returning to music and the Horn
Allen H. Davis
Hello Michael
>Michael Hampton wrote:
>
> After a 16 year hiatus from horn playing ... pick it up again ...
> looking forward to this adventure...
> ... I was involved in a motorcycle accident and lost my
> front teeth on the upper jaw.
> http://www.fastlane.net/~mhampton
Please refer to the letter below concerning the great horn player,
Hermann Baumann, especially with regard to the matter of teeth.
I likewise returned to horn playing after a hiatus of time. I am really
glad I did. I love it. I really enjoy being on the horn list
(ho...@spock.nlu.edu). The hardest part of returning was the
psychological burden of relearning, etc. This is probably the greatest
stumbling block you will encounter. Just be persistent. Let me know if
I can be of specific help.
The following post was to the horn list on May 11, 1997 by Michael
Diamond Diamonds <xtr12...@xtra.co.nz>
>From the Symphony Australia 1987 concert year book: Titled - Hermann
Baumann -Horn of Plenty.
"You need good lungs to be a wind player. But perhaps even more
vital, you need
good teeth and (for the horn or the trumpet with their small cup
mouthpieces) you need
strong tight lips. It is surprising therefore when you meet Hermann
Baumann, one of the
greatest horn players in the world today,to observe that he has scar
tissue near his
lip, and that his speech, though very precise, is affected by a slight
impediment.
Baumann, in fact, was unable to play the horn at all during his first
semester at music
college because of a very bad car accident. His teeth and lips were
damaged. "I started
to play the cello instead," he says. "I was very bad.This tooth is
artificial," He
points out a superb dental job, on which his livelihood has rested. It
is one of those
cases where fate has made things difficult, but the very difficulties
helped to create
the virtuosity. At the time of the car accident Baumann had been playing
the horn for a
couple of years since he was 17. Moreover he had had to start the hard
way because his
first instrument- a dented old military horn on Bb belonging to his
father- was heartily
disliked by his first teacher who fixed the first and third valves down
with pieces of
wood so the instrument operated like a natural, valveless horn in F.
Baumann was
immediately obliged to work with the note at the top of the harmonic
series,as horn
players all had to do before valves were inventedat the start of the
Romantic era.
It was a hard school but along with the scar tissue it made for
strenght.
The point is that as a player Baumann can do everything and with the
horn that means
a very great deal. He has a marvellously individual sound of great
lyrical flexibility.
You get the full throated calls for which the instrument is renowned in
orchestral
music, with all the blare and edge you could imagine cutting through the
texture, the
color dark and strident and imposing. Equally Baumann commands a fluid,
singing tone
rising with lightness and quick-footed ease to almost birdlike melodic
requirements.
This is truley thrilling playing with a vast range of volume and color
but also conveys
that sense of magical, arresting statement which makes the horn such a
wonderous
instrument- and recalls the instruments melodic role in the early 18th
centuary, long
before it was reduced to just one element in the romantic composers
paint box.
Hornplayers, by and large, are orchestral players and that was of
course how
Baumann started. At 22, after limited experience playing Haydn and
Mozart with the Lower
Saxony Symphony Orchestra, he got the job as principal horn with the
opera orchestra in
Dortmund. Horns in the opera are often fearsomely exposed. In Fedelio,
for instance,the
chief horn player must be capable of terrific acrobatics. Cracked notes
(Kieskers in
German)are as unwelcome as mistakes from the singers. It is not as
difficult as being a
soloist, Baumann says,because you dont have to keep it up all the
time.But he certainly
had a long way to go."I was very well developed musically. I had alreay
been a choir
conductor for some time and had a lot of experience. Now when I have
students,at 18 they
can play all right- but they don`t know much about making music. But if
todays standards
had applied I wouldn`t have got the Dortmund job."
Baumanns grandfathers had both been church musicians in north Germany,
in the country
near Hamburg. "Iam a North German," Baumann says, with a smile and a
twinkle in his eye.
He`s from Vier Landen by the Elbe; "I like the landscapevery much," His
mother was a
pianist, though she stopped any professional ambitions when she started
a family. His
father was a doctor. He was born in 1943 and started the piano at 7
taught by his
grandfather. He sang in the church choir, Becoming very competent from
the age of 10.
