Master Class Transcripts

Transcript From Classes in
Gothenburg, Sweden

AUGUST 1983

Let’s start from the beginning. My father bought me my first trumpet when I was seven years old, and I liked it immediately. I played in a little band in this town we lived in South Dakota. That next summer I remember thinking to myself (I sat way at the end so I can’t make any trouble), and I remember thinking to myself, “This is fantastic.”

I can remember that. But at seven years old I thought, “This is fantastic.” I never had an idea I would end up playing for a living, and being lucky enough to be, you know, in an orchestra which plays all the marvelous music which symphony orchestras play. But I was that lucky, and when I think of all the things I have played since I was a young man… In fact, I’ll play some of them for you.

(Herseth takes his trumpet out of its case)

Adolph Herseth holding the trumpet he played most often in the CSO, a Vincent Bach large bore trumpet in the key of C built in 1955. It is one of a set of 4 of the same model owned by the orchestra and still used by several CSO trumpeters.

As you can see, we play a C trumpet most of the time in most of the orchestras in America, as a matter of fact. But we do use the B flat trumpets at times, and when we do we use German B flats: Monke, Bohm, and some of those. Some others like the Ganter also, and a few have old Heckels—things like that. But when I play on this, if I play something from my very young days, you’ll forgive me if it doesn’t all come back to me.

I remember the first march that I played. It was a march from the Bennett Band Book, which was very famous when I was a boy. And the name of the march was Military Escort, and I can still remember the introduction to it. I don’t know if I can play it beyond that.

(Herseth plays the introduction of Military Escort March by Harold Bennett-1923)

“Off we go!” (laughter)

That’s the first one I really can remember playing and I thought, “Wow, that’s a tough introduction on that piece. How am I ever going to learn that?” (laughs) I can remember the first solo piece that I ever played, and I’ll try to remember a little bit of that. It was a piece called… It was a polka called Eva Polka. I didn’t even know who Eva was. Somebody’s girlfriend, obviously, and I can remember a little bit of that.

(Herseth plays an excerpt from Eva Polka by Alexandre Petit-1898)

And I thought, “If music ever gets harder than that I don’t want to have to play it.” (laughter) And then, of course, I have to tell you this too. You know, I went to a very small high school, which is maybe what you call grammar school here, I don’t know, which are your grades 9 through 12. And we had, in this little town where I lived… There were 500 people. That’s all! A very small town! And in the high school there were less than 100 students, even though they brought them in from all around in the country on farms.

So we had a very small little band, and my wife, who is at the hotel now (She’s along with me on this trip)… My wife sat with me in the band, playing trumpet. And I said, “You know, she’s got such a nice trumpet. I’m going to marry her and get that away from her.” (laughter)

Actually at that time I had a (I’m trying to remember the instrument.) C. G. Conn. You’ve heard of the Conn Instruments, I suppose. It was a B flat trumpet; 22 B was the model. I don’t know if you remember that or not, but it was a beautiful trumpet. My father found it. He bought it as a used instrument in a music store in Minneapolis. We lived north of Minneapolis in the state of Minnesota. And it was gold-plated. It was old-style where it had engraving all the way up the bell and around here even. Beautiful pictures and flowers, and there was a picture of a lake here. It was a beautiful trumpet. I really liked it, but my wife had one of those King trumpets. It had a sterling silver bell. Do you remember those? It was sterling silver with a sterling mark right on the bell. Well, I thought, “That’s solid silver. That must be better than mine. I’d better get that.” I did get it, too. (laughter)

Adolph Herseth holding his Conn 22B Bb trumpet in 1937 after winning the first prize in the Music Teacher National Association solo competition.

I played it all the time when I was in the Navy, as a matter of fact. I served a band term in the Navy and I used that trumpet of hers most of the time because I had traded away my Conn trumpet for a cornet. I went into a band at a college after finishing high school, and the band director said to me, “Well, if you want to play any solos with my band you have to play them on a cornet, so I traded away this trumpet, which I loved so much for a cornet, which I hated—I never liked it. So when I went into the Navy I said, “Mama, I’m going to take your trumpet. Okay?” Okay! (chuckles)

And speaking of playing solos with bands, I used to play a lot of Herbert Clarke solos. Haven’t played any of them since that time really, but I can remember them a little bit. I think there’s one… I suppose some of you know a few of the Herbert Clarke solos. I don’t know. Michael probably plays them on the tuba. (laughter)

There was one that I played a number of times. I remember it was called The Bride of the Waves. I suppose that’s the name of a wife of a sailor. Right? Bride of the Waves? Uh, let’s see. Because I play it on a C trumpet I’m going to transpose it so it sounds in the right concert pitch, so…

(Herseth performs the introduction of The Bride of the Waves by Herbert L. Clarke-1899)

Adolph Herseth holding his Conn 12A cornet on which he soloed with the Luther College Concert Band. Playing a cornet (not trumpet) was mandatory for band members, and Herseth sold his Conn trumpet to afford a cornet.

That’s the first part. (applause) And… Oh let’s see if I can think of another solo of some sort. Oh yeah, there was another one by the same composer, Herbert Clarke, who for some of you who may not be acquainted with that name, he was a very, very famous cornet soloist.

He played with famous bands in America. I think he started as a young man. He played with Gilmore’s band, and of course his main reputation was made playing as a cornet soloist and first cornet player in the band with John Philip Sousa, the man who wrote so many marches. He had a very famous band in America for many years, and Clarke was his cornet soloist for at least 20 years with that band; and he wrote a number of cornet solos, most of which I played at one time or another. I can’t remember them all at this point.

There was another one called “The Debutante,” I think it was. Let’s see if I can remember a little of that.

(Herseth performs an excerpt from The Debutante by Herbert L. Clarke-1908)

The hardest part is transposing it. (laughs) I played a B flat on this one and it sounds like it used to sound in my ears when I played it on a B flat instrument in the key of C. Good practice for me! I need it.

