Instruments of the orchestra On program for elementary
and junior high school pupils, presented by the
Wisconsin School of the Air.
Your teacher is Professor Richard C.
Church, conductor of the University of
Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra.
[Piano music]
Hello boys and girls, this looks quite a bit different from
the woodwind instruments that we've been talking about for the
last few programs, doesn't it?
I wonder if any of you know what the name of it is, what is it?
The French Horn.
Now can you tell me what family of
instruments it belongs to?
A brass family.
Let's take a look at our big picture of an
orchestra conductor's score.
Here's our French Horn right at the top of the brasses
and just below the woodwind.
I think you all know by now that whenever we hear a sound
musical or otherwise, it's because something is vibrating.
When we were talking about the woodwind instruments, you found
out that several of them used reeds to make the vibration.
Remember that on the clarinet and the saxophone there were
single reeds and mouthpiece.
And that with the oboe and the bassoon, they
each had double reeds.
We learned that on the piccolo and the flute, the
vibrations were formed by air being blown across a hole.
Now in the case of the brass instruments, I wonder if
you remember what vibrates.
I talked to you about it on the first program and
you remember I showed you the cup shaped mouthpieces.
Now what is it that vibrates?
The players lips.
The brass family is the only family of instruments in which
the vibrations are formed by part of the human body.
You've been looking at this French Horn.
I want you to have a quick look at the other
instruments of the brass family.
Here is the trumpet and this is the trombone and this is a tuba.
I'm going to let you have another look at those
cup shaped mouthpieces.
Of course, the biggest one is for the tuba because
the tuba is the biggest instrument of the brass family.
You notice that they're all shaped like little cups.
Well now just what do you think the player of a brass
instrument does in order to make his lips vibrate?
Well you watch and I'm going to show you.
I'm going to blow just on this mouthpiece.
It'll sound sort of funny if I blow just on it.
I'm going to make my lips sort of buzz.
Well that doesn't sound very much like a
musical sound does it.
But if I put the mouthpiece into the horn while I'm blowing it,
it'll turn into a musical sound.
You couldn't see my lips vibrate because they were
down there inside of the mouthpiece, weren't they?
But I have a special device here today that's going to
let you see my lips vibrate.
Now this is just the rim of a cup shaped mouthpiece
about the size of this trombone mouthpiece here.
Now blow on that just the same as I blew on the
French horn mouthpiece.
Could you see where my lips vibrated?
Of course the vibrations were
very small and very fast.
So you probably couldn't see them very well.
But let's take a look at this picture
of someone who's playing on a brass instrument.
You see it's as if the mouthpiece were placed against
his mouth right like that.
And he's got his lips stretched tight across the mouthpiece and
when he blows, why the lips are going to vibrate just like that.
Would you like to learn to blow on the instrument
on a brass instrument?
Well you watch me and I'll show you how we do it.
Your upper and lower teeth should be held so that they're
even so you move your lower jaw forward if you need to.
You stretch your lips back tightly against
your teeth like this.
Now we're going to use two fingers and pretend that
these are like part of the rim of a mouthpiece like that.
And that'll give sort of a feeling as if we're actually
playing on an instrument of the brass family.
Now I'm going to do it for you first and then
I'll let you try it.
All right now you watch me and do just what I do.
First of all, moisten your lips.
Now I'll put your lower jaw forward and your teeth
stretched tightly back or your lips stretched tightly
back against your teeth.
Take these two fingers and when I put them on my
lips you do the same thing.
Press them there and then spread them and then blow the
way I do.
All right here we go.
Okay that's enough now.
Well if you couldn't do it why don't be discouraged and you
keep practicing that between now and our next program.
Of course your parents may wonder what's happened to
you but you can just tell them you're learning how
to blow on an instrument of the brass family.
Because if you can make a musical sound by doing that you
could or I mean if you could make a sound by doing that you
could make a musical sound on any of the brass instrument.
If you can't do it very well you might get someone who plays
one of the brass instruments to help you or perhaps
someone who plays the bugle.
I think you've all probably heard bugle calls played on
a bugle.
Did you ever notice that most of the bugles
don't have any keys on them?
How do you suppose the player gets all of those different
tones without any keys?
Well he does it by tightening or loosening the lips.
It works the same on all the brass instruments.
Let me see if I can illustrate that
for you on the French horn.
Is that interesting?
I think you've all learned something about reading
music. You know that we give a letter name, a letter
from the alphabet name to each of the musical tones.
And I want to show you what those tones that
I was just playing on the French horn without
using any keys look like.
I played G, C, E and G and I played a B flat up there.
Now if a player tightened his lips still further he could
get C, D, E up here like that.
And if the French horn player had practiced and developed
his lips sufficiently he'd be able to go way
up to high C like that.
He could go lower too.
He could play this low C way down here.
Now that's done just by tightening and loosening the
lips. There's a special name for all of these tones that
I'd like to have you learn.
They're called harmonics.
And together they form what is
known as the harmonic series.
All of these played just by tightening and
loosening the lips.
Isn't that interesting?
Isn't it just wonderful too?
You know this isn't something that a man invented.
He didn't think it up.
He discovered it.
It's just one of the things about nature,
about the world that we live in, that we learn about.
We have a very fine French horn player who is a guest today who
is going to play a piece for you on the French horn.
His name is Don Conutesen and he's going
to play a part of a piece, let him buy the composer Mozart.
[Music]
Thank you very much.
Don went to high school in Jamesville,
Wisconsin. And now he's the first horn player in
the University of Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra.
His accompanist was Paul Burgess.
I expect you all saw how Don held his lips on the
mouthpiece of the French horn.
And you probably also noticed that he was using
these fingers down here.
Well, now next time we're going to talk about what putting the
fingers down does to help change the tone.
But right now I'd like to have you take a nice
close look at this French horn.
You see it's quite small up here and this tubing goes around
and around and the air goes through there and finally comes
out down here at this end.
Now there's a special name for this part of the French
horn. It's called a bell.
I suppose that's because it looks
sort of like a church bell.
All of the woodwind and brass instruments use that word
bell to describe the part of the instrument that's farthest
away from the mouthpiece.
Now a few hundred years ago, not any of the woodwind
or brass instruments look the same as they do today.
The brass instruments originally were straight.
And you know if this horn were all uncurled and straightened
out and I put the bell down on the floor that it would
be so long that it would be twice as tall as I am.
Let me show you a chart that shows the development
of the brass instruments.
Here we see a brass instrument that's straight.
Well now these were very inconvenient to use,
particularly when men went hunting on horseback and so
they look for ways of making the more convenient to carry.
And here you see one curl and here are two curls like that
and finally three.
And you see that's beginning to look
like our modern French horn.
So they were able to carry the horns for signaling while
hunting on horseback like this and they were able to control
the horse with their right hand.
Well now what have we heard and seen today?
We've talked about how to produce a sound
on the instruments of the brass family and you learned
about the harmonic series.
That is all the tones that can be produced on the
horn just by tightening or loosening the lips.
Next time we're going to talk more about the brass family
and I'm going to show you what putting the fingers down
does to change the sound.
See you then.
Goodbye.
[Music]
This has been Instruments of the Orchestra, a television
program for elementary and junior high school pupils.
Your teacher was Professor Richard C.
Church, conductor of the University of
Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra.
This has been a Wisconsin School of the Air presentation.
[Music]