Last night we were at my daughter’s voice recital; it was for high school kids, voice and instruments both. And the teenage French hornist, an outstanding player who performed the Richard Strauss Horn Concerto in Eb Opus 11, sat there and kept taking her tubing out of her instrument during the pianist’s “turns”, in order to empty the spit out of it. At one point, during a particularly long rest, she took three separate chunks of tubing out and let the horn drain each time in a leisurely manner. She also at one point picked up her water bottle and took a drink of water.
Now, I understand about needing to empty the water out of the horn (and I also understand about brass players needing to keep their whistles wet), but is it customary to do this during the recital? My only experience with horn performances has been on PBS, where possibly they edit out the parts where the famous hornist dumps spit out onto the floor?
Was she possibly having trouble with condensation? The venue was air-conditioned. Or a malfunctioning or clogged horn?
Or is it just because she’s only 16 and hasn’t been told yet, “Don’t do that”?
Well, remembering back to high school when I played trumpet and French horn, I had to empty out the spit frequently, and yeah, you pretty much did it at any point you weren’t playing. Now, I never went so far during an actual concert to take out pieces of tubing, I just tipped the horn up to empty out the first bend, then turned it around a couple more times so that the spit in the next couple of bends worked its way back to the beginning, as it were. At the end of the night I’d take it apart to clean it better, though.
Gross? You betcha. But if it isn’t done, it sounds like the horn is underwater.
Did “instruments both” consist of her on the french horn and the pianist and no one else? Or was the stage filled with folks playing trumpet, sax, oboe, trombone, bassoon, flute, etc?
Brass instruments not emptied of their bleagh! will actually start making bubbling sounds, which detracts from the listening experience when you’re holding long notes or playing languid lyrical passages, as horns are often called upon to do. And unlike trumpets and several other brass instruments, french horns have no spit valves.
If she had a reasonable expectation of not being the center of attention or not immediately becoming the center of attention due to sharing the stage with a decent number of other musicians, her behavior seems reasonable as long as she wasn’t making a big production of it.
If the number of musicials onstage was small enough that all movements of all participants should be considered to be under observation as part of the performance, better not to.
Musicians in any group larger than small ensemble do tend to do things such as change reeds, dump spit, moisten new reeds in their mouth, replace strings, etc, as need be.
I played the trombone in middle school and I remember having mini-competitions to see who could dump the most spit out of their trombone during breaks. There could be a lot in there. Luckily, they always stuck us in the back of the ensemble.
While I could see it being distracting, what the french horn player was doing was probably pretty necessary.
Some have it worse than others, of course. On tuba, it wouldn’t make a difference if I had a bit of water in the loops close to the end, but I still had to drain the valve pipes every song or three (depending on conditions). Fortunately tubae have spit valves, so no disassembly required.
While it’s a necessity for brass instruments, as described above, it could also be something of a nervous tic for the girl in question. I know I’m guilty of checking my violin’s tuning rather more often than necessary when in stressful situations.
My french horn had a spit valve, I think it was called. You didn’t have to dump it unpside down, or remove tubing (which would affect whether you were sharp or flat or on pitch, if I recall correctly).
Agreed. I’ve never been to a brass recital that didn’t feature frequent spit valve emptyings, and frequent “breakings of the mood” by the featured player. On one hand, it sucks because it always strikes me as deeply insensitive to the audience, but on the other hand, the sound of a spittle-drenched horn is no one’s idea of beauty.
It was just her and the pianist. I’m aware that orchestral brass players empty out spit during a performance, but they’re mostly in the back and nobody really notices anyway, and I was surprised to see a lone soloist, out in front of God ‘n’ everybody, doing it, hence my question.
And she was taking out entire sections of tubing and upending the horn over the floor to her side, not merely discreetly opening a valve.
“Nervous tic” sounds good; she was incessantly fiddling with her mouthpiece, too.
In order to get the spit out of the instrument, she would need to rotate the tubing in order to get it all out. The instrument is a circle and hence simply dumping it upside down would not get it all out. This is normal, I’ve seen at least 10 french horn recitals and it is encouraged by their instructors that instead of simply standing during a long rest that the french hornist empty the moisture.
Sometimes I think the whole “prim and properness” of classical recitals goes too far. I know someone who has lost marks on university recitals for having a water bottle on stage. If the music is played better why not have a drink of water? Perhaps we should just blindfold the audience so no one gets distracted by any visuals.
I agree to an extent, and vehemently disagree at the same time. In other words, I can’t make my mind up
Losing marks for having a bottle of water is ridiculous. Having a marking scheme which gives such specific breakdowns is also ridiculous, because it guarantees that many deserving attributes (or lack of) will not be fully accounted for, or that the examiners will fudge the system in order to give an appropriate mark.
However, the whole structure of a formal performance, including applause and silence, can be used to create a frame around the actual music.
Since it was just her and the piano, discreetness may have been in order. Then again, she had to do some form of emptying (and the waterbottle isn’t all that weird for a long concert, if it’s just high school.)
BTW, a question for horn players: is it spit, condensation, or both that builds up?
It’s been many, many years since I’ve played, but I’m pretty sure it’s almost entirely spit. I can’t figure out how condensation would come into play, but I’ll admit I’m dense. Edit: Wait, I guess if it’s cold in the room, you might get condensation from the warm air, or a cold horn will do that at the very start.
To play a French horn, draw the corners of your mouth outwards to pull the lips tight against your teeth. Part the teeth slightly inside your mouth. Now imagine pressing your lips against a narrow mouthpiece, IIRC less than the size of a US Quarter in circumference. Blow hard through your barely-parted lips like you’re trying to make a sound like a trumpeting elephant/squeaking balloon. You’re gonna “spray it” a fair amount doing that.
And what the others said about what spit accumulation will do to your sound is very true. I never had to be up there alone, always in back behind other players and music stands, but we were emptying the horns whenever we had a chance. The sound of accumulated spit in the horn is really awful. There’s a distinct “on-off-on-off” to the tone, which if you’re unlucky (playing a too-uncommon piece nearly solo) will clearly sound like bubbling.
Most of the water that’s in a horn will be spit, and will collect in the lead pipe, the first curve on the horn. If there is a spit valve, it’ll be located there.
There is also condensation which happens farther along in the horn. The amount you get will be dependent on the conditions, but it’s more of a problem in a French Horn because of its long length. Condensation can especially be a problem after a long rest, since the horn will cool off.
Water in the valves is usually emptied by turning the horn with the valve pipes up and fluttering the valves (pouring the water into the valves themselves), and then tilting down as for normal playing, dumping it into the third valve. Often enough, the third valve ends up being the only one with any appreciable water anyway, since it’s on the bottom when resting. If it’s further along is usually emptied by ‘unwinding’ the horn, turning it in circles until the water runs out the bell.
As mentioned, any of those actions are not unusual during a performance.
I once saw a 20th-Century piece of music which included all sorts of instructions for the horn player, one of which was a dramatic removal of specific valve slides and emptying of spit. It was a semi-joke, sort of John Cage-inspired, where non-musical aspects of the performance are considered on the paper.
French horns commonly enough (albeit apparently not universally) lack spit valves. Mine was a Conn “Connstellation”, a very common mainstream model. If you didn’t pull the valve slides out, there was no means of dumping the gick.
