Toward a pedagogy of extended techniques for horn derived from Vincent Persichetti's Parable for solo horn, opus 120
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Abstract
Extended techniques are unfamiliar, unusual, unconventional, nontraditional, novel effects and extra musical sounds occurring in contemporary music beginning in approximately 1970. Douglas Hill categorizes the following extended techniques for horn in his book, Extended Techniques for Horn: range, mutes, hand muting, tonguing/articulations, trills and tremolos, glissandos, half-valved effects, varied timbral potentials, vibrato, quarter-tones, vocalizations, air sounds, mouthpiece effects, miscellaneous, and combinations.
An investigation into the area of pedagogy of extended techniques for horn proved a strong need for research and pedagogy since the number of extended techniques in the horn literature far exceeds the amount of supportive pedagogical material. To address this deficiency, the author used Vincent Persichetti: Parable for Solo Horn, Op. 120, one of the most widely performed horn solos with extended techniques, as a vehicle for developing pedagogy of extended techniques for horn.
This dissertation identifies and categorizes each extended technique in the Parable, describes the physical production of each technique, and provides original etudes and transcriptions toward the development, mastery, and performance of each technique. The goals of this dissertation are:
- To increase awareness of extended techniques in 20th and 21st century horn literature
- To fill the lacuna in the literature between occurrences of extended techniques and parallel pedagogy
- To improve levels of teaching extended techniques
- To improve levels of performing extended techniques
As a result of this dissertation, there has come to be additional pedagogy of extended techniques in Vincent Persichetti's Parable for Solo Horn, Op. 120. This pedagogy can easily be transferred and adapted for use in many other contemporary works for horn, thereby contributing to filling a tremendous lacuna in the area of horn pedagogy.