Well Quite!

I started playing the Horn in September 1991, on an Anborg Como Single F. A few years later, though I'm not quite sure exactly when, I moved up to a Boosey and Hawkes 400 Compensating F/B-flat (yes, that Horn that everyone had). A few years after that I moved to a Holton 178 (full double F/B-flat), which remains my Horn to the day. Again, I'm not totally sure when I got it, but I reckon I must have been playing it for about eight years.

I'm tempted at this point to write about how Holtons are typically used by students and aren't really seen being played by pros, but really that's completely irrelevant. Plus it may well not be true - Holton, like Conn, are an American manufacturer and may be more widely used across the pond. Plus I'm not a pro, nor will ever be.

Anyway, over the eight years that I've been playing her, Henrietta and I have made some nice noises and played some memorable concerts. We've also cocked a few things up from time to time, though she swears it's my fault... I have however increasingly noticed differences in sound between Henrietta and all the Paxmans that are so dominant in London and certain deficiencies in Henrietta: particular passages that I have to work at overly hard which I really don't think I should have to. For example, the Mozart Rondo in E-flat KV 371, the phrase starting at the end of bars 24 and 141. Here, the slurring down to the G in each set is remarkably easy to miss. Also, Mozart, KV 495 (the "fourth" concerto), the runs up to top C (bars 52, 70, 185) are really difficult to make speak cleanly on Henrietta. Also, certain notes are just "bad", a high A, for example does not speak cleanly, and is very wide, where as the B-flat above it is really nice. The same is true of third-space C which is wide and difficult to centre, whilst the D above it is very nice and predictable. I suspect that inconsistencies such as these have caused a number of issues over the years!

So I hatched a plan. At the end of October 2007, the British Horn Society held their annual "Horn Day" and this year it was at the Royal Academy of Music. Now, I've been to these things before, though some time ago, and regional ones. The main national one always has a number of Horn manufacturers there and so I went along and grabbed some Horns and tried them out. And I didn't really like any of them. I'd forgotten to take any music with me so I picked them up, played a few notes and came to the conclusion that they were French Horns. That was about all I could conclude.

I was then really too busy to entertain any further ideas until the new year (2008). However, just before Christmas, I spent a couple of hours in Paxman's, playing some of their Horns. I took music with me, and eventually came to the conclusion that they were Horns and that I didn't like their gold brass 25. However, I was starting to realise that this testing and comparing Horns was much harder than I'd thought it would be. 2008 arrived and with it came a second hand Engelbert Schmid, in gold brass with three bells to choose between - a plain yellow, a plain gold, and a gold with garland. I have had this Horn for nearly four weeks now and I've rather grown to like it. I also went back to Paxman's and got a yellow brass 20M on approval which is about to go back.

Obviously, the following is totally my own opinion. People are physically built differently and have different strengths and weaknesses. Personally, I find the Paxman very uncomfortable to hold (I have very large hands and find the finger hook both several inches in the wrong place and very painful), I dislike how far away the spatulas are and I dislike the length of travel of the valve levers. I also find the resistance of the Horn inconsistent - adding length seems to affect the Horn more than with the Schmid. Further, whilst the high end is nice, the low end I find significantly less focussed than the Schmid. Now, once again, this is my own opinion. There are many professional Horn players playing on Paxman 20s and so you could easily wonder what the hell I'm moaning about. Also you actually have to take into account what is available "now". There are waiting lists for new Paxmans. People have suggested that I try a Paxman 25 and I did before Christmas, but there are none available now. Second hand Schmids are even rarer: what if I wait for a Paxman 25 to turn up and then find I don't like it as much as the Schmid but by that point the Schmid has gone? Such issues make making a perfect comparison very difficult.

The Schmid is very light. Staggeringly so. Even just comparing the bells from the Paxman and the Schmid (and the Schmid bell is taller - it joins on to the Horn further up the Horn, if you see what I mean), the Schmid bell is much lighter. This is, I believe, a consequence of the fact that the Schmid bell is entirely hand hammered, and only machine spun at the last minute. My understanding is that the Paxman bells are entirely machine spun. The Schmid uses thinner metal and is thus lighter. Now one of the best consequences of this is how much feedback you get from the Horn - you can really feel the Horn vibrate underneath you - the Schmid is vastly more alive than Henrietta my Holton and more alive than the Paxman too. The obvious analogy would be between a Formula One car where every single unnecessary gram has been removed and normal Sports car which has enough boot space to take a set of golf clubs. On the other hand, I've never driven either and, coming from a computing background, I'm rather aware of how bad most analogies really are.

A lot of people seem to rave about the valves on Schmids. They certainly have very little travel and are fast and light, but in my experience, if you oil daily almost any valve, it goes quickly. I've certainly kept the valves on Henrietta running faster than many of my friends who play Paxmans, and I'm sure that's completely down to regular oiling. No, for me, the most staggering difference is how alive the instrument feels. In comparison to Henrietta, the resistance of the instrument is both much less and more predictable. The bass end has much more tone and the notes are much better centred. Plus, Henrietta is in yellow brass and the Schmid is in gold brass. I find, as many do, that the gold brass gives a much warmer tone whilst playing quietly, and when pushed resists going razzy much much longer than the yellow brass. Plus, I can play about twice as loud as I can with Henrietta: almost to the point where I can hurt my right ear.

So I've also learnt some things about testing Horns. Firstly, your opinion on day one is almost worthless. You're probably used to playing in a certain room with a certain acoustic. Going into a shop and trying to make comparisons is not going to work out well; too much has changed. (On the other hand, the UK Schmid distributer came up and spent an hour with me in my usual practise room and thus we were able to discard many of the bell options quickly and accurately.) Secondly, and this really took me about a week to figure out, comparing Horns does not mean practising. When playing, or practising, I certainly just concentrate on the notes, the dots and everything else on the page, to the extent that I'm not actually really listening to myself particularly critically. I'll be very aware of splits and tuning and dynamics, but I'll be less aware of really how the Horn is feeling or what it's doing under me. So I've found that playing things that I know really well, to the point of boredom, where you can stop thinking about the notes and think about the Horns instead is best. Also, if you're trying to test certain parts of the Horns, work in short phrases. For example, studies like Kopprash 13, Derek Bourgeois 4, or things like Cooke Rondo in B-flat, or Franz Strauss Nocturno work well when you pull them apart and just do single phrases on each Horn, for testing speed of response, centring of notes, high and low range, dynamic response etc etc. Just playing a few pieces over on each Horn really never gave me enough feedback - I'd get to the end of a piece and think "Hmm, that went okay, but there were bits that went better on the other Horn and bits that went better on this Horn". Useful.

I found recording myself revealing, though I have very little equipment and so it was limited to quieter passages. Nevertheless, it gave me a different point of view and allowed me to hear things in my playing that I don't normally hear at all. I also persuaded a friend to come and listen blind to me playing. The ease with which he could identify when I was playing Henrietta was quite startling, and he made me think about aspects of tone colour more than I would have otherwise, mainly as he decided he preferred the gold brass with garland bell - rather throwing a spanner in the works!

So in conclusion, it's been fun. Turning up at a rehearsal with 3 Horns and 5 bells is always a laugh and it's interesting how there is no Horn which is perfect: they're all a series of tradeoffs. It's also been very hard to be objective, to really concentrate on what the Horn is actually doing beneath me and to try to work out why I prefer one thing to another. I'm still not totally decided on which bell for the Schmid, though it's looking like the plain gold bell is the most flexible and versatile. Now I just need to rob a few banks, and come up with a name...