Hornfolks: Instead of my making up a lot of posts on these things-, I made 1 or 2 posts combining all of my personal opinions to just about everyone's questions that I felt that I could provide some feedback upon.
Hence the length of the posts hope you will forgive the length but this replaces perhaps 15 posts apiece. Pls note I have included many folks on each one along with snipt versions of their original material. This is all the SAME subject as far as I can tell and I checked it 3 times. My opinions appear above each question. I invite anyone who disputes anything said here by me to write to me privately and we can talk offline. If I am wrong, I will apologize, not a problem. I wish to continue to learn from all of you. thx. ******* This reminds me of a prank we attempted on our sub conductor in Mexico; this guy was a very modest type gentleman. well some guy brought in a porno mag with a picture of a 'very hairy' 'unspecified gender' 'person' 'rather rudely rendered' and pasted it into the center of the guy's score before a concert. All of us waited with bated breath for him to get to the page. Well, what happened is that the guy accidentally turned two pages of the score; one being our little donation, and totally missed the joke. Oh well. And then there was the conductor in Taiwan. He was a pretty bad tempered fellow for the most part and he had just finished having one of his tantrums at the orchestra and stormed off. This was near some Chinese outdoor restaurants. I went over to one and purchased a number of barbecued chicken heads (a big delicacy there) and dropped all 10 of them on his stand. I then returned quietly to the horn section; the guy comes back and the first thing he does without even looking at his stand is to whap his baton as hard as he could on the stand, sending chicken heads flying into the fiddle section. It's funny because he never even noticed this at all; but the whole orchestra cracked up-and then there was this stray dog who came into the group and began EATING the things..... from: Paul Kampen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >raised the conductor's music stand as high I've heard of that one but forgot it....good one too :} from: "Jonathan West" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >the tune from the Sorcerors Apprentice. Now THIS happens to us all the time simply because our clarinettists keep forgetting to swap instruments no matter what the piece, so we end up stopping at any rate. >wrong instrument Oh yeah? I'll have to pass that one on :} >The trumpet solo at the start of Mahler 5 can turn into the >Mendelssohn >Wedding March. Here are some conductor issues: a) I was told by a high school classmate, if you are going to make a mistake, make it loud so everyone thinks you are playing it correctly. b) I've been known to bring up my horn a bit early just to prepare myself, only to discover the rest of the section is all ready to follow me-it's a good thing I didn't come in early. c) Then you've got the trigger-happy conductor who is just waiting to bring SOMEONE in; just to show their flashy 'stick' technique. d) Then you've got the conductor who has all the brass doing triple F in some Bruckner piece; everyone is all 'into it', happily blowing the crap out of their chops and loving it; and suddenly the guy stops because the 3rd trumpet did something he didn't like-kind of like putting your car into park while going 75 on the freeway. e) Then you've got the really anal conductor who happens to love percussion (yes they have their little moments) and who will stop an entire 70 piece ensemble just to holler at the chimes player for missing one note; OR to recruit some hapless 2nd violinist to play the triangle because of course there are always doubled up percussion scores. f) And, there is the psycho conductor. This is where the 1st horn gets 'slapped around' for something the 2nd clarinet did 40 measures ago; or because someone else in the horn section kacked up a note. Or, for anything else he can think of because he happens to want to kick someone to the curb. In these cases, there is nothing one can do but to sit and take the abuse, say nothing at all (or ELSE) and sure enough, the guy will forget all about it in the next 5 minutes. >bring someone else in Hey, Hi Bill, it's really 'long time no see' since Santa Barbara. Hope all's well. I have never heard a story on the Grieg (did you wish to elaborate on this perhaps?), but I do know another one-do you know of Leonid Hambro, the former piano teacher at CalArts? Well, he is a very fine pianist, but has, what you would call (politely) a rather unusual personality. The guy is giving a solo recital, doing some piece like Gaspard de la Nuit or something else quite difficult; and of course piano recitals are almost always memorized. About 20 bars into it (great playing of course); he FORGETS what he's supposed to be playing and stops cold. He says a very bad word loudly at the audience; runs off stage, gets his music, comes back and finishes the piece. No one says anything, we all clap, but it was funny in its own strange way. But those Hoffnung cartoons are a crackup. I had great fun reading a lot of them during my college days. I only wish they'd make the horns look more like real horns rather than mellos or bastardized tubas. >from: "Bill Gross" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >I'm surprised no one yet has mentioned the performance say of the >Grieg Piano >Concerto as performed at the Hoffnung Festival back in >the late 1950s. Well, yeah, all of us eventually have fun doing something out of tune just to get the rest of the group's attention and hope the conductor doesn't notice much. The last one I did personally was the opening to Bruckner 9 1/2 step down (the conductor did laugh at this one as it was April Fool's Day) and, as I mentioned before, the entire Mozart 40 1/2 step UP (which I got away with too). Of course there was the Mahler 3 swap a few years back (we're doing it again heh heh next year). And there are the fun improvisations that horns can do on any Sousa March without repercussion-since the rest of the band is so loud that no one notices. Kids please don't try Mozart 40 up a 1/2 step at home..... >from: Margaret Dikel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >My personal favorite is to play the famous "hunting call" >entrance of the William Tell overture in F rather than E.... Hans, why in the world did you even let this fool into your orchestra? It sounds like perhaps HE needed a small hospital stay? Maybe even a psycho hospital; you know the ones with the leather straps and electroshock? It may do his HORN some good too.... >from: "Hans.Pizka" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >who started the piece