Later he got keen on jazz drumming- After World War 2. There was not
much classical
music around, just a few old records at home of the Busch Quartet,
Schlusnus and Karl
Erb. It was only when he was 17 that he first became aware of the horn,
being struck by
the sound in the Eroica at a concert for the first time. His initial
teacher was a
postman (appropriately enough since the horn is the German post office
symbol).
He had wanted to become a conductor. But he fell totally in love with
the sound of his
new instrument and showed huge promise at it, developing very fast. With
his mother he
used to play through Schubert and Beethoven songs on the horn and then
turned to the
easier concertos, the first and third Mozarts and the Beethoven Sonata.
"Having been a
singer already, when I picked up the horn I tended to play in a singing
style with a
little vibrato and made music and that was what the Dortmund people
liked,"
Baumann did not have a good insturment but he had a natural ease and
flair for
performance- on the stage as at home. "Then I developed. Everybody
learns his whole
life. In the first 10 years of my careerI developed a lot and then in
the second decadeI
grew also as a soloist enormously." In 1960, Baumann went to the
Sud-Deutscher Rundfunk
orchestra in Stuttgart (The South German Radio Orchestra) and stayed
there six years.
The really important development was that he got first prize in 1964 in
the Munich
international competition.
This was crucial. Baumann was 30, and success showed that
long-cherished ambitions
were within reach. He only enterd the competition at the last minute but
he was well
prepared for it, his small repertoire immaculately polished. Above all
he played
everything from memory. In Stuttgart he had been sitting around
satisfied at the head of
the horn section; he was not going to a teacher but was learning by
himself: "My
influences were less from brass players than from great singers or such
vituosos as
Oistrakh or Szeryng. I told myself:'You have got to do the same things
on the horn that
they do'."
For Munich he played the Weber Concertino "Which is one of the most
difficult pieces,
both to play and to turn into a musical success. The Polacca of the
third movement is
not easy. You need a lot of endurance. You don`t get much time to take a
breath. But
it`s great fun for the audience and nowdays I play it often- Better too
than I did it 20
years ago. On my new recording with Masur and Gewandhaus orchestra, I do
that Polacca
louder and a bit faster than on my old LP with the Vienna Symphony in
1970."
Playing from memory was very unusual."In Munich I was the only wind
player who did
everything from memory," Baumann says. "I was lucky to find memorising
easy but also my
choir conducting and singing had prepared me for that.I prefer to play
without music
when I like a piece." He also prefers playing in public to making
recordings."I think
every musician does."
The Munich win meant that solo opportunities were suddenly available.
On the whole
playing solo horn at that time was a bonus for the resident principal
horn player. Why
bring in Baumann? But now he was wanted. And despite the
responsibilities of a wife and
three children he decided to go it alone. In 1967 he abandoned his
orchestral career-one
of the very first to take the risk (At that time Barry Tuckwell was
still an orchestral
member). "There was no soloist around and yet there was so much
repertoire for the horn
as a solo instrument. I knew that I had to break from the orchestra to
be taken
seriuosly as a soloist. It was a risk. I think other players have failed
when they tried
it. Conductors warned me against it. But they tend to hold that the best
thing a horn
player can do is sit in an orchestra and play all the Beethoven, Brahms,
Mahler and
Bruckner. Whereas what I mostly do now is play Haydn and Mozart and
Richard Strauss and
Weber." He does not do much chamber music; only the Brahms horn trio and
the Mozart
quintette for horn and strings. In the summer he sometimes tours and
makes records with
Brendel and Holliger the oboist, or plays at festivals like Gidon
Kremer`s at
Locckenhaus. After Australia he will go to Argentina for the first time.