The other thing we did a lot of before I became a symphonic trumpet player… I liked to play in dance bands. I really enjoyed that and I did a fair amount of that when I was in college, and also when I was in the Navy (I served in the Navy during the war) and of course, one of the heroes of all trumpet players we spoke of last night, Harry James, very famous trumpet (dance trumpet player in the United States). He just died a couple months ago (he died July 5, 1983), as a matter of fact. He was like everybody’s hero. You know? And I used to play some of those tunes, the stock arrangements that you would buy and play with your own little band. And one of his favorites… I used to like to play ballads especially, and this was one of them I liked playing.

(Herseth performs the melody of You Made Me Love You by James Monaco-1913) (applause)

That was fun! I don’t really know what Maestro Solti, my conductor, would say if he heard me doing that. [laughter] He’d say (imitates Solti), “My dear, my dear, where is the rhythm in your part? You should play like that!”

And then I became a symphony trumpet player. It’s not exciting in the same way that I found playing dance music. That I really, I found that very very exciting. It’s exciting in a much different way. We play an enormous amount of music. We have four and sometimes five concerts each week, and three or four rehearsals, and we make an awful lot… We make a great many recordings for disc, you know. And all our concerts are on tape for FM transmissions. I think our concerts are sent to over 300 FM stations around the world and sponsored by… I think Exxon, the big oil company is one of the sponsors for that, and some others too, but I think they are the main one.

So as you do here in this house, we live in front of the microphones in our house also, and we play with a big variety of guest conductors. In fact, when I first joined the Chicago Symphony we had guest conductors for the first two years that I was there. And then we had a permanent, as we call it, a permanent conductor for three years, Rafael Kubelik. He was young back then. He was a very good conductor, I thought. He stayed only for three years. And then we had a man named Fritz Reiner, who was a Hungarian conductor who had worked for many years in Europe and then went to the United States. We had him for ten years. He was a tough man but a very good conductor. But he was a hard man.

Adolph Herseth performing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1977.

And then we had a French conductor by the name of Jean Martinon for about six or seven years, and then we have had Sir Georg Solti since that time. And I must say I’ve enjoyed him very much. Sir Georg is not always the greatest conductor at everything that there is, but there is no such thing as a conductor who does everything the best. But our relationship with him on a personal basis is very good. He’s a perfect gentleman with us all the time that we work with him. He works very hard with us. I think one of the things we appreciate about him as a conductor is the fact that he knows how to rehearse. He doesn’t waste any time. He’s very efficient at rehearsing and we like that. He has to be because our rehearsal time is somewhat limited, playing four and sometimes five concerts a week. We can’t sometimes have as many rehearsals as we perhaps should have, you know.

But anyway, getting back to playing in the symphony, what do you play and that sort of a thing. One of the things that we have played so many times, and Norm asked me how many times have you played Pictures at an Exhibition. We’ve made five recordings of the darn thing. And the next time we do it we’re going to get it right. (laughter) I hope!

But it’s interesting when you talk about, you know, making recordings of so many pieces so many times, and playing with so many different conductors. You know, the opening part of that piece is what you call a “promenade”. And it’s just somebody walking into a museum, going into some place, and we’ll see what’s hanging on the walls, you know. And every conductor does that differently. I remember when we played it, as near as I can remember it when we made that recording with Kubelik. Of course we had played it at the concerts many times, and I think even on tour in New York Boston and wherever. And he always took it rather briskly, the opening promenade.

(Herseth performs the opening of the Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition, Mussorgsky/ Ravel-1874/1922)

Adolph Herseth led weekly trumpet sectionals for the Civic Orchestra of Chicago each season, and also taught each of the section members privately.

So he walks rather briskly when he walks into a museum. Then we did it with several other conductors. We did one with Maestro Giulini. Have you seen Maestro Giulini here? Well, he’s an Italian conductor. He mostly conducted at La Scala in Milan, the opera, for many years. But then he gave that up and he’s now been conducting symphonies. He worked a lot in London, and he was one of our conductors for several years. Then he’s been in Los Angeles, California now for some time.

Well, when we made that piece with him, it’s a different temperament in the man, so you have a different temperament in the music. It started slowly and then got faster as it went on. You know, he started very broadly.

(Herseth performs part of the Promenade again, starting slowly and gradually getting faster)

By the end of it he was running about the same speed Kubelik went all the way when he played it. It’s always been a kind of favorite piece of mine. Well, there’s a lot of nice things for the trumpet to play, you know. There’s a tuba part even in that thing, I think. Did somebody say that’s going to be this afternoon also? Fantastic. And one time… This time I don’t have to have a sore lip to play it. I can listen. (laughs) Okay!

And then… You know, there’s another part in there. We’ll jump… Incidentally, if somebody has questions or anything you want to ask or talk about, by all means, you know… I’m glad to talk about anything you want. If you are curious about what the business is like in the states… Well you know there’s a little part in that piece for the trumpet which is called Goldenberg and Schmuyle, and there again there’s another passage which conductors have very different ideas about, at least the ones I’ve played with. And you know, it represents two people having an argument or whatever. Being Scandinavian I call it Olson and Johnson. I don’t call it Goldenberg and Schmuyle—it’s Olson and Johnson as far as I’m concerned.

I have to put some oil on these valves. I haven’t touched either one of these for a couple of days so… The first few times I played that, I played that particular solo on a D Trumpet. It was much easier. All the configurations were easier to do on the D trumpet than on the C trumpet or the B trumpet, you know. So almost everyone was playing that on a…Everyone that I knew at least was playing it on the D trumpet. And it was okay that way, but finally one day my assistant, first trumpet player whose name is William Scarlett… He played that piece in a children’s concert, and solo players in our orchestra are excused from playing children’s concerts. We don’t have to play them. And so he had practiced that on several different trumpets. I know some of my friends, Mr. Ghitalla, and Mr. Gilbert Johnson (used to be first in Philadelphia) they would play that on a G trumpet. I don’t know. I’ve tried it on a G trumpet and it didn’t work for me.

