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

Ensemble Types

Ensemble Types Most of us spend our pre-college lives in the band setting. If we are lucky, our school has an orchestra program that tries to incorporate winds. In the band setting, we are surrounded by other woodwinds, brass, and percussion instruments. Bands are the leading forces in school ensembles through college, but then there are not many examples of bands outside of the school setting. They are many military bands that exist across the world, but professional bands outside of military connections are rarely found. Orchestra is the other most common type of ensemble you could be a part of. In this ensemble, the winds sections are greatly reduced and the string family is added in. The standard setting is for two violin sections, a viola section, cello section, and bass section. If you are put in orchestra for the first time when you enter college, do not be afraid to ask your teacher and your colleagues for tips and advice. It is a different setting from band and can req...
Post a Comment
Read more

Transposition

Transposition The purpose of this post is not to completely teach you how or why we transpose, but rather a few ideas on how to work on transposition. The short of it is, we transpose because of our tradition coming from the natural horn where you could just change a crook and be in the right key. The how gets a little more complicated, but with proper guidance and lots of patience is easily achievable. Further reading can be found at: http://hornmatters.com/?s=transposition I highly suggest that you find a teacher who knows what they are doing when you start learning transposition. It is a tricky matter that if learned incorrectly to being with can hurt things down the road. When you are first learning transpositions, give yourself some baby steps. First, identify the key you are transposing to and the interval over which you need to make the chance. Take Horn in D for example. This means you are transposing down a minor third. Check the key signature and see if there are an...
Post a Comment
Read more

Scales: Chromatic/Major/Minor

Scales: Chromatic/Major/Minor Scales are a great starting point for fundamentals on the horn. Most exercises are built around scales and arpeggios so learning them early is key. I suggest starting with a chromatic scale. Find a trusty fingering chart from one of your band books or online ( http://www.public.asu.edu/~jqerics/HornFingeringChart.pdf ) and find a note that is in the middle of your current range that is comfortable to play. From there, work your way chromatically down as low as you can continue to get notes to speak. When you reach your lowest possible note, turn around and work your way back to to where you started. Now do the same thing going up. Go as high as you can without forcing and come back down. This is a great starting point for getting to know your way around the full range of the horn and you should start memorizing your chromatic scale as soon as possible. Then we need to work on major scales. Full range of the horn makes it possible to play every sca...
Post a Comment
Read more