Skip to main content

Orchestral Excerpts

Orchestral Excerpts
Orchestral excerpts are short selections of music taken from actual horn parts that have been chosen based on their difficulty and particular skills they can highlight from a person’s playing. These excerpts cover each of the four standard horn positions and can range from exposed solos to section playing and even sometimes to sections that are not heard over an orchestra. This is the music that most professional ensembles use for auditions. You will see these excerpts popping up your entire career from being a student and taking ensemble auditions through when you are trying to find employment.
As horn players, we are extremely luck to have an online resource that highlights the most common excerpts asked on auditions. Daren Robbins surveyed horn auditions from across the world and created a website that has the music for each of these excerpts, along with several recording for reference. This is an amazing place to start when learning excerpts. You can find it at https://www.hornsociety.org/hornexcerpts-org.
It is important to create a process for yourself when learning new excerpts. I always recommend starting with listening to recordings and getting the context for what type of playing will be required. Watch the music and get an idea of who is performing around you, then you can dive into learning the excerpts on the horn. Start by identifying possible issues such as transposition or weaknesses in your your playing that are highlighted within the excerpt.
Once you feel comfortable with the excerpt, start building into bigger picture ideas. See if the entire part is available on imslp.org so that you can learn how else the composer has incorporated the horn into that particular piece. Also, try finding a score so that you can analyze everything else going on around you at the time. You will often be surprised at what is happening that you will not catch just from listening.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Creating Your Brand : A Guide to Freelancing

Creating Your Brand : A Guide to Building a Successful Freelance Career By Tracy Bass University of Missouri - Kansas City Dissertation Points Credit Spring 2019 Introduction So you wanna freelance but... where do you even begin? The freelance life can be extremely rewarding, but requires more work than most people realize and is rarely an instant success. You need an attack plan and a promise of commitment to yourself. The obvious issues of location and socioeconomic level will be contributing factors to the outcome, but if you push yourself and be patient, you will be surprised at what is possible. The Essentials First and foremost, buy a planner. There are countless studies that have proven you remember more when you write things down. Plus, making lists and marking items off is more satisfying than deleting a note on your phone when you take a look back at what you have accomplished. Find a planner with plenty of space for you to jot things down q...
Post a Comment
Read more

Unaccompanied Works

Unaccompanied Works For my lecture recital at UMKC, I decided to do a survey of unaccompanied works for horn. Each work includes a brief bio of the composer and a video clip of the piece being performed. My focus was on the extended techniques required throughout each work. I wanted to highlight the different influences composers draw from in their lives and how they come out through their writing for unaccompanied horn. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qSeJJstnVYhYk7x6ks6vFE5x-oPju0HA8K2Ezyj7fqE
Post a Comment
Read more

Women Writing Chamber Music

Women Writing Chamber Music For my Chamber Music Literature class, I created a presentation on chamber music works that have been written by women that include the horn. I wanted to write about works by women because they are so seldom heard. My goal was to find a video performance of each work so that the audience would have an audio and visual representation of the piece. This project was more difficult than expected in some ways. While there are a few resources that highlight chamber music by female composers, they are typically outdated and include pieces that I was not able to find any information on the composer, let alone the piece itself. The project was enjoyable to work on and I hope to be adding more pieces in the future. The current list highlights selections from 1849 to 2018. If you have any suggestions on pieces to add, please comment below! https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1MMmnOz8YykQakaPRcjYDzzHg0uwH97ch5ClT6KJjK8U
Post a Comment
Read more