But Mr. Scarlett said he had done it on his A trumpet, A piccolo (piccolo in A), and he said it was really good, so I thought, “Well, I’d better try that.” You know you should learn something everyday, right? Well, that’s what I learned that day. So the next next time we played it I used the piccolo trumpet. Actually the one I use is a little Monke, German rotary valve piccolo trumpet with three valves. And I have a mute that fits just perfectly into the bell on that horn. Sometimes it’s hard to find a mute that fits these little bells and it’s still loud enough. You find soft ones for these little bells but to find a loud mute is sometimes difficult. But anyway I found one.

So I play it always on this now (he is holding a Schilke P5-4 piccolo trumpet in A with a mute), and when we did it the third week…we had it as one of our numbers two years ago when we toured in Europe. We were in Germany, France, Italy and so on. And so that was one of the pieces we played, and we had played it many times with Sir George before, you know. And if you remember, that trumpet part—it all starts with the bass and cellos there. (sings the introduction) And then comes the trumpet part. It’s all marked Andante, so some conductors think you should be exactly the same tempo, the slow tempo that the opening bars are in. Well, most conductors are gentlemen. They let you take your own tempo, a little bit, you know. And the usual tempo for that is something that you can actually play with the single tongue, you know.

(Herseth plays the first two measures of the trumpet part within Goldenberg and Schmuyle)

Adolph Herseth performing on his Schilke P5-4 piccolo trumpet in A. At rest his face was the same color as his hands, but during strenuous moments his face can be seen turning bright red.

And we had played this piece a number of times with Maestro Solti, and then when we went on tour in Europe we had the rehearsal, just one rehearsal before we began the tour, in Frankfurt, and I thought to myself, “Well, I’m tired of playing it that way. I’m going to see if he’ll let me play it through faster, make it more exciting. Besides, it’s over quicker – ends! (chuckling) So I had always practiced things in several different tempos, you know, slow and fast and in between. And so I thought, “I’m going to try it. I’m just going to see if I can get away with it, you know, if he’ll let me do it.” So I played it really as fast as I could which was not necessarily fast, but just to see what his reaction was. So I played it something like this.

(Herseth plays the same excerpt at a faster tempo—about 152bpm to the eighth note)

So we get through and he said, “That was spectacular, my dear. Can you do that every night?” (laughter) “Well, sure, as long as I can find a good place to eat and drink after that.” (laughter) So that’s the way I did it for the whole trip, and it’s more exciting to play that way, too, you know. So, okay, that’s that piece. That was almost like a theme song or a mantra for our orchestra for so long. And actually I’m a little tired of it at this point because we have played it so many times.

Uh, does anybody have any questions you want to ask now? You know. I don’t want to do all the talking. (laughs)

Adolph Herseth studied at the New England Conservatory with Georges Mager (left), principal trumpet of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1919 until his death in 1950. Herseth is pictured holding the Couesnon small bore trumpet in C on which he also won his audition in Orchestra Hall for the CSO in 1948.

Question: How do you get into the orchestra and what music do you have to play to get in?

Oh, okay. Well, I suppose the story is different in almost every case. Maybe not so much these days, but back in the time when I came into the orchestra, it was not done the way it is today where in our country they make an advertisement in the musician’s paper saying that a certain orchestra needs one first violin, one cello and a third clarinet, say for instance. And they will say, “Send your application and all your information to the manager, and the auditions will be held on such and such a date.” And usually they have a screening or preliminary auditions, which are usually just conducted by an audition committee from the orchestra, the players themselves. And they choose the finalists. That’s so that the conductor doesn’t have to listen to… We have sometimes 150 people to listen to because there are so many coming out of all these schools that we have, you know? So anyway they are giving a preliminary audition. And then the conductor listens to the finalists, and he decides, of course.

But in my own case it was not that way. Back in the time… It’s the only job I’ve ever had, and I’ve been here now 36 years. And it’s like one of my sons said to me. He says, “Hey Dad, you know you’re really a failure. You’ve never been promoted since you went on that job.” (laughter) And I said, “Where am I supposed to go, to the podium? There’s a guy there already,” you know, “I can’t…” (laughter)

So when I came to the orchestra I was going to school in Boston, studying with Mager. You know so well about him. He was the first trumpet in the Boston Symphony, and I had a telegram which came from the manager of the Chicago Symphony, and I had no idea why should this come to me, you know, asking if I would be interested in playing an audition for the conductor, who at that time, for just that one year, Artur Rodzinski, a conductor from Poland, who worked for many years in America. And could I go to his apartment in New York on Park Avenue and play for him in about three days after I got that telegram.

And I had no idea what to play for him. It didn’t say anything in the telegram and it said the opening was to be for a third trumpet chair. So I went to New York, and I played for him. And you know he had living room in his apartment which is about the size of this stage. Unbelievable! And Park Avenue, the most expensive street in New York. He had a full-size grand piano on that end, and another one on that end. And so if he wanted to play the piano he didn’t have to walk too far to get to one. Unbelievable! (laughter)

So I went to the librarian at the Conservatory, and I hadn’t played more than a half-dozen orchestra pieces in my life, and that was mostly at the conservatory where we had a little orchestra, and we would read through the pieces, get them prepared for a concert, so my entire orchestral repertoire was maybe six or eight pieces. That’s all I knew, and most of those simple ones.

