On Jun 7, 2011, at 8:53 AM, Steve Freides wrote: > I disagree. The traditional French Horn is a single horn in F, to > which a Bb horn was added, accessible via the thumb key. Speaking as > an amateur whose newest horn is 30 years old, the traditional notation > works fine for me and is, IMHO, just fine because it's the way G-d and > Hans Pizka intended it to be. (Hans, you know I am joking, I hope.) > > Is this country-specific in any way, since you mention avoiding it in > an "international context?"
Yes, it is country specific. What Ricardo said is true, that in some areas of the world about most horns are configured to lie in Bb rather than F. What I don't know for sure is how widespread that is. Of the 12 subjects that recorded excerpts for me last fall (see Multimedia—>European Style Surveys on the IHs website) all 12 played everything on the Bb horn except the last two notes of the opening Till solo. These area ll principals of major European orchestras. Now I'm going to go back and look closely at their thumbs to see which way their horns are set ;-) If you compare the 2010 survey with the horns used in the 1965 survey, you'll see that for these players, their current double horns are in effect an F side added to the single Bb that almost all of the players used in '65. Dan ==================== Dan Phillips Associate Professor Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music University of Memphis www.prizmensemble.com _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
