QcCowboy

LESSON 2 (continued)

The usual disposition of the brass section in an orchestra is as follows:

- four horns
- two or three trumpets
- three trombones (two tenors and a bass is the most often found grouping)
- one tuba

This exact disposition is variable, with some pieces requiring more or less of each instrument.

The four horns

We have already covered the horns in relation to the woodwind section in previous chapters of this course. We now need to examine how the horns can be used within the context of a brass grouping.

As has been said earlier, the horns do not have the carrying power of the other brass instruments. There are a number of ways of balancing out the brass section to take this into account. Not all of which work well.

The one way will will avoid is the use of different dynamics for the horns and the other brass. Notating the horns at forte while the rest of the brass grouping are mezzo-forte (or even softer) will not guarantee a successful blending nor balancing of the group.

NOTE:
I would go as far as to recommend that this sort of artificial blending of tonal weight be avoided at all costs regardless of the instrumental group being worked with.

The two most effective ways of dealing with this issue are placement in range, and doubling.

As has been examined in the woodwind section, most instruments have strong and weak ranges. With the brass this is a bit less marked than with the woodwinds, however. Generally speaking, the upper or lower extremities of a brass instrument’s range have the same carrying power. The timbral quality, however, will be markedly different.

By placing the horns in their most felicitous register (the octave either way up or down from middle C, concert) the musicians will be playing notes that are easier to produce.

The other option is to have the horns doubling each other. This is the safest manner to treat the instrument in extremely loud passages. For example, it is quite common to find 1st and 3rd horns in unison on one note, while 2nd and 4th are in unison on another. In the very loudest passages, there is nothing wrong with the four horns playing in unison.

The more movement your instrumental part has, the less tonal weight it will have in the texture. Thus a very busy horn part will not carry as well as one made of more static material. This principle applies to ALL instruments.

As mentionned earlier, it is often best to arrange harmonic material for the four horns in such a way as to complete the harmony as much as possible. With more complex harmony (compound chords, polyharmony, atonal material), the choice then becomes one of “which part of the harmony do I want to emphasize”. With more contemporary musical idioms there is no strict, hard and easy, rule on which notes to double.

Another way to deal with the horns is to complete the harmony in both trumpets and trombones/tuba, and then to place the horns right on the juncture of those two groups of instruments. In other words, some of the horns might double actual trumpet notes, while others might double trombone notes.

When the distance between trumpets and trombones becomes too great for this last solution, the horns can then “fill in” the harmony in between. I personally do not find this last method to lead to the most subtle nor successful orchestration effects. A combination of all of the above will most often lead to the most sucessful end result.

Remember the concept of “thickened melody”? Well, it can easily be applied to the four horn parts. If you find yourself with a “stately” melody in the alto register, perhaps played by the violas, it becomes a perfectly valid option to double this melody with the horns, themselves “harmonized” to follow the melody.

NOTE:
The melody need not be in the 1st horn part, either. The 1st horn could quite conceivably be playing harmony notes ABOVE the melody while the actual melodic fragment might be in the 2nd or 3rd horn.