by Ab Koster

On November 5 this month, IHS honorary member Adriaan van Woudenberg will celebrate his 100th birthday. He was born on November 5, 1925, in Amsterdam.

As a volunteer, he began playing with the Concertgebouw Orchestra (now the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra), seated next to the German solo horn player Richard Sell, who was also his teacher at the Amsterdam Conservatory. Along with his horn studies and his position in the Concertgebouw Orchestra, he studied piano and completed his final piano examination in 1946.

Because he was German, Richard Sell left Amsterdam and the orchestra after the Second World War in 1945. This gave Adriaan van Woudenberg the opportunity to become principal horn with Jan Bos. He held this position until 1984, performing under conductors such as Willem Mengelberg, Bernard Haitink, Kirill Kondrashin, Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy, George Szell, Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter, Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein.

Throughout his life, Adriaan van Woudenberg played a horn made by Knopf. Most of the time during his career with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, he used a single B-flat horn. At that time, many horn players in Europe played only single B-flat horns—among them Dennis Brain, Alan Civil, Peter Damm, and almost all high horn players in major orchestras.

From 1956, he was a member of the Danzi Quintet, a woodwind quintet that achieved international acclaim. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote on March 27, 1969: “All [the] musicians are fabulous masters of their own instrument. Each instrument glows with its own unique color. In ensemble they radiate a perfection of pitch, intonation, dynamics, and intellectual understanding that is a joyous thing to hear.”

In addition to his performing career, Van Woudenberg taught at the Amsterdam Conservatory, and at the conservatories of Tilburg and Maastricht. Many of his students went on to positions in leading orchestras and became successful teachers themselves, including Hans Dullaert, Paul van Zelm, and Fergus McWilliam.

Van Woudenberg never played with any orchestra other than the Concertgebouw. On December 25, 1984, he performed his final concert with the orchestra. The program featured Mahler’s Symphony No. 2.

by Katy Carnaggio

The curtain rod gave out first. That felt right. Not symbolic, not poetic. Just one more thing failing to hold.

You hadn’t touched your music in four days. The recital loomed on the calendar, circled in red, like you meant it. And then the curtain gave out. And that’s what you chose to fix.

Drywall dust in your hair. A drill buzzing like a bee in your hands. And for the first time in days, you don’t feel like running. You feel sharp. Focused. You even learn how to locate support points using a stud finder and say, “Well, that’s not ideal,” with dignity.

And you nail it so quickly (or drilled it, really) that it surprises you, as if your brain was thrilled by the messy, shifting middle where your thoughts leap and your body learns and your fear doesn’t leave but you keep going…like it sees your originality, your resilience, your wild intelligence that re-routes on instinct. And it doesn’t want to miss a thing. So it stays.

When your brain detects the mismatch between what it expected and what happened, and when it sees the curtains crash down, too, it releases the precise amount of chemicals to boost alertness and help you focus. It focuses your attention and executive-control networks to figure out what went wrong and how to adjust.

And though it prefers a pattern—a reason, proof—it sees the tension in your shoulders, the ongoing mismatch in your expectation, and swaps perfection for direction. It says, “It’s okay. We’ll learn on the way.” It lowers the threshold for learning, so you can adapt faster, with less feedback.

When the situation stays unstable, but within reach, your brain stores what you learn in a flexible, generalized form so you can use it for different contexts later. Not just for curtains.

You learn faster and deeper, because when the ceiling falls down, your brain doesn’t freeze. It doesn’t flinch. It steps forward. It says, “I see you. Even now. Especially now.”

When mismatched expectations come with a horn, that step forward can sometimes feel like a threat. The stakes feel higher. It’s your music, after all. You’re alert, but your hands won’t stop shaking. You’re focused, but only on your mistakes. You’re adapting, but nothing feels stable enough to stand on. And sometimes, that very volatility, the one that primes your deepest learning, is the same thing that makes you set the horn down. Just for a day. Then a weekend. Then a week…until it’s been so long you forget how your own breath feels. Until you whisper, without meaning to, “I don’t know if I’m a musician anymore.”

Offered, like a secret, afraid that it won’t be held, something warm meets you instead. Steady. Familiar. A whisper you feel more than hear: “Hey. Still here. Not scared of the mess.”