But I listened a lot to the radio. I went every week to the Boston Symphony concerts, so I had heard a lot of those pieces. And I took all the trumpet parts that that the librarian could find for me, and went down to New York, and I played for Mr. Rodzinski for about an hour actually. And I really didn’t think too much about “Is he going to like it or not?” because I still had a year to go in my school where I was.

And when I finished, and as I said, I thought it was for third trumpet… And when I finished he said, “You will be the new solo trumpet in Chicago.” Well, I wasn’t going to argue with that. (laughter) So I went, you know, playing everything, learned everything right there on the chair. I was as green as I could possibly be. Absolutely no experience! But it was very exciting.

We had just guest conductors for the two years when I first came. All the big name conductors came, you know: (Otto) Klemperer, Fritz Busch, Bruno Walter and Pierre Monteux. (Ernest) Ansermet would come from Suisse Romande in Geneve, you know, and (Eugene) Ormandy, who was the conductor for so many years of the Philadelphia Orchestra. So we had very interesting conductors, and of course, when they come as guest conductors they bring their favorite programs, their favorite pieces, you know. So those first couple of years that I was there I had a fantastic amount of repertoire that was exposed to, and I was able to learn. So that was very good for me I think. I think maybe I had as many big pieces in those first three years with guest conductors, as you normally have with the regular conductors in about four seasons, you know? So it was a very good learning experience for me at that time. And that started in 1948, the summer of 1948, so I will now, just this summer, have played my 36th summer with that orchestra.

And I think it’s at least as much fun now as when I went in there, to play with so many fine players, and to play with so many good conductors. You know the world’s greatest music was written for symphony orchestras and operas. I can at least play the symphony parts, though I don’t have the chance to do operas like you have. And I hope to play… I can’t play for 36 more years. I know that, but I’m going to try to play for as many as I can anyway, because I really do enjoy it.

Uh, that’s a pretty long answer to your question. (laughter) Does anybody else have anything they’d like to ask, to talk about?

Adolph Herseth in his first season with the CSO, with fellow trumpet section members (right to left) Gerald Huffman, Renold Schilke, and Frank Holz. .

Question: Tell the story of Ormandy and the bass trumpet.

That’s a marvelous story. Oh yeah. It was the first year I was in Chicago actually, and many of you know who Mr. Renold Schilke was. He made the Schilke trumpets. He was an old friend of mine, and the first summer when I was in Chicago they usually allow new players to begin at the summer concerts, which is kind of a nice way to “break in” if you want to call it that, so that when you begin the subscription concert season in the winter you have a little bit of a feel of what the orchestra does and what your colleagues are like and all that sort of a thing. So anyway, Mr. Schilke and I became very good friends right from the start.

Well, we were playing some Wagner things with Ormandy conducting, and you know in some places the bass trumpet will be played by perhaps a trombone player, and in some places maybe a trumpet player. I think it really probably should be played by a trombone player because it’s more in that register. But anyway Mr. Schilke was playing the bass trumpet and he was just using a regular trumpet mouthpiece in it, you see and he had an extra tube or adapter that he put around the shank so that it would fit the slightly bigger receiver on this bass trumpet.

And Ormandy looked back there, and I think there was a trick to this too, because I think he knew about this sort of thing from his own players in Philadelphia, you see. But then he comes to Chicago, and he said, he said to Mr. Schilke, “Are you playing that bass trumpet with your regular trumpet mouthpiece, or are you using a bass trumpet mouthpiece as you should do?” (laughs) He saw that it was a small mouthpiece.

And so Mr. Schilke said, “I’m using my regular mouthpiece. What’s wrong with it?” (laughs) Ormandy said, “Well, it should be played with a bass trumpet mouthpiece.” Schilke said, “Okay.” We happened to have another rehearsal the next day. Normally at Ravinia Park we have only one rehearsal for each concert, but some conductors are given two rehearsals before their first concert comes, especially for a “big timer” like Ormandy was. So the next day Schilke came with his bass trumpet and he had a bass trombone mouthpiece, and he had made it so it would fit into that bass trumpet. But inside of it was his trumpet mouthpiece. (laughter)

And it was just up like that. See this is the rim of that trumpet mouthpiece so it stuck just far enough so that when he put it up he could play, see. (laughter) But when you looked, it looked like he had that big mouthpiece on there. So we came to that place for the bass trumpet to play, and he played it. And of course it sounded exactly as it had the day before. And Ormandy said, when he saw that mouthpiece, “See, I told you that would sound better if you used the right mouthpiece.” (laughter)

And, you know, I always wanted to tell Ormandy about that trick that Schilke pulled on him, but I never did. (laughter) Well, if I see him again… I think maybe he comes to conduct. He still conducts. He guest conducts, you know, and I had a very nice… I enjoyed Mr. Ormandy’s conducting very much. He did Sibelius Symphonies. Marvelous, by the way, as you probably know. And it was very exciting to play some of the Sibelius things with him. Uh, I may see him again this year. Maybe I’ll tell him this year if I see him. Mr. Schilke won’t care now. He’s no longer with us.

Did someone else have something you wanted to ask or talk about?

Question: How is the audition today for getting into the orchestra?

Oh, okay. Yeah. I understand. Usually in most orchestras, when they have a vacancy for any instrument (but I’ll talk about the trumpet particularly) they will send, after you have applied, and sent your application and your information, then they will send you back a letter and it will tell you when and where this audition will take place, and will tell you what you will be expected to play. And very often they let you first play a solo piece. The first movement of Haydn or the Hummel, as we did here yesterday. Sometimes they will also say, “or one movement of a solo of your choice,” or you could pick something else if you wish. We always ask them to play that first. Something familiar as that; and you know, if it’s in a new house where they’ve never been, they like to get the feel of it. For a soloist, it’s a good way to get the feel of a strange place.

