I'm compensating because there's no muscular cohesion around my mouth."Īs much as Stephanie has focused on improving her own skills, she emphasizes her role as part of a larger ensemble, whether it’s an orchestra or a marching band. She shared, “When I first got to Mason Gross, I would say something like, ‘I'm not sure where my air is supposed to go.’ Now I would say, ‘The inside of my mouth is too small. For her capstone, she has transcribed her lessons to analyze, in particular, her technical growth. Since the fall of her sophomore year, Stephanie has been recording her lessons with him to understand how she progressed so quickly. She attributes her success to her teacher, Richard Deane, Acting Principal Horn of the New York Philharmonic and expert in the technical aspects of horn playing. With her eye on playing with the best around her, she “prepared like crazy” and by her sophomore year, she had achieved the level of principal horn in the top orchestra. She learned the French Horn, an instrument she was drawn to for its ability to sound either dark, bright, intimate, heroic, or distant, by watching YouTube and reading wikiHow articles on “How to play the Horn.” Without a teacher at a young age or access to summer music programs, she had to rely on herself: “I started in a place where I always felt like I had to catch up.” When she arrived at Mason Gross she was placed in the school’s lowest band. She played horn in the band and orchestra, lead trumpet in jazz band, mellophone in marching band, and piano for the choirs. As a child growing up in Stroudsburg, PA, she started playing the piano at 6, violin and trumpet at 9 and 10, and the horn at 12. Stephanie’s success has come from sheer drive and deep interest. Filling Schare Recital Hall with the eerie sounds of Messiaen's Interstellar Call.at that moment, I felt like I might've actually been in outer space.” It was one of the most ethereal experiences. Creating an audition recording is physically, mentally, and emotionally taxing, but brings its own rewards: “I recorded my audition at about 1:30am to minimize the chance of someone interrupting. By the end of the recording session, she had played each solo 30-40 times and each excerpt 70-100 times.
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Each opportunity had slightly different requirements and demands.įor her Yamaha audition, she chose a diverse range of time periods and composers-Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, and Messiaen-to showcase such special effects as lip trills, flutter tongue, half-valve, and glissandi.
#THE ART OF FRENCH HORN PLAYING EXCERPT PROFESSIONAL#
As she prepared for grad school, summer festival, and professional auditions last fall, Stephanie learned and performed 6 solos and 38 orchestral excerpts.
![the art of french horn playing excerpt the art of french horn playing excerpt](https://orchestraexcerpts.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Beethoven_Symphony_No_3-Orchestra-Audition-excerpts_Horn-2b.jpg)
She has received the Vargas/Vetter-Ukena Fellowship with the New York Youth Symphony and has been accepted to Yale University to pursue an MM (Master of Music) at the Yale School of Music in the fall.Įvery opportunity has required an extraordinary amount of time and preparation in selecting, learning, and recording the perfect audition. She won the Mason Gross School of the Arts annual Rutgers Sinfonia concerto competition in her junior year, and she is the only horn player in the country to be recognized at the 2019 Yamaha Young Performing Artist Competition.
![the art of french horn playing excerpt the art of french horn playing excerpt](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3b/0a/bf/3b0abfffceca65c1ad7e5e26454a20c1.jpg)
Stephanie Fritz (’20, MGSA/HC) has dedicated her young life to music, spending hours daily on the work of perfecting the sounds she creates playing one of the most difficult instruments-the French Horn.