The concerto repertoire that he plays with the valve horn (A Paxman
designed by
Australian Merewether, or an Alexander) is only part of his work,
though. He has also
excelled in the specialised field of Corno da Cassia,played with a crook
or tuned by the
position of the hand inside the bell. An interest in boroque was one of
the reasons he
took the job in Stuttgart where he could play Bach with Munchinger. And
the great German
horn enthusiast and patron gave him an Alphorn, which offered a whole
new quality of
sound to work on. He had been told bt Benjamin Britten to use out of
tune harmonics when
playing the Serenade for tenor, horn and strings: the Alphorn opened up
the joys of
"correctness without the civilising touches". He now collects natural
horns and has over
a dozen. In 1973 he recorded the Mozart horn concertos on the natural
horn with Nikolaus
Harnoncousrt and the Concentus Musicus.
"When I started as a soloist I often played for Karl Richter and
alongside Maurice
Andre. At the time nobody played the handhorn, It wasn`t a question of
having specially
tough lips. It`s just the same as the valve horn. But I have specialised
in building the
kind of pressure needed for the high soprano parts and for baroque
music. You couldn`t
learn the right style for that in an orchestra, I think. His former
colleagues used to
play Bach and Telemann much as they played Beethoven and Strauss." I
decided to tackle
it in a completely different way, even with a different embouchure." He
plays corno da
caccia either with or without valves. The mouthpiece for the baroque
work has a
shallower cup, more like a trumpet mouthpiece, and he plays it
centrally, the embouchure
half on the upper lip and half on the lower lip, whereas for the
romantic repertoire he
will play two-thirds on the upper lip and one-third on the lower "Which
makes a warm,
round and fine sound".
He says he`s played almost all the Bach cantatas with hunting horn
parts. There are
recordings with Erato, Electrola and Telefunken. Oddly enough his
favourite composer is
Bruckner, who wrote no solo music for horn, with Schubert following
closely. His
favourite concertos are first the Webere, then the Richard Strauss, on
the grounds of
sheer difficulty. He`s glad Strauss wrote for the horn but not specially
keen on his
other music. After the Strauss 2nd concerto, the next hardest he says
-is by Othmar
Schoeck(born in 1886). The Mozart Fourth is also hard, perhaps not
getting the notes so
much-"But later, and Mozart is always like this, you realisr its much
harder musically
than it seems".
Baumann is the kind of horn player who commissions new work which
will become
repertoiremusic and for whom contemperary composers are glad to write.
He did the world
premier of Ligeti`s Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano, HOMAGE TO BRAHMS,
in 1982,and
recorded it for Wergo."I did 30 performances. Ligeti, good composer, you
know," Other
contemporary pieces are not by quite such high-quality names. "As
soloist," he says,"I
have to be responsible for the whole spread of music written for the
instrument. When
you play modern music some composers ask a bit too much, heh? You kill
sometimes the
beauty of the sound. You kill your lips. "They used to couple the Ligeti
with the Brahms
Horn Trio but ending with the Ligeti," The sound is not goodany more
after it, a range
of four octaves, and quadriple fortissimo, loud as possible. To get back
to playing
Mozart after that takes two days and two nights, to recapture a good
embrouchure and
beauty of tone. This I can`t face too often.
"I like to make modern music but there`s not much repertoire, so I
concentrate on the
18th and 19th and early 20th centuries." He tends to match the concerto
up with the
orchestra, only tackling the harder works when the orchestra is up to
it; partly because
for a difficult piece he demands two rehearsals,though he says Strauss
first horn
concerto is possible with one rehearsal only." I try to play less common
music, like
Schoeck. I`m doing that at StGallen. But promoters always think they`ll
get better
audiences with Strauss. For Australia I have chosen Hans Georg Pfluger`s
Horn Concerto
written for me in 1983. And I always couple it with Mozart before it."
Baumann teaches at the Folkwang High School in Essen where he has 15
pupils. He says
his practising is now very irregular because he is so busy. He clearly
never tires of
investigating hoe different pieces of Baroque music should best be
played. It`s always a
matter of opinion of course. "This is music. It is art. There`s not just
one way. In the
18th centuarythere was the Viennese style, the Parisian style and the
Venetian style of
articulation and performance- not to mention different pitch. My hand
horn playing has
had some influence on my valve horn performances. And I think a good
influence. We all
have learnt of course that Bach should not be played with the style of
late Verdi. I
don`t mean by that that Furwangler`s Bach is not interseting to us; I
dont play it that
way."