Your brain sees you. Even now. Especially now. It doesn’t flinch when your hands shake. It doesn’t leave when your sound does. However long it takes, however far you wander, the moment you reach back, it reaches with you. You’re still learning, because when you doubt the most is when your brain sees the most. Not the effort. Not the habit. Not even the resilience. It sees your wanting.

You may believe your worth is in the practice room. But your brain has never located your value there. Not once. It watches the way you move toward music again and again, even when you can’t touch it. Your raw desire to belong activates every system it has.

You don’t have to prove you’re a musician. You’re the one it builds the music around…the phrases you shape from a falling leaf, the timing you map from subway doors, or the ache you channel from betrayal.

There’s even a name for it: Transfer of Knowledge. It’s when a skill, a truth, or knowledge learned in one context changes how you perform in another. It asks you to notice the different selves you already are and draw connections between them, so what you learn in one part of life can advance the others.

Your brain sees it all in one moment: the student, the musician, the person, the teacher, the bruised, the burning, the still-reaching. And it never recovers. (In the best way).

Transfer isn’t just what your brain does for you. It’s what you do with your whole life when you decide to let it count. You learn how to link things. You learn how to trust the links. You learn that finding support points for your curtain rods might work for your tricky phrases, too. And in that trust? You become unstoppable. The practice was never the proof. The love was. And it never left. So even now, especially now. You’re still here.

Next up, Part 3: The Mechanism of Connection (or “Transfer Is Hot and You’re Not Apologizing”)

by Inman Hebert

Greetings, members of the horn community! As chair of the International Horn Society Student Advisory Council, I am honored to write about a new project, the Horn Lesson Opportunity (HLO) Program. A program created by students for students, HLO will enable a few students from financially disadvantaged backgrounds who are under the age of eighteen to gain the opportunity for a year of lessons with members of the International Horn Society Advisory Council.

What sparked the creation of the HLO program? The story begins with the reformation of the International Horn Society Student Advisory Council in early 2024. While the SAC serves to add a younger perspective to IHS Advisory Council meetings, we found ourselves asking what else we could do to impact the horn community, specifically the students we represent. In addition to offering advice, we decided to develop our own project, with the generous support of the IHS Advisory Council.

When considering how to best make an impact, one issue repeatedly came up: the barriers that accompany the study of music. Personally, I grew up and received my early music education in the state of Alabama, far from the wealthiest state in the USA. The majority of schools here expect students to purchase their own horns. Even middle-class households may struggle to buy an entry level horn with payment plans (which frequently extend three or more years) to fit into household budgets. Another barrier exists with most band directors having limited time and resources to mentor young horn players individually; this further impedes learning one of the hardest instruments.

While university music schools and non-profit organizations offer programs to benefit their communities, the SAC felt that the International Horn Society, in making its own contribution, acknowledges that motivated musicians throughout the world who have potential frequently lack opportunities to develop their skills.

Because the horn has so many intricacies, lessons are crucial in aiding young players in their journeys; but many students who may have a desire for lessons cannot afford them. Having seen these struggles, the SAC developed the HLO program as a path for a few of these students.

Any student under the age of eighteen can apply. The application can be found under the programs tab of the International Horn Society website during November. I would ask our readers to reach out to a student who shows motivation and proficiency on the horn but lacks the resources to hire a music teacher to help them develop their skills.

This project serves the core mission of the International Horn Society to share knowledge and foster a greater appreciation of the horn, and it recognizes the financial barriers some starting out in our field might face. We can only move forward with the support of the IHS Advisory Council volunteering their time and expertise to give passionate students this chance. With time and funding, we eventually hope to turn HLO into a sustainable, international program serving horn students.

Chamber Music Corner—John Harbison’s Twilight Music

by Layne Anspach

This month’s Chamber Music Corner focuses on John Harbison’s Twilight Music for horn, violin, and piano (1985). John Harbison (b. 1938) is an American composer, conductor, and academic. He is an Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his output amounts to nearly 300 works, including operas, symphonies, a ballet, and chamber music. Harbison has served in residencies with the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in addition to several festivals. Among many awards, he has received a MacArthur Fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize. Harbison has also served as the President of the Copland Fund.