And then when they finish that then there’s a list of specific passages from specific pieces that you shall play. And sometimes they will have a very long list, maybe two pages, but you’re only going to play four or five of them anyway because they don’t have time to listen to you play all twenty-five of those things is they are going to listen to a hundred players, you know. You’d never get through.

So I’ve always felt… We haven’t done it quite this way in our orchestra, but I always felt, you know, if you want to hear them play five special passages, just tell them those five. Otherwise it’s a guessing game. They don’t know—it says (on the list) “Mahler’s 1st Symphony”—well what part do you want? Or do they have to study the whole piece, you know. That’s one of the weak points of the way it’s done now.

But then they are asked to play these different passages, the opening Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition is very common on the auditions, and it’s also the “Olson and Johnson” thing that I played (Goldenberg and Schmuyle). And of course Mahler 5 is another one. And there again, talking about that, I’m straying away from the question momentarily but…

Talking about a piece like the Mahler 5 (Mahler’s Fifth Symphony), you know we’ve played that with so many conductors too over the years. In fact, it was a big touring piece for us in Europe with Maestro Solti, several different times that we came. But I like having pieces with a lot of playing, especially when I’m going on tour because you can’t find time to practice sometimes when you are traveling. And so if you have a big piece, a couple of big pieces maybe, on every program to play, it helps keep you in shape, you know. And then you can go play golf in the daytime. (laughter) So anyway, some conductors have played that when they want that to be very slow and very measured.

(Herseth plays the opening measures at about 120bpm to the quarter note)

For me that’s a little too slow. Most conductors do it a little bit faster, and have you play the triplet a little bit quicker.

(Herseth plays the entire excerpt at about 144bpm to the quarter note, and also partially plays the successive low Eb omitted in later editions) (applause)

Thanks—that’s the old edition where the trumpet goes on down lower on the long note near the end with the trombones. It’s an old edition which Mahler himself corrected and took that away. In case you see that you’ll know what the story is there.

And I enjoy playing pieces like that. They are very exciting, but we have played so much Mahler in Chicago. Next year we will again. In September when I go back on the very first opening concerts I must play the Hummel Concerto with Maestro Solti at the first concerts. And I said, “You know, that’s not appropriate to have an orchestra player soloing in the opening concerts of the season.” He says, “Well, that’s the way it is. You play!” Okay! (laughter)

When I finish here I’ve got to go home and start practicing, you know! (laughter) Anyway, we’re making another recording of Mahler 1st. We’ve already done, I think, three of those. And in February we do another recording of the Mahler 7, and we’ve already got two of those. So we will have recorded all of the Mahler symphonies at least two times with the exception of the 8th, and I’m sure that’s going to come around again too

So…I get a little bit bored I suppose with Mahler because we have done it so much, and I don’t like to be bored with any kind of music, so in a way I resent that a little bit, that we play it so much that the orchestra gets bored with it. Rather you should not play it so much and feel fresh about it whenever it comes, you know. But that’s not the case with us any more. We play Mahler, Bruckner and Strauss all the time, nothing but the big ones, block busters as Solti said. He says, “I have a band which will play very loud, and so I like that. (laughter) I like loud music and my band will give me that.” Uh, well, I digressed again. (laughs) Anybody else got anything you want to talk about?

Adolph Herseth practicing his German Bb trumpet in the basement of his home in Oak Park, surrounded by numerous trumpets and mouthpieces.

Question: Please tell us the differences in how you play Mahler and Bruckner.

Well yeah, okay. I’m going to say that when we play Bruckner especially, we almost always now use German trumpets for that. And I would use the German trumpets even more except our trombone players don’t always want to play the German trombones. And of course, it’s more effective using the German trumpets, the rotary valve trumpets, if you have the whole trombone section also playing on German trombones.

Then it makes a marvelous match of the sound. So we use the Monke trumpets usually when we play Bruckner because it is a different quality of sound which Bruckner should have. Not so aggressive as the piston valve trumpets. Mahler needs to be played in a more aggressive way, I guess.

For Bruckner, well, you just play everything different, that’s all. At least in my experience. My first experiences with both Mahler and Bruckner music were with a famous conductor who passed away years ago. Bruno Walter was his name. He was a colleague of Gustav Mahler, so I felt that if Bruno Walter said, “This is the way this passage in the Mahler symphony should go,” he really knew, because he was a friend of Mahler and conducted first performances of many of Mahler’s pieces; and he was present at times when Mahler himself would be conducting his own music.

Unfortunately I have never played with anybody, any conductor, who had known Anton Bruckner, or whether there is the tradition of Bruckner. Of course, this comes through all of the conductors, especially in Germany and Austria. But when you play that kind of music everything is much more straight and not nearly so exaggerated in the dynamics, and that sort of a thing, you know. Uh, it’s just an entirely different kind of music.

Adolph Herseth with the other CSO brass section principals in 1974, (left to right) Jay Friedman, Dale Clevenger, and Arnold Jacobs.

In many ways the sounds that are there on the harmonic that he used are similar because they come from a period of musical development, but the end message of those pieces is just totally different. And you know, most players, when they see a Bruckner symphony for the first time, they see all these chords have a big marcato marking on them, you know, and it’s like you should go “Pooom…Pooom!”

Well, of course, that’s not true. As Paul Hindemith said to us when he conducted, “Ach gentlemen, don’t forget Bruckner was an organist,” you know, and that’s exactly how it should sound with no rough edges anywhere. And, of course, when you play Mahler you have a lot of rough edges because it’s a different kind of music.