He does play with vibrato but not as the French brass players used to
di it, wobbling
around like elderly Slavonic sopranos. In the 18th Centuary, he says,
although
orchestral horn players in Vienna played straight, anybody who came in
contact with the
great French school employed vibrato. In Dresden that tradition ,he
says, lives on ,as
in Leningrad. "I play the same as when I sing. I have my personal
vibrato...Every
soloist has his special sound and color and its important to be
different and
recognisible." Perhaps the Weber concertino is the ideal piece. There
Baumann not only
plays notes but chords, humming and singing at the same time as he
vibrates his lips in
the mouthpiece for the cadenza. "Its an old technique," he says
matter-of-factly.
Baumann is still breaking new ground in the repertoire, reviving
mislaid or neglected
pieces. For Phillips and Masur and the Gwandhaus he is planning a
fascinating record of
French music for what we, after all. usually call the French Horn:
Gliere,
Dukas,Saint-Saens and Chabrier. He is very excited about it.
He doesnt play in Brittain much: "In Brittain they have so many good
players." He
doesn`t like Tchaikovsky. "I like Mahler," he suddenly volunteers, "But
not so often.
Fot me, it`s enough to listen to a Mahler symphony four times a year".
Regards
Malcolm Diamond
K C Moore
In article <33acf7e4....@news.fastlane.net>
mham...@fastlane.net "Michael Hampton" writes:
> [ ... ] I currently wear a partial with false teeth
> which are removable. Now I know that you are not supposed to be putting a
> lot of pressure on your teeth (one of those bad habits I had back then),
> but has anyone hear heard stories good, bad, or indifferent about playing
> the horn with false teeth? [ ... ]
I know of a professional player who had a plate for his upper two
front teeth before he took up the horn. He worked hard at a very
low-pressure embouchure.
--
Ken Moore
k...@hpsl.demon.co.uk
Helen Read
ada...@VoyagerOnline.net (Allen H. Davis) writes:
>
>Please refer to the letter below concerning the great horn player,
>Hermann Baumann, especially with regard to the matter of teeth.
>
>Hermann Baumann -Horn of Plenty.
<snip>
Thanks for posting this interesting article about Baumann. Does
anyone have any *recent* info about him though? Has he completely
recovered from his stroke?
--
Helen Read
http://www.emba.uvm.edu/~read/
Bill Gross
k...@hpsl.demon.co.uk (K C Moore) wrote:
>In article <33acf7e4....@news.fastlane.net>
> mham...@fastlane.net "Michael Hampton" writes:
>
deletia
>I know of a professional player who had a plate for his upper two
>front teeth before he took up the horn. He worked hard at a very
>low-pressure embouchure.
>
>--
>Ken Moore
>k...@hpsl.demon.co.uk
Phil Farkas has a photo in one of his books of him practicing with his
horn sitting on top of a dresser, he was playing open tones. No
hands, just lip against horn. Obviously if he tried too much pressure
the horn would just slide away.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Unfathomable in method Undaunted in Defeat Unbearable in Victory
------------------------------------------------------------------
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Rob van Albada
On Sat, 21 Jun 1997 18:06:46 GMT, bgr...@airmail.net (Bill Gross)
wrote:
>k...@hpsl.demon.co.uk (K C Moore) wrote:
>
>>In article <33acf7e4....@news.fastlane.net>
>> mham...@fastlane.net "Michael Hampton" writes:
>>
>
>>--
>>Ken Moore
>>k...@hpsl.demon.co.uk
>
>Phil Farkas has a photo in one of his books of him practicing with his
>horn sitting on top of a dresser, he was playing open tones. No
>hands, just lip against horn. Obviously if he tried too much pressure
>the horn would just slide away.
>------------------------------------------------------------------
>Unfathomable in method Undaunted in Defeat Unbearable in Victory
Ya'akow Mishori (Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) does the same, with
the horn resting on a table.
Rob.
DeLiRiOuS
The Russian Jazz-horn player Arkady Schildkloper has a friend who plays
the horn WITHOUT Teeth.
Ifor James also has a couple of false teeth, I believe.
Amazing,
Bastiaan van Vliet