I recently decided that it was time for one of my high school students to finally learn an excerpt or two. I had never had a student advanced enough to even remotely consider this before, so I took to Facebook to ask for some thoughts on the subject from my Horn playing peeps. I had my own thoughts on the subject, as well as particular excerpts in mind, but I was curious about what kind of feedback I would receive. Some of the more standard answers I received were: "Start with Tchaik 5 to learn about phrasing," "The Finale from 'Firebird' since it's short," and, of course, "Freebird." I knew that my hands were slightly tied with this student because, while I wanted her to start learning some of our amazing orchestral rep, we haven't yet broached the subject of transposition. And somewhat unfortunately, at least in this case, there aren't very many major excerpts that are both written in F and attainable enough for a high schooler. Let's just say that Heldenleben isn't going to happen any time soon.
Then I had a friend make the suggestion that I should ask this student what she would like to play, and then choose alternate excerpts that were related, if necessary. If she wanted to play "Heldenleben" have her instead start with the tutti horn passage from "Don Juan." If she chose Brahms 1, transpose the part for her. The ultimate goal was to introduce her to some of the orchestral repertoire that she had not yet experienced on her own. As is the case for many high school instrumentalists, her school does not have an orchestra program and the area youth orchestra rehearsals conflict with marching band season. If she was going to learn anything from the orchestral repertoire, we were going to have to get creative. I come from the school of horn playing that does not use transposed parts, period. In my mind, if a composer wrote something for horn in D, I play the part written for horn in D. I was so stuck in this mentality that I had lost sight of the ultimate goal for my student. At her age, it doesn't matter so much if the part is transposed for horn in F, or into another key entirely, if it helps her learn some of the basics of the repertoire. Make it clear that they are not playing the original part in the original key. Our students are much smarter than we give them credit for. They will understand your reasons for making changes to the part and even appreciate the lengths that you are willing to go to help them start learning some of our "big" literature.
Giving them a transposed part is also a great way to introduce them to transposition. Transcribe all 3 parts to the Beethoven 3 Trio into horn in F. Give them a week or two to learn the parts as written in F, then give them the original parts written in E-flat. At this point I start talking about different ways that people can approach transposition (i.e. thinking in broad terms of the key signature vs. intervallic relationships between pitches vs. a combo of the two) and I hand them a C major scale in whole notes. Then we dive in head first and see if they can swim. Just like everything else we do on the horn, transposition just takes practice. It can be scary at first and very uncomfortable for beginners, but we all manage to get the hang of it in the end. Once they've managed to work their way through a few scale patterns in E-flat, go back to Beethoven 3, confiscate their F horn parts, and ask them to prepare the original parts in E-flat. They may freak out about it, or they could happily embrace the challenge. Either way, they'll learn it and they'll probably feel an incredible sense of accomplishment when they do. Many instruments use transposition in some capacity, but rarely does anyone use it to the extent that horn players do. It's one of our "special" skills that marks us uniquely as horn players and it's always fun to welcome a student to the "club" of transposition.