Okay. What else can we talk about? How much practice? You practice enough that you can play everything you have to play and play it well. That’s the only rule I ever go by. I have had players ask me, “how many hours a day do you practice?” Well, it’s different everyday for me at least. If we have a week when we are doing a heavy program, big Strauss piece, this Mahler/Bruckner stuff that we keep talking about; and some of those are very heavy for the brass. And you know when we have a dress rehearsal in the morning, and the first concert in the evening, I don’t practice. I don’t put in an hour of practice in the afternoon on that day. I do a little warm-up practice in the morning, and then a little warm-up practice before the concert in the evening, and that’s it as far as my individual practice is concerned. But if it is a very easy week, a Beethoven symphony, a piano concerto, a little overture or something, then I practice. Yeah, I practice. I try to get an hour or an hour and a half of practice each each day, you know, in addition to the rehearsal time and the concert time. But it’s different every day, really. Every day and every week.

You know I’m marking fingerings in my part now. I’m old enough that I can do that. I mark fingerings at the beginning of a passage in my part, but the reason for that is that sometimes I will play that on a C trumpet, and sometimes I may play it on a B-flat trumpet. And if you forget which one you have, you know, you have a problem. Conductors are rather sensitive to that sort of thing. (laughter) So, now on a piece when I may use sometimes a C or sometimes a B or sometimes a D trumpet, I mark the first note at least of all the important entrances so that I’m in the right key. You don’t want Beethoven to sound like polytonality.

Question: When do you practice the bass trumpet?

I’ve spoken so many times about this. There are times when I like to practice on a bass trumpet. I have an old Kruspe bass trumpet in E-flat, D and C. And I like very much to practice on that at certain times. There are times when I really like to practice on that if I have had a very hard day. Sometimes when we make recordings of these Mahler Bruckner and Strauss things and so on, which are very strenuous to play. And you do that for six, seven, eight hours during the day, that’s a lot of hard playing, you know, so when I go home, I may take out my bass trumpet with a bass trumpet mouthpiece, or even a trombone mouthpiece, and I play low notes. It feels very good.

It’s like massaging your lip. After all, when you have played really hard, you are, in a sense, abusing a muscle here, in this spot where you play. And then when you get up the next morning and you have to go to a rehearsal, and you are going to play something very delicate like La Mer or something, which is totally different. Your lips feel like they belong to somebody else. (laughter)

And so that’s when I really enjoy doing that. I take a trombone mouthpiece and I play on that for a while, and then I move up to the bass trumpet mouthpiece for another ten minutes, and then I go to my regular mouthpiece, and everything feels fine. Works marvelous. Really! And you know, I think that’s why some of the jazz players, like Maynard Ferguson, he plays trombone and also trumpet. He goes back and forth I used to notice that when I was a kid playing in dance bands. I had played baritone horn for about half a year when I was in high school because I had my lip bruised and cut actually playing basketball, which is a very popular game in our country. This is when I was in high school, and the bruise and the injury was right where my trumpet mouthpiece would rest on the upper lip. So it was very painful to play, and I couldn’t really play very well, you know. It was best that I just leave it alone.

And one day I tried to play a baritone horn with a bigger mouthpiece and it felt fantastic and it didn’t hurt at all, so I said, “I’m going to play this for awhile.” And you know when you play marches and overtures and that sort of a thing on the baritone horn or euphonium, you get all these nice solos to play, you know? And I thought, “Wait a minute, this is more fun than playing that crazy trumpet.” And they had a heck of a time getting me back on the trumpet section.

Then when I went into college we had a dance band with only two trombone players. Just students in the school. Well, they had only two trombone players who could play this kind of music. So you know some of the ballads—the nice melodic tunes (as opposed to the “jump” tunes)—would be scored for three trombones, and it didn’t sound very good when you just had two playing these things.

So one day I said, “I’ll go to the band room”, and we dug out a trombone. And you know, everybody can figure out the positions a little bit. If they go slow enough you can find ‘em. (laughter) I said, “I’ll play third trombone.” So I played third trombone on the ballads. I had to practice a little bit so I wouldn’t slop around too much, you know. And I noticed every time I would do that for one tune, when I moved back the lead trumpet on the next tune, it was like I had a fresh brand new set of chops. Just like fresh as could be—fantastic! And I’m sure that’s one of the reasons that players like Maynard Ferguson do that.

There was another one back in the nineteen thirties and forties, a trumpet player who did the same thing. He played trumpet and also trombone—Sonny Dunham—another marvelous player, and I’m sure that was part of the reason that they would do that. Uh, yeah, okay! I know you agree. (chuckles) What else do we talk about?

Adolph Herseth warming up in the basement of Orchestra Hall alongside CSO trumpet section members Vincent Cichowicz (center) and William Scarlett (right).

Audience member: Mouthpieces!

Mouthpieces! Well, get one that feels good. And it’s got to make the kind of sound you want, and that’s all it really needs to do. Uh, the mouthpieces that I prefer to use are, well they’re Bach mouthpieces because that’s what I’ve played on since I was a kid, you know. I think my first trumpet, that Conn trumpet I told you about, had a 7C mouthpiece. A Bach 7C mouthpiece came with it. That’s always been the most, the biggest seller I guess in that entire line because it’s kind of medium sized, not too big, not too small.

And I liked a basic mouthpiece, but I switched mouthpieces actually after I had an injury to my lip here. I broke some teeth, and busted my lip in an automobile accident, and I had about fifty stitches across here and so on. After that I was playing on a plain seven mouthpiece which is a deeper one than a 7C, more like a cornet kind of a cup; V-shaped, you know. But it felt very small so I said to Mr. Bach, “Will you please send me three or four of your largest mouthpieces?” I said, “The scar tissue swells up, you know, when I play.”

And so he sent me (mouthpiece sizes) a “1”, and a “1 1/2”, and a “1C”, and I guess a “1 1/4C”; and I really liked the number one (‘1”) the best. It seemed to have the fullest sound. So I changed to it right away. I got those mouthpieces on a Monday morning in the mail, and I tried them real quick before I went to the rehearsal. And we were playing Bruckner 7, by the way, with Carl Bohm from Vienna and Salzburg. He just died a year or so back (1894-1981). A very fine conductor!

