Alfred Brain's career with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1923 had begun at a fabulous salary (for the time) of $250 a week. He began the practice of receiving over-scale wages in the studios. His protégé, Vincent de Rosa, and others, including James Decker, would carry on the practice of earning double scale as first chair players. Decker recalls his first studio contract as principal horn:
David Klein, the manager of the orchestra, got my price up from a start of time and a quarter to time and a half the next year. Then, next year, to time and three quarters and, finally, the fourth year I was there: I got a double check like some of the guys in the other studios. We learned that from Alfred Brain. He said, "I don't need an assistant, just give me the check." So he always got a double-scale check whenever he played.
For the finest players, union scale in the studios was never a consideration. During most of Alfred Brain's lifetime, inconsistent professional horn players were quite common. An accurate horn player who would not ruin recording takes and had all the other fine playing qualities would be compensated well. This consistency became even more important when the contract orchestras were disbanded. Instead of salaried musicians with nearly unlimited rehearsal and recording time, the musicians were now being paid by the session. Overtime for these sessions could cost thousands of dollars. This provided even more incentive to hire the best musicians possible, particularly when it came to the horn, where a cracked note was far more obvious than an out-of-tune note in one of the string instruments.
In Robert Faulkner's sociological study of the Los Angeles studio musicians, he noted that studio string players had the least job satisfaction because playing in a studio orchestra was considered inferior to being a soloist or chamber musician. He indicates this was less so with the horn players. In general, commercial music is more interesting for the winds; moreover, the horn was often the favored solo instrument. A striking example of this preference for the horn occured during the last collaboration between composer Bernard Herrmann and director Alfred Hitchcock. Herrmann wrote a prelude for the 1964 film Torn Curtain in his usual symphonic style with an orchestration that included sixteen horns as well as twelve flutes, nine trombones and two tubas. Because Hitchcock had asked for a score with more "beat and rhythm" Herrmann was fired after Hitchcock heard the prelude. Although this prelude did not appear in the film, the Los Angeles Philharmonic recently recorded it under Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Alfred Brain had raised the standards of horn playing for studio hornists and had influenced film score composers to write more prominent horn parts. In addition to more rewarding parts, doubling fees for many of the winds made their pay more lucrative than that of the string players. In a 1972 article entitled "Double or Nothing," James Decker wrote that there were hundreds of calls that used descants53 or tuben,54 each involving "doubling" pay. 55 Gale Robinson gives examples of the disparity of pay between various orchestra instruments and the use of the tuben for "doubling" pay:
The tuben were used legitimately when there was a definite sound that was required. Then a lot of us started using the tuben because in certain places you had budgets where there was a scale involved. The way that you could get over-scale, which would be time and a half, was by adding another instrument. Because they usually wrote for four tuben, the entire section could get over-scale. There was no use for the descant horn but there was a use for the tuben. We literally tried to sell that thing as a moneymaking situation. Then the composer would write one or two cues or whatever to make it honest. For instance, if you did a live TV show, with a lot of money involved, maybe a Jerry Lewis show or Flip Wilson show or another of those big comedians, everybody else is watching [the woodwinds] cleaning up on these doubles. You take those woodwind players and they would have four or five doubles, and they would have four woodwind players and each of them with five doubles. I don't know what the trumpets and trombones were doing. I don't know what deal that the string basses worked out, or the concertmaster, but we saw that they were underpaying us. We weren't going to sit there for scale making $200 while the rest of the guys were making $800. So we worked that thing out as a double.
Just as there were exceptions to the contract arrangements during the contract studio orchestra years, so too would there be during the freelance years. James Decker gives an example of one of these exceptions:
Paramount came up and asked me to be first call for them. They couldn't put me under any kind of a contract, but they wanted to obligate the first horn, concertmaster, and the first cello to an agreement that they would always be available for their scores. They would pay me a double check if I would agree to do this. So I did. Even the TV shows like Odd Couple, Mission Impossible, and Star Trek were under that obligation. They paid me double scale even though it was just TV, which was awfully nice. So that went on for a few more years. After that everything became an open session.
Artistic satisfaction for the horn players did not rely solely on their studio work. Many well-paid studio musicians went out of their way to play less remunerative live music. Decker gives an example of this in connection with establishing the Glendale Symphony:
We all gave back our checks to help sponsor those things, although we all played for scale. We had a great orchestra of studio musicians and we all gave back our scale. I made a deal when Joe Hoeft, the founder of Glendale Federal Savings, came in. Everyone would play for minimum scale in the orchestra as long as no one else was paid time and a half. If they paid time and a half to anybody, the rest of the team of thirteen first chairs of the orchestra would also be able to get that time-and-a-half scale. It wasn't in the union regulations but everybody was making time and a half in the studios at that time, when they had a principal part.
The enormous pay differential between interesting live music and recorded music kept de Rosa out of live music for many years. Their compensation, when added to residuals,56 made the top studio horn players the highest paid hornists in the world. De Rosa recalls giving up live music do to the ban on the Guild members and because rehearsals would conflict with his recording schedule:
I used to do a lot of live performing - lots of it. But after the Guild, I couldn't do any more. I was locked out of any of that. I used to do a lot of chamber music. In fact, I did the first recordings with the LA Chamber Orchestra with Neville Mariner. [Richard] Perissi played second horn with me. But then I had to give it up after that because they would rehearse in the middle of the week, and, if I was in the middle of a picture, I wasn't going to give up thousands of dollars to go in there and rehearse.