Twilight Music for horn, violin, and piano (1985) was commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, which hosted the premiere on March 22, 1985. The piece is a single movement work divided into four distinct sections. The first section, Con moto, flessibile, begins with violin and horn serving as counterbalances to each other. Harbison writes in his program notes, “The horn and the violin have little in common. Any merging must be tromp-l’ Oreille and they share material mainly to show how differently they project it.” As the dialogue progresses, the piano enters as support to the narrative. A momentary peak in the phrase leads to the first iteration which horn and violin perform together. The two part when the horn abandons the violin only to re-enter with a separate melody. The section ends with piano alone but moves directly into the second section, Presto, in which most of the technical skills needed to perform the work, with its fast tempo and quick darting figures, is required. The horn and violin eventually come together again, made all the more striking by disparate passages leading to the merger. The section begins to break down when the texture becomes more sparse, with each performer playing on their own.

Antiphon, the third section is, as Harbison describes, “the crux—the origin of the piece’s intervallic character.” The violin and horn play rhythmically together for much of the section—in contrast to the two prior sections. The character shifts when the violin initiates a long chromatic line which separates the two until a sweeping jump reunites them. A descent into the horn’s low register and sparse violin and piano writing signals the end of the section with a grand pause preceding the finale, Adagio, cantabile. Here, both violin and horn again play separately with piano underpinning long passages. The two instruments do not play melodic content together for the entire section (making the contrast in the third section more meaningful). Upper range in the violin and continued piano support brings the work to a calm finish.

The reference recording comes from a performance at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Music Masters series from February 18, 2010. The hornist is Robert Ward.

Ein Waldhorn Lustig

by Caiti Beth McKinney

Hi horn friends! This month I want to introduce you to a composer who not only writes incredible and engaging music for the horn, but whom I also feel very lucky to know personally from my time in graduate school—Kimberly Osberg (b. 1992). Originally from Wisconsin, Kimberly is currently based in Portland, Oregon. Osberg’s music is always witty and vibrant, and while frequently tongue-in-cheek, often contains powerful messages based on her unique perspective of looking at the natural world.

Kimberly is already what I would consider a prolific composer with over 75 published works, several of which feature the horn in prominent roles. Among my favorites is a lively trio for clarinet, bassoon, and horn entitled Freaks of Nature (2023). Osberg describes the piece as a “love letter to three endangered species,” the volcano snail (a fascinating little creature), the huntsman spider, and the giant golden-crowned flying fox. The first movement focuses on the snail and is infused with both the humor and the resilience of an animal whose shell is composed of iron and who inhabit hydrothermal vents. The second movement is more unsettling (or is that my arachnophobia?); the horn player alternates between a weaving chromatic figure and an offbeat metrical section while the clarinet performs a “spinning” solo. I particularly enjoy the third movement about a bat so large it is misidentified as a fox. All three performers take turns with a sixteenth-note triplet that elicits a sense of motion and momentum until the horn takes over with soaring lines evoking the flight of this megabat. Freaks of Nature provides an excellent balance of challenge and approachability and is also a guaranteed crowd pleaser.

Another of Osberg’s works with horn is the fiery work, scored for either brass quintet or brass ensemble, Almost Ready (2017, rev. 2021). Commissioned by the American Brass Quintet as part of their Aspen residency, the piece “unexpectedly accompanied the arrival of Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg at the intermission of a season concert at Aspen.” It’s a quick work, only a little over two minutes long, but it is an energetic piece which passes lines rapidly between all performers only to bring them together in a triumphant climax at the very end.

Kimberly has composed other pieces for horn, including another short work entitled 30. Optimistic, Mysterious for bass clarinet and horn that was part of her 2020 project Commissions from Quarantine, another brass quintet, near death (2023) that is scheduled to appear on Calypsus Brass Ensemble’s forthcoming album, and a duo for clarinet and horn she titled (UN)NATURAL (2023), based on strange and dramatic weather phenomenon. Osberg is currently accepting commissions; learn more by visiting her website.

