The Hapless History of the Horn Trio
Probably most composers have experienced major setbacks and disappointments in their careers, and I am certainly no exception. Recovering from them may sometimes take many years and much struggle.
In the mid-1990s, I was already a highly experienced composer and had produced a wide variety of compositions, but as a kind of afterthought I went back to school to get my master’s degree in composition. While there, I completed my Horn Trio in 1994. (A horn trio does not use three horns, as one might expect, but is a chamber work for horn, violin, and piano.) Although this piece has a lyricism reminiscent of Brahms, it is also harmonically complex and adventurous. Below is an excerpt from the first of its three movements, showing the end of the development through the first five bars of the recapitulation.
The development ends in a long crescendo, climaxing at bar 131. The melodic lines are agitated, chromatic, and contorted with emotion, but one can discern at bar 131 a G7 harmony, exotic and unusual within the A minor tonality of the work but actually carrying weak dominant function within that overall key. A more straightforward dominant (E9) harmony follows at bar 132, leading to the return of the tonic (and the recapitulation) three bars later.
Shortly after finishing the work, I had the good fortune to review the score with a well-known composer, the late David Maslanka. Maslanka was highly enthusiastic about the piece and strongly encouraged me to get it performed by qualified musicians. He even put me in touch with a high-level horn player, whom I shall not identify here. The horn player examined the score, but finding it too difficult to imagine the complex harmonies in his head, he said he would need to hear a good recording of it before he could consider undertaking it. Of course, a good recording requires qualified performers, and I had contacted him precisely because I had been unable to obtain them. Because of this catch-22, it appeared that the Horn Trio could never receive a proper performance. As a last resort, I created a MIDI realization of the work, but my Romantic style has never worked well with MIDI, and the results were unsatisfactory both to me and to the horn player.
The horn player was not kind in his final letter. I completed my degree the following year, but because of this and several other setbacks around that time, I sank into depression and ceased to compose for many years.
By early 2016, however, I was beginning to establish new contacts with performers who were well qualified to play my works. That spring, I recorded another of my works with vioinist Cari Sue Jackson, an exceptionally fine player who I believed would be able to render the violin part very beautifully. The first good performance of the composition, however, used two musicians whom I had met through the Paradise Valley Chamber Music Collective, violinist Charles Liu and Martha Sharpe on the horn. I created a new modern Finale edition of the work, and after considerable rehearsal, we presented it at PVCMC’s summer concert on July 29, 2017 to an enthusiastic audience.
A couple of weeks later, I learned the sad news that David Maslanka, who had provided me such kind encouragement at the beginning of this quest, had passed away on August 7.
The work was recorded that September with Cari Sue Jackson on the violin, Martha Sharpe on the horn, and myself at the piano.