Sounding Free

My mother used her grocery allowance to buy my first horn. The transaction occurred in the canned goods aisle, with my junior high English teacher.  Mother also bought my first college horn, from my high school horn teacher.  When I was a senior at the conservatory, I turned to my mother for help to buy my first professional horn, a Paxman. My horn teacher Mr. Perrini arranged for the Wichita Band Instrument company to send a few Paxmans to the school for me to try, and I settled on a model 40L.  Thanks to that horn, and of course to Dave, I maintained a strong thread to my musical soul while the storms of early sobriety pummeled me during our first round of graduate studies in Michigan

Just prior to returning to Colorado, for another summer season of our orchestra job, I attended the Summit Brass Symposium.  The masterclasses and concerts impressed upon me the need for some changes, first to my embouchure and more importantly to my horn. Wichita Band let me trade in the horn I had purchased from them for a different Paxman, the 20M.  This was the brand’s most popular model designed by Richard Merewether, and it would be my instrument for over twenty years. One of my goals during a trip to London was to find the Paxman showroom. Its modest space surprised me, given the horn’s world-renowned reputation.

A trio of Russian hornists offered to buy my Paxman when I was in St. Petersburg. I had been invited to sit in with the Mozarteum orchestra for a concert, and my horn caused an immediate sensation for its high quality. Notably, the bell of the principal hornist’s horn had a hole worn through it, and several braces had been repaired with twine.

At the close of my second trip to Russia, an airport customs agent tried to impose an exit tariff on my horn, claiming at first that I had failed to claim it on entry and then accusing me of purchasing it there. He did not appreciate my pointing out that the bell branch read “Made in England.” When finally allowed to board my flight home, I slid the horn under the seat in front of me, thankful for the engineers who had figured out how to make a detachable bell on horns for travel ease.

I loved my Paxman horns, and I found in Ken Pope a wonderfully understanding colleague who not only loved Paxmans but also sold and repaired them. His shop in Jamaica Plain (outside of Boston) turned out to be only a few miles away from the mother house where my cousin Margaret lived. I don’t know which experience brought me closer to God, being surrounded by Ken’s inventory of Paxmans or being surrounded by the community of Pauline nuns.

Cancer’s Toll

Injuries from cancer surgeries and radiation limited my ability to hold my horn for long periods of time. My left side would forever be weak, no matter how much physical therapy, Pilates, or strength training regimens I followed.  My beloved Paxman felt increasingly heavy to my left arm. For a while, an inconspicuous brace attached at the leadpipe grounded the horn on my leg and provided some relief. But within an hour the disabling pain again radiated from my arm to between my shoulder blades. The problem, I realized, lay in the overall distribution of the horn’s weight.

I attended a regional horn conference with a mission to consult with Ken as well as other horn vendors about my problem. I lost track of all the horns I tried there.  Ken sent me three horns from his shop to try, including a beautiful new Paxman with rotors considerably lighter in weight. Its resonant sound and free-flowing airstream, hallmarks of the brand, nevertheless did not prevent the familiar pain from creeping into my left side. The other two horns Ken had sent felt too foreign to my face, hands, and especially my ears.

Too old to change everything again, perhaps I was now too injured to keep going. Perhaps the pain signaled an end to my outer musical voice. Tearfully, I called a friend to announce that my days as a hornist had ended.

“Good lord, Thundercat (our pet name for each other), enough with the drama! I’m coming over right now so you can try my Cantesanu horn.” Ally soon arrived, refusing to hear any of my foolishness about quitting. She listened as I played through the usual repertoire of horn excerpts on each instrument – four horns, including my own Paxman. Then she brought her own horn out of its case for me to try. Handing it to me, she told me to play through the excerpts again.

A stunning, effortlessly beautiful sound filled the room. I immediately felt familiar sensations of a Paxman horn’s free-flowing airstream and the resonant overtones. But I felt differences just as immediately, and I liked them. This horn required less effort to “spin” the sound into optimum resonances within the harmonic overtone. Extreme ranges of both volume and pitch remained consistent.  Felix Cantesanu, the horn maker, had played Paxmans for much of his career.  It seems he had managed to replicate that sound as he designed his own horn.  I was thrilled.

It dawned on me that, for the past hour, I had been playing Ally’s horn without feeling any pain. She noted that the horn’s weight distribution landed onto my right side. My injured left side now unburdened could simply support the fingers operating the valves. Instead of automatically cringing in anticipation of pain, I could draw in a full breath and propel the air through the instrument with an ease I hadn’t felt in years.

Settlement Money

My heart burst open with joy that an emerging voice borne of healing was now possible.  Felix and I spoke at length in the ensuing days about my particular needs, for he crafts one horn at a time in his workshop. He modified the height and length of the valve array, and he narrowed the angle of the bell branch wrap to accommodate my petite height. I had never paid so much money for a horn, nor waited for one to be custom designed for me. Truly, I felt like a princess.

The money for the new horn came out of a combination of money from the lawsuit against my sisters and money from selling my Paxman to a trusted colleague. It seemed only fitting to invest what Lee had shared so generously with me toward commemorating one of my mother’s more positive influences in my life. At the same time, it marked an end to her presence in the finality of severing all ties with our sisters.

They may have had scurried away with substantial loot, but I had laid claim to a much more renewable source of wealth in affirming the sonic power of my presence. All they could do was shout and grumble, much like the character of the devil depicted in an ancient morality play, Ordo Virtutum, by Saint Hildegard of Bingen.

My new horn arrived six months after I ordered it. I ran around the house yelling like a child excited at holiday before I was calm enough to carefully unpack the horn from its padded mailing box. I had already warmed up, and I eagerly fit my mouthpiece into my new Cantesanu horn, playing arpeggios through the entire four-octave range of the horn. Then, closing my eyes, I called forth the mournful melody of Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess.

Playing with a tender grace and nuance that had long lingered at the threshold of my imagination, what I had imagined became manifest.  Unceremoniously, here in the living room among the tattered packaging and the sleeping dogs, I welcomed home the child of my own self, inviting her to wander no more.

Conventional wisdom advises a break-in period of at least a month, usually two, for a new instrument. As it turned out for me that day, all courtship was overridden so that I could take the new horn for a spin at a recording session.  With each run-through of the opening movement of Mozart’s Symphony #25, I played increasingly clear and strong high A pitches above the treble staff.  Tami, sitting on the second horn part, giggled along with me in delight.

Within a few days, I handed over my beloved Paxman to its new steward. Like me, he experienced an instantaneous compatibility with his new instrument, and he quickly dispensed with his former horn.  Something so incredibly satisfying about timing here…