Here's an article from MUSO magazine on 'How to be a brass player' I have a sneaking suspicion I know who the horn player is!
'Subtlety' comes between 's**t' and 's*phillis' in the dictionary. Although scarcely Johnsonian in wit or lexicographical profundity, the observation serves well for an area of the music profession that still attracts to its ranks yoof offenders, sufferers from Tourette's Syndrome and downright nutters.
After years spent playing nothing more than rhythmic exercises from the first dozen pages of Arban's Grande méthode complète pour cornet, it's little wonder trumpeters turn to drink. Trombonists, however, cannot use Arban as an excuse for their legendary intake of alcohol, which seems to be more a matter of evolutionary mutation.
Those looking for fast-track career success should take a leaf out the book of one celebrated brass-playing wheeler-dealer, who christened his new symphonic brass ensemble with a title that sounded incredibly like that of a more established rival. A booking at the Proms and other plum gigs followed before anyone spotted the difference. Alternatively, become a specialist on some awful early music instrument and prove to gullible audiences that Bach's clarino trumpet parts were actually written for 18th century Leipzig's equivalent of Dizzy Gillespie.
An irate librarian at one august conservatoire was overheard demanding to know why a trumpet student had not returned the scores of Haydn's string quartets marked against his library ticket. 'I've never taken a ******* score out of here in my life' came the reply, delivered with pride and no little menace. It's clearly best not to know too much about music history or its analysis when your daily grind involves hours of musical navvying and a few minutes of rectum-clenching clarino playing.
'Stick it on your face and blow' remains the best advice to aspiring orchestral brass players. Sadly, the theory falls down if the lips fail to engage with the mouthpiece and is sorely tested after the consumption of a dozen pints of Old Peculiar.
Remember, Joshua's trumpeters had the necessary lungpower to demolish Jericho's walls and make it into the Old Testament. Biblical history is on the side of any brass player gifted with the ability to blast asunder everything in sight. Honourable mentions are guaranteed for those intent on reducing viola players' eardrums to jelly and causing permanent pain to the wind section.
According to the brass player's bible, God created trumpeters, trombonists, horn players and tuba players to inflict maximum suffering on conductors. Who can forget the great Covent Garden horn player who stopped Georg Solti in full flow, persuaded the maestro to leaf through the monumental score of Götterdämmerung until he reached 26 bars after letter AA in Act 1, just to tell the Screaming Skull that he liked that bit? Or the epic tale of a former LSO trumpeter who punched the bouncer in a German brothel, was arrested, put in the slammer and finally bailed to appear that evening before the orchestra's conductor in concert?
Alcohol and Beta-blockers can never quite take away the fear of splattering the opening of Mahler Five or duffing up the big horn solo in Beethoven Nine - so you may as well leave caution to the wind section and go out in a blaze of glory.
Written by 'Teatime von Stockhausen'
