Nine months on…
It is nine months since my sabbatical finished and I have had the chance to test out the horns I made in a number of concerts and recordings. It has been a curious process, not least because my first impressions of the instruments were hampered by my lack of “match-fitness”, i.e. practice and professional work. When I had finished my horn building last September I felt that there were certain improvements to make to the “Strauss horn” to make it a really good instrument, but now that I have used it in at least a dozen concerts where it would really have shown if it was sub-standard, I feel that actually it works rather well. Cosmetically there are improvements that I should learn to correct in the manufacturing process, but the concerns I had about certain notes and tuning have fallen away as I learned to play the instrument better, and recovered my technique after my wisdom tooth surgery. So this horn has really proven its worth now, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, in period instrument performances of Schumann’s Konzertstück for Four Horns and Orchestra, in Schumann’s 3rd Symphony, and in various works by Tchaikowsky, including Romeo and Juliet Overture and the Rococo Variations.
The other horn I made, the natural horn modelled on the Sandbach played at Covent Garden in the 1820s, has shown itself to be less practical than I thought it would be last year. One thing I thought was clever about its design was the fact that it needs fewer crooks to achieve all the different keys. This is possible due to the permutations of four couplers that can be added to the master-crooks to give the required length for each key. The drawback, I discovered, is that the couplers can look rather similar to each other when hanging side by side on hooks suspended from a music-stand, awaiting a quick key change between arias or movements. In one concert in Bristol last year, I accidentally began an aria in the wrong key by putting together a combination for the key of E when it should have been Eb. I realised what was wrong after one note, and quickly rectified the matter, but I predicted that it could easily happen again and it worried me about future use of this system. This could be solved by making more crooks for the horn, but I feel reluctant to significantly alter the original maker’s concept in this way. In a few week’s time I will use the instrument again in a patch of work where I only need one key, so I won’t get it wrong then.
Psychologically, the break from performing has had a number of results. The most worrying of these is that I can’t seem to stop thinking about making the next instrument! There are several parts on order for my next experiments and I intend to start work on this very soon.
I have realised that it is not compulsory for me to be a musician to fulfil myself, but I still enjoy it and it seems a shame not to be one whilst I still have something to offer in that rôle. The break from playing last year was going to be compulsory for me for dental reasons, but I took extra time to learn about instrument making as this is something that I have been contemplating for years. I was very lucky to find a sympathetic horn builder in Keith Berg, to be able to work in the beautiful surroundings in British Columbia, and to receive funding from the Get a Life Fund to help make this happen. Without this experience I am sure I would still be dreaming about making a new horn, but now I have the skills to put it into action.
Posted by Andrew Clarke on June 16th, 2009.
