Fortissimo!
Wendell talked about amplitude.
Three years ago, Wendell, my previous horn teacher, tried to teach me how to think about playing fortissimo. He asked me what makes one sound louder than another. “The amplitude of the wave,” I said.
“Exactly,” Wendell replied. When you play the horn, the volume relates directly to how far the buzzing parts of your lips move back and forth. I got this concept in my head, but my intellectual understanding failed to translate to my kinesthetic sense (my chest, tongue, air, lips) of how to play the horn. Without realizing it, I was holding onto the notion that, to play extremely loud, I would have to push hard to move an extreme amount of air through the horn.
Hazel can play fearsomely loud.
Hazel, my current teacher, is the horn professor at the University of New Hampshire. Without apparent effort, she can put mouthpiece to lips and produce a wonderful, clear tone that is loud enough to rouse the dead. My fortissimo is about the same as her mezzo forte. She has regularly pushed me to expand my dynamic range, especially on the loud end. I was still trying to push an extreme amount of air through the horn. Often, paradoxically, I would push so hard that back pressure from the horn would completely shut down the sound. “You’re working too hard,” Hazel said. “I can see your whole upper body shaking with the effort.”
Jesse invited me to play Kopprasch № 1 in front of the class.
Jesse is associate artistic director of the Kendall Betts Horn Camp. (Oh, and he is also second horn with the Cleveland Symphony.) At camp, Jesse was teaching us how to approach the first of the famous Kopprasch etudes. The deceptively simple-looking passage starts with a mid-range C major scale. It opens whisper soft and then gets as loud as you can play.
My problem with the etude was that, in a sense, I was playing louder than I could play. That is, my lips weren’t doing what was needed to hold back the force of air, and so the buzzing surface was breaking down. I lost any semblance of good tone.
It’s always about the buzz.
When playing horn, the entire point of blowing a stream of air past the almost closed lips is to make the lips buzz. Pushing an extreme volume of air into the horn makes no sound at all if it doesn’t make the lips buzz. The key challenge of playing very loudly is that the lips must be firmly anchored to resist the force and speed of air, but the buzzing surfaces must be sufficiently relaxed to be able to vibrate freely.
There are many variables that affect the amplitude of the lip buzz, including the lip tension; the size of the aperture opening; the shape of the vocal cavity; and the speed, direction, and volume of the flowing air. One must experiment to find the right combination to produce a great quality fortissimo.
Sometimes I do produce a super loud tone with good quality. When I can make this happen, the effortless feeling of it surprises me and reminds me that I am still playing inefficiently much of the time.
So, I continue to play my long tones and loud attacks and my Kopprasch. I try to get inside my buzz and understand how to control it with a minimum of muscular exertion. I’m getting there, slowly.
On my music stand
Speaking of playing loudly, here’s the opening of Kling #9, which I’m studying this week. Fortissimo! Fieramente!


