French Horn, Jasper Rees and uncertainty

horns of a dilemma

01Dec08

French Horn Close Up What has the French Horn to do with the science of uncertainty? The Economist review of journalist Jasper Rees’s book I Found My Horn may have nailed it. The book chronicles Rees’s mid-life crisis in which he picked up his childhood instrument rather than running a marathon . It’s now being published in the US as A Devil to Play: One Man’s Year-Long Quest to Master the Orchestra’s Most Difficult Instrument. More pertinently, a play starring co-writer Jonathan Guy Lewis opens this very night on the London stage.

What makes the horn quite so hard to play is the length of tubing necessary to produce its tonal range; despite three valves, it is very easy to hit the wrong note, or fall off the right one. There’s a level of doubt about each outcome that does not trouble other musicians to quite the same degree. Even professional orchestral players are more exposed than most to public musical catastrophe, because of the horn’s expressive value to composers. For this, among other reasons, horn players are considered a breed apart. This is how Simon Rattle puts it:-

You never eyeball a horn player. You just don’t. They’re stuntmen. You don’t eyeball stuntmen when they’re about to dice with death.”

Given the Knackered Hack’s quest for antidotes to hubris, perhaps mastery of the horn (if that is not a contradiction in terms) should be considered an essential qualification for public or corporate office? I’ve noticed that this website seems to attract a disproportionate number of horn players (at least two). Perhaps there’s a connection? You can purchase a CD by one of those readers below.

[By way of full disclosure, the Knackered Hack was placed first in the under 12s brass section of the Harrogate Festival in 1976, performing the second movement of Mozart's Fourth Horn Concerto K495, cough... ]

Photo credit: vtengr4047

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4715 Responseshorns+of+a+dilemma2008-12-01+16%3A44%3A03knackeredhack to “horns of a dilemma”

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1 Tim Beadle on Dec 2nd, 2008 said:

I started learning the French Horn when I was 13. I only lasted two weeks before switching to the drums, a far more enjoyable pastime (once I’d regained control of my facial muscles, which seemed to have a life of their own in the early days of concentrating really hard on four limbs doing different things at different times).

Perhaps I just don’t like stuff that’s too difficult to master…
2 knackeredhack on Dec 2nd, 2008 said:

Tim,

I think some drummers never fully regain control of their facial muscles. So well done!

Tim
3 Raimundo Díaz on Dec 7th, 2008 said:

Hi Tim,

I just noticed your posts about the horn. Great stuff! Thanks for the Ars Aureum plug. I am now in the last stages of my new album which I believe is a giant step above performance-wise and sonically, I am trying to get a decent label for it, it is just too much work to do it all by myself. Listen to most of the pieces here: http://www.myspace.com/titoskyx3

I can send you the files as a christmas gift , let me know.

PS. That search optimizacion post about Magoo, contrabassoons et al was pretty funny.

Cheers and keep it up!!
4 Ken on Dec 5th, 2009 said:

I must admit, this seems like a match made in heaven. Whoever invented the thing must have been a sadist, knowing full well its impossible to play and would torment masochists.

You have an eye for the interesting Tim.

Thanks,

Ken
5 Lyn Fouty on Aug 13th, 2010 said:

howdy, nice article.