And I thought, “Well, I’ll try this Bruckner 7” It’s a very strenuous piece. “I’ll try that with this mouthpiece and if I can get through that with this mouthpiece, well then, okay. Good.” So I used that number one mouthpiece for the concerts that week—we played it four times at the concerts. And it felt marvelous, I had actually more range, more endurance and more sound, naturally, because it was a bigger mouthpiece. Lots of people get small mouthpieces. They give you more range, but that’s not necessarily true.

So I’ve been playing on either a plain “1” or a “1B” which is still not listed in the catalog, but it’s a mouthpiece they make. I think they take some other B-shaped cutter and then they expand it to fit to the screw-rim. As a matter of fact, the mouthpiece I have is the first 1B that Bach ever made. And some of the people don’t want to put it in the catalog for some reason or another. I don’t talk to them anymore anyway, so… But I go back and forth between the one and the one 1B. The 1B is more like a cornet cut, a little more V-shaped, you know, and it plays a little different. Those are my two favorite mouthpieces now but I don’t say to anybody, “You should play my mouth pieces.” That’s too much of an individual matter. Whatever works for you. They have some wonderful-sounding players who play on what I would call small mouthpieces, but they sound marvelous, so what can you say?

I have found that I like to put a bigger hole in the mouthpiece. Most of us, I guess, you know, drill out that little hole or have it drilled out, the one in here. I don’t know what you call it here. We call it the throat of the mouthpiece, and we call this the back bore from here on. The terminology is different everywhere. And we very often have this part of it opened up a little bit wider, too, you know. It broadens the sound a little bit and makes it play a little bit more freely. If you want to play stronger there’s more there, you know.

As far as the rim shape is concerned, I understand Maurice and Pierre and most people like a very flat rim. I don’t like a flat rim. Again, that’s personal, you know. And Maurice, he plays with a dry lip. He wipes the mouthpiece, and brings it up. If I did that I wouldn’t be able to find the place. You know, I’d be over here, I’d be over here. I can’t move it and then… But again, that’s an individual matter, you know.

Adolph Herseth owned several hundred trumpet and cornet mouthpieces, many of which were custom made for him and sometimes stamped with his name.

Comment/Question: (Georges) Mager from his old days in Paris – He had a flat rim?

I think he maybe did at one time, but you know, I have the last mouthpiece he played on. I got it from Vacchiano, who I thought was very nice. One time I went to visit Bill Vacchiano in New York and he said, “I have something for you,” and he gave me a mouthpiece, a Bach mouthpiece with a screw rim, from Mager, a very narrow, round rim. Yes, I think he did change somewhere.

Audience member: It was narrow?

No, it was actually like a 1C cup, this mouthpiece, and Vacchiano said he got it from Mrs. Mager when (Georges) Mager died. He said to me, “I think he should have it.” I was very touched by that, I really was, you know. But I have not played the mouthpiece because—I have not used it—because the rim does not feel good to me, you know. But it was very round, and quite narrow, almost like a French horn rim. Some people like a little wider rim, and some people like a narrower rim.

I find if I use too wide a rim, what some people call a cushion rim, I find I don’t have as much flexibility somehow. I feel like I can’t move my lips around the way I want to. And with too wide a rim I am tempted to press too hard because, you know, you feel like you have to get things to work. So I don’t do that. I actually have been trying some rims which are a little bit narrower than this standard “1” rim which I use, and I like those in many ways, and I think I’m going to switch to a slightly narrower rim. You can press it in deeper. (laughter)

Which reminds me, you talk about non-pressure—“no pressure”—when you’re playing or something like that. I remember the first time we played, years ago, with a famous band, the Sauter-Finegan Band. They were two famous arrangers. And we did a record with them once, with the Chicago Symphony, a piece—I don’t remember the name even.

But anyway, they came and they played a concert with us. They had just played some concert with Maynard Ferguson when he first came into the business. And somebody asked their trumpet players—they had been talking about playing a show with Maynard just the week before; and somebody asked one of these trumpet players, “Well, does Maynard press when he plays those high notes?” And the guy said, “I don’t know if he presses, but he had blood on his shirt!” (laughter) Actually, nobody recommends that. Well, what else can we talk about?

What kind of things to practice? I’ll tell you, in my experience, and it will not be the same for everyone, obviously, but if somebody learns a little bit from somebody else’s experience, that’s fine. So I’ll tell you what my experience has been.

When I first came and started playing in orchestras, I practiced solo etudes, you know, books like the Charlier Book, Walter Smith Book, Salon Book, Arban book, of course. I still can’t play the Arban book like I should, so I’m still practicing in that one. And I found that after about seven or eight years of playing in the orchestra—and orchestra playing tends to take a little of the finesse away from your playing. Bill Vacchiano has said that too—many times—the hard, loud, straight kind of playing that you do so much of takes away a little bit of the fluency that you have, that you like to have for solo playing. because we don’t get any chance to play nearly as much solo material in our country as you do in Europe. And I am sad for that—I wish we had more opportunity.

I found that after seven or eight years of being in the orchestra I had to go back to fundamental scale things. I used the Herbert Clarke Technical Studies, the second book in the series of three, and simply because it was handy to use. You can use whatever you like. But I found that I had to go back and practice those things to keep my fingers and my articulation so that I could at least play halfway decently, because otherwise— that part of my technique was going away a little bit, you know. So I stay with that. I do that almost every day, something of that type, so I keep my articulation and my fingers so they still work, because you know, at 62 it’s not quite as fast as at 22 (laughs)

So I practice these things, and I try to do them in a variety of ways. If I’m doing a scale, a double tonguing scale, I try to do some of it in a very connected way, and some of it in a very pointed way, so I’m not doing it the same way all the time because you need any number of different sort of qualities of articulation when you are playing different styles of music. So I play them something like this. [ plays ]

And then I slur and I play pointed and I run together all different kinds of articulations. And I found that helped me a great deal, just to keep me in shape; and to keep that part of my technique so it wouldn’t go entirely away. One in a while you have to play something fast, even in the symphony.

