Baltimore County, MD smARTS, 16 May 2017

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From YouTube: French Horn - Get smARTer Spring 2017

Description

Get to know the French horn, from its beginnings as a call to hunters to modern orchestras.

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( ♪♪♪ ).

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Whether you re listening to your favorite movie soundtrack or the heroic calls from don juan or the epic solos from till eulenspiegel or the incredible horn writing of mahler,, the french horn is heard throughout music across our nation and land.

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My name is greg lauer.. I m the principal horn of the hunt valley, symphony, and I m here today to talk to you about this amazing instrument,, which I chose to play many years, ago.

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the origins of the french horn date back to it being used as a hunting, horn.

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So,, the original horn-- we see now we have valves, and we have lots of piping.

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The original horn was just a large circle with a bell on it.

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So,, the huntsmen would carry it around their shoulder, and they would be out hunting with the dogs and the horses,, and they would use it more to call them.

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...Without valves and without anything else. so, when the horn, eventually transitioned into orchestral music,.

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The players had to obviously cover a wider range of notes.

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Than just those few. so,, they would use their hand in a cupping method to change the pitch of the instrument to get more of a scale. Out.

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( major scale plays ).

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So, this technique, known as natural horn playing,, was used throughout orchestral works, and the players would change.

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In and out crooks to change the key of the instrument.

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that eventually turned into the invention of valves.

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And wanting to put a set of these crooks on the horn.

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so, in the front of the horn here,, we have one set of valves on the top that make this an f horn,, which many of you have probably heard..

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And then we have these three valves that go with that,, which made that scale that I just played on the natural horn. A little easier.

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( major scale plays ).

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This really changed a lot about horn. Playing.

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players were now able to cover more notes,, and then we started expanding the range a bit into the high register,.

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And players found that if they were playing a smaller horn, that would be easier. so,. On the back of this horn,, there are a small set of pipes here that are the b-flat horn.

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So, together,, the b-flat horn and the f horn make this.

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The modern double horn that we all play today.

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and the addition of those pipes added one extra valve,, which is right, here, the trigger., pushing that down flips this over to the smaller horn and allows us to go higher in the register.

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( plays higher notes, ).

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That takes us to the horn that we have today.

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some other fun things that we can do. horn players. Do a thing called stopped horn,, where we close our hand the whole way and get a really brassy feel.

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...Which is used in music for different types of timbre. so.

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Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk to you about this amazing instrument that I have the absolute pleasure of playing..