There was another important shift that was taking place during the waning days of the contract orchestras. In many of the nation's orchestras, the nickel-silver Conn 8D double horn was becoming the instrument of choice. The 8D had a large, dark, heavy sound that was becoming the new standard in the symphony orchestras of New York, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. The Conn was modeled on the large bore nickel silver "Horner Model" Kruspe, designed and imported by Anton Horner57 of the Philadelphia Symphony, but often had better intonation and a more reliable scale.58 The Kruspe horn was manufactured in the city of Erfurt, Germany. During World War II the factory was bombed and was never rebuilt after the city fell under Soviet control as part of the new East Germany.
James Chambers, the principal horn of the New York Philharmonic from 1946 to 1969, was the first prominent horn player to promote the Conn 8D. Just as the Conn59 evolved from the Horner Kruspe, so too did Chambers' playing style evolve from Horner, in de Rosa's estimation: "Chambers was great in his way. He had a big beautiful sound and he carried on the Horner tradition." Vincent de Rosa, while not the first to embrace the instrument, eventually made the Conn 8D sound his hallmark. Discussing the introduction of the 8D in Los Angeles, Gale Robinson recalls: "It would have been around 1948. The first one to switch was Fred Fox. He had always played Alexanders and he said it was a revelation to him because of the accuracy of the instrument compared to the Alexander. Then a couple of other guys switched."
The result of Fox's introduction of the 8D to Los Angeles seems to have been incidental. While he was a fine player with an excellent reputation, his greatest influence was as a teacher. At a time when most horn teachers taught by example, he was able to articulate a comprehensive teaching method. His book, Essentials of Brass Playing,60 was one of the finest books to come out of the Los Angeles area on brass playing at that time. In addition to his private teaching, Fox taught at the University of Southern California, the Music Academy of the West, Pepperdine College, California State University at Los Angeles, and California State University at Northridge.
Using a deep "da Losa style"61 mouthpiece with a large throat size, along with the Conn, produced a sound that was fully formed close to the horn bell. George Hyde gives credit to Chambers for inspiring the stylistic change in Los Angeles:
In my opinion, it wasn't until later when Vince finally heard James Chambers playing his 8D, and thought, "That's the horn sound I want - a big full dark rich German Kruspe sound." So Vince got an 8D. It wasn't long before he got on the top and anyone who wanted to play in his section [played a Conn or a large Kruspe], and it has been that way ever since.
Brain's cutting sound was ideal for a microphone placed at a distance from the orchestra. It was less appropriate for the new recording environment where adjustments could be made for sections and even individuals by using microphones placed closer to the horn bell. As recording technology evolved toward a larger number of tracks and the attendant "close-miking," the Conn became the best choice of horns. Robinson explains that different instruments were compared as the recording technology changed: "As for mikes and horns, we would put comparisons to work, and invariably the 8D would come out best for our work. We compared Alexanders, Knopfs, Schmidts, Wunderlichs, Kruspes - all of the horns." De Rosa obviously preferred the Conn 8D or large-bell Kruspe in his section. Since he controlled much of the freelance studio work, that became an additional incentive for the other Los Angeles horn players to shift toward the Conn.
In the early stages of this transition to the Conn, an interesting compromise was created by two of Stagliano's students, Decker and Robinson: adding a Conn bell to the Alexander double horn. Decker emphasized the Conn bell's capability to play without "edge" and the ability of the modified Alexander to match the Conn:
The only thing I can say about that is that Vince was totally responsible [for the use of the Conn 8D]. I was playing an Alexander horn with an 8D bell, because I wanted to be able to match up. It took me a lot of trial and error to match up these harmonics. I had a Jimmy Chambers Reynolds leader pipe on it, and I found an 8D bell that worked after three tries. I played on that type of instrument for a long time as did a lot of the other players. Charlie Peal and at least ten other players that also converted to that style liked the Alexander horn, but it wouldn't match up with the other horns as well. I started that [putting Conn 8D bells on an Alexander] because the Alexander bells edged up too soon. When you play with 8Ds they don't edge up that fast, unless you have a tight player. When you play with 8D players and you want to get that same melodious sound, you have to do something about it, because the Alexanders simply don't do that. One thing that studio composers don't like is edge. If they want edge, they will have you play with a brass mute, like Bernard Herrmann did, or they want that "noble" sound.
Robinson recounts his reluctance to switch to the Conn in a conversation he had with Decker:
I remember talking to Decker about this, and he said, "My God, now a person's fundamental sound is going to be more important the closer they come into us [with the microphone]." Because Brain used to rely upon a thrust and a projection; and his sound would ricochet around and you could put the mike way back there and you could still hear him. When you were sitting next to him you could hear very little. It was crazy. With the 8D you could send out a sound that was around you. You could hear it. That was why they liked the 8D, because the first horn could hear the second horn, the second could hear the third, the fourth could hear the first. But sometimes with the slender sound, the sound would go up instead of coagulating around here, and people would have trouble hearing each other. We would sit next to Brain, and it would sound like he was barely playing. But he was projecting like crazy. They used to talk about that. Do you want to feel good (Mr. Feel Good, when you are sitting around and you can hear everybody well) or do you want to go for the audience? Who are you playing for, your colleagues or the audience? Make your decision. I remember that we used to talk about the psychology of that.
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