Getting Attention
Question: You are in this to get attention aren’t you?
If not, then why did you choose to play the horn in the first place?
Whether a horn was handed to you by a music teacher or other third party and you agreed to learn to play it, or you chose it yourself, either way you did at some point accept, or decide to play the horn.
At some point you also accepted the implicit or explicit reality that you were going to be heard playing the horn and attention was going to be focussed on you precisely because you play the horn.
If you feel deep down inside, that you did, and still do want to be heard, that you do crave this attention, then you are well equipped to play the instrument.
And if you want to be heard by others, then you will have to go out and expose yourself onstage where there’s absolutely nowhere to hide!
However, if you are looking for a safe place and a safe way to play the horn, stay at home in your practice room and avoid the stage, because you have in fact chosen the wrong instrument.
1. So, how do you feel about all this? Write down your thoughts and reactions. Write down what you like about playing the horn, and what you don’t.
2. Now that you have the “whole world’s” attention focussed on you, what effect do you want to make on all those people? Make a short list.
3. If you only had 30 seconds’ playing time, with what single most lasting impression would you want to leave the audience?
Select one single item from that list in (2.) above. Try to be concrete and specific, for example:
What about trying to play note-perfectly? Would that not impress the listeners?
What about phrasing in an original, personal way, one that bears your unique signature? Would that not advertise your accomplished musicianship?
What about demonstrating rock-solid, accurate rhythm? Would that not prove your musical discipline and technical facility?
But what effect does impressing, advertising or proving stuff to an audience have on them? Does it leave any truly lasting impact on them? How would you react to another person doing that to you?
What about trying something altogether different? What about trying to seduce your listeners? What about seducing them with a ravishing, electrifying, thrilling horn sound? Wouldn’t you like an experience like that yourself as a listener?
But just hang on a minute! Is this legitimate? Is one permitted to discuss music making in terms of seduction and sensuality?
Is this vain? Perhaps.
Is this manipulative? Possibly.
Is this outrageous? Never.
Is this illicit? On the contrary!
It is a fundamental fact that most audience members have come to hear you precisely because they seek a musical and sonic experience which is at various times thrilling, moving, breathtaking or even disquieting. And they also seek and expect a sensual and emotional sonic experience—amazingly, even musicologists and the occasional critic too.
It is therefore both a great responsibility and a great privilege to be chosen to give audiences what they seek, to actually turn them on. What a challenge! What an aspiration, to electrify, to galvanise with mere sound! What a sensual bomb! How exciting!
I like to imagine a questionnaire handed out to an audience at the end of an orchestra concert in which they are asked to list their three favourite instruments from that concert.
I believe nearly everyone would include the horn, not necessarily always in first place, but always among the top three. The horn has a universal appeal and a nearly unmatched potential for emotionally expressive power. Hornists have opportunities to electrify audiences within seconds. We don’t even have to go so far as to build a powerful phrase—a single note can do it! By way of example, think only of the beginning of the last movement of Mahler’s 5th Symphony.
So go ahead. Have fun! Indulge yourself in making gorgeous sounds! Your audience will thank you for it. You will have their undivided attention … and isn’t that what you wanted in the first place?
Taking It Off
When I was a pubescent thirteen year-old, I started working with a new teacher. Our first lesson took place on an oppressively hot and humid summer day and in those days there was no air conditioning. He greeted me shirtless, having been hard at work in the garden just before, and I experienced excruciating discomfort about the situation. It soon got worse.
After only a few minutes’ work I was drenched with perspiration too and my teacher suggested that I also remove my shirt. Panic was my first reaction but heat stroke would have been next. His wonderfully reassuring wife came in with a cool drink for us both and towels. I slung one around my neck and nervously peeled off my sodden shirt. And then I experienced an “epiphany”.
I felt terribly unsure of myself but as I continued to play, I began to feel a strange sense of power; my sound seemed to become more intense; I found it easier to play. What in fact had happened is that I began to blow more freely.
This experience was much more than just a challenge to my pubescent shyness. It was pointing the way towards the necessary acceptance of one’s own physicality as a prerequisite to playing the instrument. To the extent that a hornist feels personally and physically inhibited, so will his playing be restricted and inhibited. And the effort involved will seem enormous.
Just as every singer must realise and accept that their body is their instrument is, so too must every hornist. We cannot hide from this. Getting physical is unavoidable.
Here are three words that are often used in connection with the human body. I have suggested a few qualities that are popularly associated with these words.
| Physical |  |
strength, power (masculine qualities?) |
| Sensual | |
sensuality, softness, vulnerability (feminine qualities?) |
| Visceral | |
to do with the guts, the bodily organs (instinctive or animalistic qualities?) |
Throughout my teaching and playing career I have observed the following:
1. Many hornists, particularly but in no way exclusively males, are fixated on the physical aspects of playing.
2. Fewer hornists, of either sex, seem as willing to admit to the sensual qualities.
3. Very few indeed like to relate to the visceral qualities.
I like to keep all three words, physical, sensual and visceral in my “horn-playing” vocabulary for the following reason: they are powerful facets of the phenomenal interplay between the language of music and our physical bodies. We cannot pick and choose only those aspects of music making and horn playing which seem appropriate, “tasteful”, or SAFE to us. We cannot tiptoe around the dirty puddles; we must wade right in, get splashed and smeared with mud, blood and crud. Here I sense a connection to Ernest Hemingway’s statement in 1.3.
“The Right Stuff” (Ambition, Drive, Desire)
If you plan to play the horn professionally, you should know the following:
• You are going to be on your own.
• You are going to encounter frustration and failure, self doubt and personal crisis.
• You are going to endure competitive stress as soon as you come into contact with other horn students, and this competition will continue through your studies, on through the audition experience and into the profession, most significantly in the freelance world. The pressure may never let up.
Therefore you must possess or develop the necessary attitude early on.
You will need something variously called drive or desire or ambition, and whatever you choose to call it, you’d better have a lot of it because this is “The Right Stuff”.
The horn must become the most important and fabulous thing in your life. It must become so important that nothing else can compete with the kick you get simply from making the horn sound. You must be, or you must become, a
“Fun-atic”
In this regard it might be constructive to ask one’s self occasional searching questions like:
• What am I trying to achieve and why?
• What am I trying to prove? To whom? And why?
• How much am I prepared to put up with to achieve this?
• Would I rather be a little fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond?
• Can I remember something from my childhood, which might be a reason for me wanting to be a hornist: a person, an incident, an experience?
• If not, why DID I choose the horn?
• Am I thinking about playing professionally simply because I seem to have the talent and I’m good enough, or because, irrespective of talent, I feel I absolutely have to play horn?
Honestly now, what do you desire or seek most?
• to play the horn?
• to be on stage?
• to be a member of an orchestra?
• to be a favoured student of a famous teacher?
• to take risks or to frighten yourself?
• to be a soloist?
• to be world famous?
• to be famous at home?
• to influence or affect others immediately around you?
• to influence or affect larger numbers of people such as an audience?
• to be in the spotlight, to be a star?
Try ranking the above 11 points in order of decreasing importance to you.
What does this exercise tell you about yourself?
Finally, ask yourself this:
If you don’t “make it”, how badly will it hurt?