But the main thing I find in practicing is that I must play solo types of material, whether it’s solo etudes from he Charlier Book or the Pietzsch Book or whatever, or just practicing solos, as you young people have played this weekend. That’s the best thing for anybody’s playing because, you know, to practice making music you must practice music. It really comes to that. I know every time I am preparing—I will go home now to Chicago after another week and a half—I’ll have to practice, of course, a lot. We still have a week or two of holiday left before we go back to work. I will need that to get myself in shape to play a decent solo with the maestro when we play the open concerts—I must do the Hummel with him. And that kind of practice always is the best for me I’ve found. It always has felt the best. And when I practice those things I try to play them a little different way each day, so I’m trying to think, “What can I do with this musically today that I didn’t do to it when I practiced it last week.”. I have one very favorite study, the second one from the Charlier book. Every time I play it I find some different ideas, what I can do with this phrase or the next phrase, you know? It’s starts like this:

(Herseth performs the first 24 measures of Charlier’s second etudeon his Bach C trumpet—in C) (applause)

Adolph Herseth warming up on his trumpet mouthpiece to get ready for a CSO tour concert.

I find for my purposes that playing melodic things like that is very important because you don’t get much playing like that, unfortunately, in a symphony orchestra in a job like I have. It comes very seldom, really, that you have that kind of a nice melody that goes on for a whole page, you know. It’s very seldom, so I think it’s particularly important for somebody in a position like I am, to practice those things because then when a nice melody comes, you can have some idea what to do with it.

The other thing that I really try to keep in mind when I am practicing, and I do it, is I must practice sometimes on the rotary valve trumpets, the German trumpets, because the whole way – you hold those instruments differently. The whole coordination with the fingering is a little different. The whole response is different. The notes lie a little differently. I find I have to practice on those German trumpets, oh, two or three times each week in the weeks when we are not using them in the orchestra.

I do practice on them. I’ll practice an etude like this on my Bach trumpet and then I will take the German trumpet and play the same etude over again on that one. And I also try to practice a little bit on my piccolo trumpet. You know, I may go months without having anything really that I’m going to actually use the piccolo trumpet for, because as I say, we don’t have a lot of church concerts and that kind of thing in America like you have here. I wish we had them, but we just don’t. It’s just beginning a little bit now.

I practice on that very often at home, so that when something comes where I must play on the piccolo trumpet, I don’t have to go into a panic and, you know, spend five hours for two days trying to remember how to play it, so I work on it fairly regularly. And I find, as I am sure many of you have found here, some practice on the piccolo trumpet is very beneficial to your playing if you don’t overdo it. I’m speaking now it’s beneficial to your regular playing on your regular instrument. I use a smaller mouthpiece when I play on the piccolo trumpet, yes, especially when I am playing Baroque things. If I’m using it just for some little passage in the orchestra that will go better on the piccolo then I will use a mouthpiece the same size as this—my regular mouthpiece.

Strangely enough, you know, there are a couple of passages in Mahler Symphonies that call for “kleine piston”—small trumpet. Mahler 7 has a passage in the last movement where he says, “if possible on a small trumpet.” And there’s also one spot in the first movement of the third Mahler Symphony which says the same thing. That’s another favorite piece of mine, by the way – Mahler 3rd, the trumpet or flugelhorn solo from back stage.

(Herseth performs the first 13 measures of the “posthorn solo” from Mahler’s 3rd Symphony)

Adolph Herseth speaking with Arnold Jacobs (CSO principal tuba 1944-1988), the top and bottom voices of the CSO brass section.

Marvelous passage—marvelous passage. We’ve done that a number of times. Interestingly enough, I might comment on that. The part, the separate part for that, which goes for the backstage player. In some editions it says “flugelhorn”, and in some editions it says “flugelhorn or post horn”. Some editions it says “trumpet or post horn”. Well, it’s always a big discussion—what instrument shall you use to play that?

When I played it on a post horn, like a little horn with rotary valves made by Bohland & Fuchs in Czechoslovakia—hanging on the wall in Schilke’s shop. (laughter) Actually it belongs to a man in Chicago who’s a dentist. His father brought it from Europe when they moved here. So I played it on that. It was actually quite good that way, and I’ve played it on a German fluegelhorn also, and I’ve played it on a C trumpet, and we just made a record of that piece again last year with Maestro Solti—played at the concerts, and made a recording of it.

I was trying to decide what shall I play that on? So in my home I set up my recorder—a tape recorder in the living room with the microphone. And then I go to the other end of the house in the kitchen, and I play from there so I have a little distance between where I am and the microphone. Give a little effect of the distance, because you play that from backstage, you know? And I used different instruments, different mouthpieces, and I tried a lot of combinations. And do you know which one sounded the best of all? I have a little Conn E flat cornet, 100 years old, and I have a very deep flugelhorn mouthpiece and I put that in that little cornet, and that the best sound of anything. And I had never tried that before.

So I played the concerts on that and made a recording on that, and Solti was so happy with that. He said, “Fantastic instrument! Is that a new one?” I said, “Well, it was new a hundred years ago.” (laughter) I just couldn’t believe that that E flat cornet could sound that good. Interestingly enough, everybody says, “Well, you must use a post horn”; or “you must use a flugelhorn.” When Mahler himself conducted that piece the first time he had it played on a trumpet, so that settles all arguments!

Okay—I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed doing this, and I leave you with one thought, which is what I leave everyone with when I finish things. “Don’t forget to practice!” (laughter) So, thank you very much, and bye bye. See you later.