LESSON ONE (continued):
RESONANCE
When you play at the piano you use the pedal to create an effect of resonance – notes that hold through as you continue playing. This effect can, and should, be recreated in some way in your orchestration.
I will take this opportunity to add an instrument to our orchestral palette: the Horn in F. We won’t go into technical detail of the instrument’s absolute range (and we will take the same approach with the other brass instruments) but will rather lay out an idealized tessitura wherein the horn is most effective in various contexts.
Brass instruments, like string instruments, have ranges that are not as clearly defined and “absolute” as those of woodwinds. The skill of a performer, as well as the quality of the instrument, will often define the extent a particular instrument can exceed its “normal” range. While we will only consider the written high C (two octaves above middle C) as the highest note for the horn in F, you will surely meet horn players capable of notes beyond this limit. However, as orchestral composers, your main preoccupation is not the rare exception to the rules but rather an overall sense of “ideal”. In this extreme register, the horn loses both tonal quality and precision of both attack and intonation. As a matter of fact, this applies to pretty much all the instruments of the orchestra. If you get into the habit of placing orchestral instruments regularly in their extreme registers, you risk having more trouble with rehearsals/performances and a greater number of unpleasant extra-musical sounds. The recommendation is to keep extremes for those very special moments of climax.
Back to the horn. Here we have a general idea of three different ranges for the Horn in F:
The first example indicates the written (and sounding) full range of the horn in F. Lower than the lowest note here written creates serious intonation and attack problems. The lowest octave is absolutely playable but is not commonly used for the simple reason that there are other instruments more suitable to that register. If you require notes from this lowest octave remember that they cannot be attacked with any precision if the music is extremely active, or if they are approached by wide skips.
What we will refer to here as the “normal” range is shown in the second example. I have further added a “most useful” range which is what will preoccupy us for the first few weeks of these lessons and exercises.
I want you to learn one most important lesson here: the horn is an alto instrument. Meaning that it should NOT consistantly be above the main group of your orchestral ensemble. Its role is principally one of intermediate harmonic support when it is not a solo melodic instrument.
The "most useful range" in the image above is "written notes", meaning, those notes actually sound a perfect 5th lower. DO take that into consideration. The single most common error of young orchestrators is to write the horn part much too high. Assuming you are working in concert pitch (ie: in C), then your horns should only in extremely rare cases go higher than the C in the 3rd space of the treble clef. Once transposed, this means the G just above the staff. The easiest habit to get into is that just visually, looking at a transposed horn part, very little should go above the staff, you should only find ledger lines in very extreme cases. The notes are not impossible, they can and should be used to good effect, but they are not what we are concerned with here. On the other hand, it is VERY normal for a horn part to have notes beneath the treble clef staff. If 50% of the horn's material is written "in the staff", then 49% is written "below the staff", and only 1% will make it "above the staff". If you look at your horn part and it looks like a flute part... toss it.
Here we will also mention a tradition of horn playing: the concept of the high and low horns. Traditionally, the first horn has been the one specializing in the higher notes, while the second desk player specialized in the lower end of the range. With the addition of third and fourth horns for a larger orchestra, this same range preference continues and we have the third player as the “high” horn and the fourth as the “low” horn.
The reason we are talking about the horn at this point sends us back to the opening paragraph of this part of the lesson: resonance. The horn serves a very useful purpose (other than adding a new tonal colour to the woodwind section): it is a solid backbone on which to orchestrate with resonance.