Transposition is playing music in a key other than the one in which it is written.
Many French horn parts written in the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth Centuries, and a significant number of those written later, are for horns in keys other than F. In order to perform them on modern horns pitched in F, the player must transpose them.
One (too) often hears the argument that goes something like, "This is the Twenty-first Century. All horn parts should be written in F" (with which I have no sympathy whatsoever), or ditto, with the end changed to "all horn parts should be written concert pitch and we should all re-learn our fingerings" (a movement I might support). The truth is, though, that the parts in orchestras' libraries are for horns in other keys, and orchestras are not going to buy new parts.
The bottom line is, like it or not, transposition is a fact of life for any serious horn player. Inability to transpose will severely limit the repertoire a player can perform and will eliminate all chances of winning a professional audition. Whine all you want, but these are incontrovertible facts.
It is not a mystical skill that only God's chosen elect can master. In fact, it's about as far from this as it's possible to imagine. There are aspects of playing the French horn that are truly hard. Transposition is NOT one of them! This point cannot be emphasized sufficiently.
Tonal music, the overwhelming majority of what gets performed, consists of scales, arpeggios, and random notes. Most of the "random notes" turn out to be not so random and can be analyzed as being parts of scales or arpeggios if they are stared at hard enough.
Thus ability to play scales and arpeggios fluently in all major and minor keys essentially translates into ability to play most music--though the music may still require some practice! There is no single skill any player can acquire that will improve his playing as much as being able to play all scales and arpeggios.
The ability to play scales and arpeggios fluently in all major and minor keys is a tremendous aid to transposition. For example, being able to see an E minor scale or A major arpeggio and then play it automatically relieves many burdens of transposition.
Philip Farkas covers this topic in chapter 18 (pp. 70-75) of his famous work The Art of French Horn Playing (Evanston, Ill.: Summy-Birchard, 1956). Harry Berv covers it, and so, probably, does Gunther Schuller. I'll add citations to their works as soon as I dig them out!
This will describe how I transpose, which is essentially the way Sam Ramsay taught me when I was in high school. (I also have Sam to thank for my attitude towards scales and arpeggios--and believe me, I thank him every day!) I most emphatically do NOT claim that this is the only, much less best, way to transpose! If you have another method that works for you or your students, stick with it. Like the old hippie in the Bellamy Brothers' song, I ain't tryin' to change nobody. I'm just trying to help those who need to learn to transpose and who have no teacher to guide them or whose teachers don't teach transposition.
I imagine a piano keyboard in my head, a ninth from B-flat through the C a ninth above. The F representing the key in which our horns are pitched is in the middle. If the key the part is written in is below F (e.g., E-flat, D, B), it is a downward transposition. If the key is above F (e.g., G, A) it is an upward transposition.
Of course, life isn't simple or logical, and there are two "gotchas." The first is that horn in B-flat or C can be a transposition up or down. If the part just says B-flat or C, or if it says B-flat basso or C basso, it is a downward transposition. However, if it says B-flat alto or C alto, it is an upward transposition.
This is as good a point as any to bring up nomenclature. In German parts, B means B-flat and H means B (natural). Why this is so is beyond the scope of this paper.
There are three basic approaches to transposition:
There are at least two ways to do this. The first is the one I use; the second is one many respected teachers advocate and that some students find easier.
Notes on the modern horn pitched in F sound a perfect fifth below where they are written. (We'll leave aside old style bass clef notation for the moment.) So the key signature for playing "horn in X" parts on the F horn is that of the key a perfect fifth higher than X.
Examples:
The part says horn in E-flat:
The part says horn in A:
The another method that I don't like so well for my own use, but that some people find simpler and more logical, goes like this.
The modern horn is pitched in F. The key of F has one flat in the key signature, a B-flat. Thus the horn can be said to have one flat "built in." Because of this built-in flat, the new key signature will have one less flat in keys that have flats in their key signatures (because one is already part of the horn) and one more sharp in keys that have sharps in their key signatures (to "overcome" the flat the factory installs in all horns).
Take horn in E-flat as an example. E-flat concert has three flats in the key signature, B-flat, E-flat, and A-flat. However, since our horns have a built-in flat, the key signature for horn in E-flat has only two sharps, a B-flat and an E-flat. Another example is horn in A. A concert has three sharps, F-sharp, C-sharp, and G-sharp. Because of the horn's built-in flat, horn in A has a key signature of four sharps (F-sharp, C-sharp, G-sharp, and D-sharp). The extra sharp is needed to cancel out the horn's built-in flat.
First I figure out the new key signature using the first method given above. Again, if the other way works better for you, go with it! I use the first method only because it's easier for me--and probably because I tend to over-intellectualize everything.
For transpositions of a minor or major second (up or down), just imagine the transposed note. For horn in E-flat, if you see a G, you play an F; for horn in E if you see a D you play a C-sharp; for horn in G, you see an A and play a B.
For transpositions of intervals other than a second, I suggest using clefs. For example, for D horn read the music in soprano clef; for B-flat horn read the music in mezzo-soprano clef. Here's why I prefer this to intervals: With clefs the difference between horn in B-flat and horn in B (natural) or horn in D and horn in D-flat (admittedly rare) becomes one of changing the key signature. The Brahms 2nd symphony will become a breeze, which it certainly isn't if you transpose by interval. (Nothing, but NOTHING, will make the third & fourth horn parts in the third movement of the Brahms First easy, though!) For horn in A, read bass clef and play two octaves higher. For horn in B-flat alto, do B-flat basso and play an octave higher.
This brings us to horn in C. I was taught to read horn in C as if there were a C clef in the bottom space. You can also play horn in C by using the B-flat horn fingerings for those notes but with the horn actually in F; e.g., last movement of Brahms First is for horn in C, the notes E, D, C, G. If this were horn in F, on the B-flat horn you'd play them T2, T12, T0, T1. If you play the same but without the T, you'll get that solo in the right key. You can also do this one by interval, natch.
In sum, I do not know a completely satisfactory (to me) way of doing horn in C. If you come up with one, let me know. Whatever method you use, C alto is the same business, just an octave higher.
left out all the theory and digressions. If you have any questions or don't follow what I said, let me know.
Now "all" you have to do is practice them. Eventually you get to the point that you'll quasi-hallucinate when you transpose: The notes will magically appear to you as the ones you are supposed to play, not as the ones that are actually written on the page. I know this is hard to believe, but it's true. It also takes less time than you'd expect to get to this point.
I suggest picking one of the keys that come up all the time (e.g., not F-sharp or B or D-flat) and working on that till you're pretty comfortable. Then move to another key. You can use anything for practice: excerpts, Kopprasch, whatever. Again, knowing all your scales and arpeggios will only make this easier, not to mention otherwise improve your playing more than any other single thing.
If you want to write me about transposition, either to ask a question or to comment on this page, please use the link below. However, don't waste your time telling me either why transposition is a skill hornplayers no longer need to learn or that yours is the one and only way to learn transposition successfully. I'll cheerfully send all such emails to /dev/nul.
Draft: 20 Jun 2005
Revised: 25 Dec 2005