an article in The Horn Call by Lee Bracegirdle in October 2014, from the Richard Martz website, and from the Ed. Kruspe website.
Farquharson Cousins (1917-2017)
by Tony Catterick
Farquharson Alfred Mackay Cousins ‒ “Farkie” to everyone ‒ was a true horn legend and character who achieved lasting fame as a devotee of “the true horn tone.”
Farkie was born in Bristol, England in 1917 to an Anglican clergyman, Alfred Edmund Cousins, who served in France in the First World War, and Margaret Mackay, a Canadian. The parents met in Canada where Alfred was working as a priest; Farkie spent some early years in Canada.
I saw my first horn when I was four years of age in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada, where we were living for a while. Dad took me to a Military Band outdoor concert. It was The Band of The Welsh Guards touring Canada and I clearly remember them playing Franz von Suppe’s overture Light Cavalry. Little could I have imagined that the Sergeant playing first Horn would, in fifteen years’ time, be my second Horn in the same Band!
Farkie attended Clifton College, a boys’ public school in Bristol, England from 1931-36, where he decided to take up the horn at age 15. This was a school-owned piston valve instrument with an F crook that was hanging on a wall; he tried it, producing a G below the stave immediately! After three years he won a prize playing Glazunov’s Reverie. His father bought him a similar-type Raoux horn and, for the rest of his life, Farkie stayed passionately loyal to the narrow bore piston valve French horn in F.
Farkie attended Selwyn College, Cambridge to read Music, graduating in 1938 and deciding to become a professional horn player. With the help of a scholarship, he went to the Guildhall School of Music in London in 1939 to study with Bertie Muskett, one-time principal horn for Sir Thomas Beecham’s New Symphony Orchestra. During the months leading up to the Second World War in September 1939, he was also able to have lessons with Aubrey Brain at the Royal Academy of Music. Some of his contemporary horn students with Aubrey Brain were Aubrey's son Dennis, Douglas Moore, William Grant, and John Burden, all of whom later had distinguished careers as first horns and teachers of the next generation.
In 1992, aged 75, I recall, over half a century ago I sat alongside Dennis Brain in The Duke’s Hall at the RAM, with Sir Henry Wood conducting. Halcyon days, with Aubrey as our mentor. We all played French horns in F, the large bore B-flat German horn had yet to dominate, and with Aubrey Brain – never!!
On the outbreak of hostilities, Farkie joined the same Welsh Guards Band he heard as a child in Winnipeg. He also played in the Orchestra in Khaki, a group of military musicians formed to make aluminium records for relay to the Forces abroad. When he was demobilized in 1945, he bought a Joseph Lucien Raoux horn in F.
He joined the BBC Symphony Orchestra for the 1945-46 season, the City of Birmingham Orchestra in 1946-47, and the now defunct Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra based in Leeds in 1948-49, the last horn section in the UK to play the narrow bore piston valve French Horn in F. The section was Farkie, Raymond Few, William Crosse, and Walter Smith.
From Leeds, Farkie moved in 1949 to Glasgow with the Scottish Orchestra. He now realised that there was no choice but to give up the old narrow bore piston horn and so played an old Lehmann compensating horn in F and B-flat owned by the orchestra. He stayed the renamed Scottish National Orchestra for the next 10 years, during which he bought a yellow brass Conn 6D full double instrument. The section in the early 1950s was Farkie, Aileen Way, a young Barry Tuckwell, and Derek Lisney. Farkie also taught at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music. He then was solo horn in the BBC Scottish Orchestra, also in Glasgow, from 1960 to 1966, with ex-horn player Normal Del Mar as the Principal Conductor.
In 1969 he joined first the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra in South Africa as principal horn and then the SA Navy Band, playing horn, BBflat tuba, and a lot of golf, before moving finally to the Army Band as Music Librarian. He retired in 1991, returning to the UK to write novels and play more golf.
His classic tutor, On Playing The Horn, first published in 1983 and revised and expanded in 1992, is an absolute must for all horn players. He describes, with humour, wisdom, and long experience, the many qualities that make up a horn player’s character, playing technique, and how to survive as an orchestral musician.
Never forget that the most beautiful note in the world can become a disaster, unless it is played in the right place. F.C.
This great man, fine horn player, teacher, author of murder mystery books, cartoonist, writer of articles to music magazines eulogising the narrow bore horn and bemoaning the “cow horn German thing,” believer in a pure, clean, and open tone on the horn, raconteur, lover of fine malt whisky and poker, highly intelligent, a true bon viveur with a twinkly-eyed sense of humour, sometime tuba player and passionate golfer, left us three months after his 100th birthday. We will all miss him, as they don’t make these larger than life characters any more.
© Tony Catterick, Historian for The British Horn Society, July 2017.