in F instead of E-flat. >It is in minor, but this fellow played it in major Oh yes, we did a good one to the conductor of the Fresno Phil back in '88. First off, it was Halloween, so I got a lot of helium balloons in black and tied one to the back of each of the 8 horns' chairs. (of course I got permission for all this in advance). Then I gave each hornplayer a party hat and one of those little whistle things that unroll when you blow them. I instructed the 1st horn player to stand up when the conductor came on for the dress, and blow his whistle and all of us would follow. Sure enough, this is exactly what happened; 8 horns in unison w/party hats stood up and blew party whistles at the conductor-and, to our surprise, that (snobby Brit) conductor looked over at us and casually flipped a hand in our direction through the long green WIG he was wearing! At that time; he did not change expression. However a little thing I did during performance did attract his unwanted attention; I was on 4th Wagner tuba and 8th horn; sitting closely to a colleague with the same equipment; our tubens were balanced precariously on orange crates; and there is a very fast page turn and tuben-to-horn change on Bruckner 8. Well, in rehearsal and one of the performances this went 'just in time'. However, in the last performance, I threw down the tuba (a crappy one anyhow); grabbed my horn and was about to play but miscalculated the distance and bashed my 8d into my colleague's 8d pretty hard; loud enough to get the conductor's attention. HIS expression said volumes of promised pain. My colleague and I looked at one another real fast; 'apologized' silently to one another, determined no damage was done to either horn & we finished the concert. However, ANOTHER conductor (who was doing a guest solo with the orchestra) was seated in the audience. This guy was a good buddy of mine but extraordinarily fussy about everything. At dinner that night, he asked me "Rachel, WERE you planning on a cymbal solo tonight?" At least it could have been a lot worse from him-he has a real rep for tossing players simply for not being able to do their parts properly. >from: Dan Malloy Jr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >The look on the conductor's face was priceless!! I hope that oboist had tenure, because if I had done something like that in a pro orchestra, I'd probably be downstairs negotiating with the union steward. but heh heh I wish I'd thought of that first....:} >from: "Bill Gross" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Conductor immediately gave him the cue. Oboist slowly shook his >head and >pointed at the first flute. Isn't that funny how so many guys forget to zip up? (sorry to be so rude about this) Any guy want to provide this list with a good reason? How much in a hurry are we these days that we can't even get our clothes on straight? In my high school, we had a new choral/orchestra conductor who, upon our first day, gave us this long and boring lecture about 'protocol' and other things that no one cared about; because as we all know, all we are there to do is play; and it seems that conductors just love to run their mouths off. This guy's fly was down the whole hour-but no one dared to say a word. Finally one of the male brass players mercifully took him aside and told him after the rehearsal. We all gleefully watched as he frantically fumbled to get the thing zipped up with his back to us.... >from: Kathy Lowe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Your fly is down". NHR: Having worked over 15 yrs for a government contractor, I get a good laugh when someone catches them on a 'paperwork error' as they like to call it. At one point I used to help to write government contracts and requests for proposal. It is done THEIR way, including specs for software type; type of formatting, and typed error-free. One error; you will keep getting the stuff back from them until it is fixed to their satisfaction. There is a 0% margin on this. I am surprised that Kissinger was even given the paper to read without it being scanned by several undersecretaries and that he himself didn't bother to check it before reading. This is is standard procedure for all document handling in the government. Why do you think 'your' nice email to the President only gets a form letter answer? He doesn't read anything you say to him,not unless you make a threat, and then you will receive more 'special' attention than you'd like. I'll not go into more detail here; it's pointless. >from: "Bill Gross" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >NHR:"YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN NOW - YOU SOB." How in the world did you get that part? I had no idea that anything outside of the Rite of Spring or Dona Nobis Pacem had alternative 'versions' to the music. In church music, I still see absolutely illegible handwritten 'things' that had to be sight read the 1st time around, but I do make a point of calling it to the director's attention. I have even seen bass clef parts written by some hapless composition student and these have often included up to 10 ledger lines (and the part was in F...). I am sympathetic to your plight on Firebird. I'd blame the librarian to begin with and then ask the conductor if I could please see his/her score. Once you find out the right version or key, or whatever, it is easy to get that librarian to order you the correct part. It is a shame that your librarian didn't bother to check the part versions before making distribution-this should have been fixed by the 2nd rehearsal and the conductor should have been aware of all 'versions' out there. from: "Jeremy Cucco" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Berceuse & Finale: Firebird; wrong transposition Hi Bob! Long time no see as well....and to pull a fast one on Seiji; well I haven't ever heard that anyone was able to do that to HIM before. I was sort of hoping you guys would try Mozart 40 up a 1/2 step all the way through on some deaf conductor, but that was a good prank on the Rite 11/4 (and a real tricky one to boot). I kowtow to your legerdemain on planning - and I bet it only took you 5 minutes to get the idea. However, I wonder how that conducting student was able to even get into Tanglewood if he didn't know his scores? I thought they were fussy over there..... >from: Robert Ward <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >I thought Seiji was going leap through the roof of the little theater >when it happened - the student conductor just seemed slightly >confused... Sonata for Horn and Hardart???? Haven't heard that one in a while..... >Peter Schickele's best wishes Rachel Harvey _______________________________________________ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