by Jason Ayoub, United States Navy Band

I have a confession to make: I really like to play loud…deafeningly loud! I’ve liked to blast since I started playing the horn. I grew up listening to the Chicago, Berlin, and the Vienna symphony brass sections in addition to film scores that highlighted the powerful sound of the horn. My models were wonderful, but I focused only on one aspect of what they could do. As soon as I could, I began blaring in every register and playing as many ear-splitting excerpts as possible. My first professional job was in a brass quintet, and my goal was to never let the horn’s sound be covered. Soon after, I won the United States Navy Band horn audition, and we prided ourselves on being the loudest military band in Washington D.C. For nearly 16 years I sat Principal and made sure I was always heard over the rest of the section (and sometimes over the entire band). As you might have guessed, all those years of loud playing finally caught up to me as I started to age. I began to get an occasional sting in the upper lip, but I reassured myself it wasn’t anything significant, and I would ease up a little in the next show. Unfortunately, I allowed myself this habit of playing too much, feeling pain, backing off, then starting the process again. I knew something had to change last summer when the pain didn’t subside, my endurance diminished, and I couldn’t keep up. I made the most difficult decision of my life and gave up playing in the band and moved into the IT office. Because the horn was a huge part of my life, I wouldn’t let this setback end my career. I rested a lot, received help, and started implementing new warm-up techniques in my everyday playing. Nearly a year and half later, I now play with more ease, and I am almost to the level I was before I started to notice problems. The reflection process throughout my healing was just as important as the rest and new warm-up routines. Everything that happened was avoidable, especially my perspectives on how great horn playing should sound. I would like to share those with you.

Listening to orchestra and movie recordings where the horns had a distinct characteristic encouraged me to emulate what I heard. No matter what horn I played—from an L-series Conn 8D to a large bore Lawson and a Schmid double—I wanted to create a powerful blend of those big Hollywood and European sounds. I spent countless hours working to create my ideal color, particularly in the louder dynamics. You’re probably wondering why that’s a problem: aren’t we supposed to work on those aspects of our playing? We are, but I was never satisfied with the sound I made while trying to achieve my concept. I felt I had to prove that I could bury the horn section, the brass section, and the band. What started as a desire to produce a powerful sound turned into a source of pride. It was this pride that kept me from backing down…and that even created an unbalanced ensemble.

Such a mentality can produce problems within a section. Instead of working together for uniform tone and dynamics, colleagues may end up doing just the opposite. Because section members want to match the principal's dynamics, they play so loudly that a characteristic sound and good pitch are sacrificed, and overdone dynamics produce an imbalance that loses blend. Injury, resentfulness, and unmusical sections are a negative result of these approaches. In the end, players don’t work well together, and the result is individual sounds rather than a united section.

My desire for the Navy Band section to sound larger than life was also hindered by another aspect peculiar to military bands.  

Most orchestras have the luxury of performing in the same venue for the majority of their performance season. Those players learn how to play in their hall and produce the section sound they desire in that space. In the Navy Band, we perform in a different venue for almost every concert. On national tours, we encounter a variety of acoustics, from concert halls to high school gymnasiums. In most concert halls you can hear yourself, your section, and the rest of the ensemble. Unfortunately, gymnasium performances create situations where it is incredibly difficult to hear your section, the ensemble, and sometimes even yourself. Not knowing whether we are projecting or not creates the desire to play louder and louder. I would often feel like it was my job to make sure that the horns were heard. Instead of trusting my section mates to carry the load with me, I would play even louder to compensate for my inability to hear my colleagues. My friend Jose Sibaja used to say that you can’t save the band by playing louder to keep the ensemble together; it always causes more problems than it fixes. Yet I was trying to save the section instead of trusting them as the fine professionals they are. This becomes a vicious cycle which can lead to injury and section members inadvertently working against each other.  

During my recovery, my mindset has changed. Playing with a full, loud sound will always be part of my playing, but I choose my moments. Many years ago, my teacher, Dr. William Scharnberg, had a great comment concerning dynamics that always stuck with me. He said that playing loud is like the peak of a mountain and soft is like the valley below. Your peak only looks impressive if there is also a deep valley. If mezzo forte to fff is all the same, then you are really existing on a dynamic plateau without any peak. Every player and ensemble needs to have the ability to perform all the dynamics and not just soft and loud. Loud playing is only as impressive as the soft dynamics which help them to stand out. For too many years, I was caught on a dynamic plateau, and I needed to experience greater depth.  

My advice for all my students and future horn players would be to focus on creating a quality sound that will project in any performing space and always to work for a controlled and blended dynamic range. Horn players should not only be the muscle in the ensemble but also have the versatility to work as a woodwind player who creates lyrical melodies with delicate precision. Always treat the quiet sounds with as much care as you do the great climactic parts of a work.