¹Jon Burlingame, For the Record: The Struggle and Ultimate Political Rise of American Recording Musicians Within Their Labor Movement (Hollywood: Recording Musicians Association, 1997), p. iii.

²The use of the word horn refers to what is frequently called the "French horn."

³"In New York in 1927 the Capital Theater increased its orchestra to eighty pieces, and the Roxy advertised an orchestra of more than a hundred pieces." James Kraft, Stage to Studio: Musicians and the Sound Revolution, 1890-1950 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) p. 37. The introduction of "talkies" with soundtracks and the beginning of the Depression, created economic pressures that resulted in smaller theater orchestras in many cities before eliminating them altogether.

⁴Later Carli Elinor was in charge of music at the Carthay Circle Theater. The programs come from his personal collection now housed in the Margaret Harrick Library. Warren Sherk, the music specialist and archivist of the Margaret Harrick Library Special Collections was of special help in bringing these programs to my attention.

⁵The following is a partial list of the horn personnel changes for the California Concert Orchestra: (11/9/19) 1st Edward Schaefer, 2nd Ferdinand A. Schaefer; (11/21/20) 1st Vincent de Rubertis, 2nd Ferdinand A. Schaefer; (2/27/21) 1st Vincent de Rubertis, 2nd B. Slootsky. Greater California Concert Orchestra: (11/20/21 - 5/14/22) 1st Vincent de Rubertis, 2nd A. Macairo.

⁶Jack Cave interview.

⁷Brain played solo horn with Queen's Hall Orchestra, Covent Garden Orchestra, co-principal with the London Symphony, the New York Symphony Orchestra under Walter Damrosch as well as principal horn of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland Symphony Orchestra and Fox studios. Most people are more familiar with Alfred's nephew Dennis Brain, the son of Aubrey Brain. Alfred's brother Aubrey was also a hornist, as was his father A. E. Brain (senior).

⁸James Decker interview.

⁹Vincent de Rosa interview.

¹⁰De Rubertis also played at MGM. In fact, MGM gave him a screen test because he looked like a tall Rudolf Valentino and his friends in the symphony nicknamed him "the sheik," but he couldn't remember his lines. Like Brain, he was an avid fisherman and outdoorsman.

¹¹1998 Gale Robinson interview.

¹²1997 Gale Robinson interview. Unless noted, all Robinson quotes are 1997.

¹³Aubrey would become Great Britain's finest horn player until the emergence of his son Dennis.

¹⁴Stephen Pettitt. Dennis Brain: A Biography (London: Robert Hale, 1976) p. 32.

¹⁵Ibid., p. 35.

¹⁶Don Christlieb. Recollections of a First Chair Bassoonist (Sherman Oaks: Christlieb Products, 1996), p. 74.

¹⁷Gale Robinson recounted a similar exhibition by Brain.

¹⁸Stephen Pettitt's book incorrectly states that Rodzinski moved to Cleveland in 1934 and took Alfred Brain with him for two years. Rodzinski's move actually occurred in 1933 and Brain followed a year later and played as first horn for the 1934-35 and 1935-36 seasons. Tracing Brain's whereabouts is a bit difficult because he would go in and out of town, according to Cave: "There were a couple of times that Al Brain played with Cleveland and then came back and then returned to Cleveland and then returned because he wasn't here in 1939 when we started to make Gone With the Wind with Max Steiner. Al played the main title and then left, so I had to finish the picture on first horn, and Stagliano ended up playing horn in my section. I thought, "Oh gee, he should probably be playing first horn," but Steiner said, "You play first horn." Stagliano played second horn and we just had a ball, except for the fact that we were working all day at MGM and all night over at United Artists where they made the music for Gone With the Wind."

¹⁹According to Cave he got his opportunity to play principal horn with MGM because Brain was preparing to leave for Cleveland and they were trying out hornists to replace him.

²⁰Richard Perissi freelanced as second horn to de Rosa for many years but was also a fine principal horn at Paramount Studios during many of the contract studio orchestra years. His father Odalindo was also a horn player and at one point they both played in the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Cave recalls Odalindo identifying himself as a "Specialeesta in the Lowregeest."

²¹Wendell Hoss. "The Development of the French Horn," The Instrumentalist, Vol. III, No. 5 (May-June 1949), p. 14.

²²George Hyde interview.

²³Christlieb, op. cit., p. 75-76.

²⁴Jaenicke was actually the brother-in-law of Cave's stepfather. Amy McBeth, A Discography of 78 rpm Recordings of the Horn (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1997), p. 141.

²⁵Sansone's innovative design for the five-valve B-flat horn that used an F horn slide on the fifth valve significantly advanced the cause of the B-flat horn. Sansone even boasted in a special preface to some of his sheet music editions that it would soon replace the double horn.

²⁶The double horn is made up of the longer F horn with its fundamental partial on F and the shorter B-flat horn that is customarily used for the high register.

²⁷Transcontinental broadcasts were routed between radio stations by telephone lines. In 1935 the Federal Government forced AT&T to lower carrying costs that were based on mileage. Los Angeles benefited from this change more than any other major American city because it was furthest from New York City where transmissions were hubbed.

²⁸A globular flute invented in the 19th century by Giuseppe Donati: also called a sweet potato or sweet potato whistle. Made of porcelain, clay, or plastic, and in various sizes, it has a duct-type mouthpiece, eight finger holes, and two thumb holes. Donald Randall, The New Harvard Dictionary of Music (Cambridge, Belknap Press, 1986), p. 554.

²⁹Kraft, Stage, op. cit., p. 33.

³⁰Works Progress Administration orchestra. Established by the Federal Music Project (FMP, 1935-1943) in response to the Great Depression. There were ten rejuvenated orchestras and eleven newly created orchestras across the country funded by the FMP to lower unemployment among musicians.

³¹Modeste Altschuler was already a fixture in the musical life of Los Angeles for many years before conducting the WPA. "In 1926 the Glendale [California] Symphony took a giant step beyond "amateur" status when it hired Modest Altschuler of the Russian Symphony Orchestra to be its musical director." Home page of the Glendale Symphony Orchestra/history. Updated 11/22/96, accessed 7/23/1998. http://glendale-online.com/entertainment/gso/history.html. Altschuler's former concertmaster from the Russian Symphony, Nikolai Sokoloff, was the head of the FMP.

³²Christlieb, op. cit., p. 74.

³³Alfred Brain, 1885-1966, was almost sixty when he left the Philharmonic for the Fox studios.

³⁴Christlieb, op. cit., p. 75.

³⁵Cave remarked: "Hoffman was a wonderful horn player. He could play everything. I thought he was terrific. He took Al Brain's place for a year after he went to England [Cleveland, not England, the year before Stagliano came]. I think that he originally came from German opera.

Robinson states: "George [Hoffman] was also third horn in that great section and he was down there with the rest of them for fifteen years. He left that chair like they all did and he became first chair at Warner Brothers. Hoffman did all that fantastic horn playing with Captain Blood and all those Erroll Flynn films. He recorded one of the most famous horn calls that was ever written at the time in an Erroll Flynn picture." Robinson 1998 interview.

³⁶The uncle of the better-known Andre Previn.

³⁷De Rosa played in the Air Force band in Santa Ana but eventually obtained a deferment due to family hardship. Perissi had severe asthma. Cave had a deferment because MGM made training films for the army. Decker had a radical mastoidectomy as a child that kept him from serving.

³⁸Robinson remembers: "By the time 1940 came around I won an audition with Leopold Stokowski for his youth orchestra. He made me his first horn, and I was fifteen years old. That was the West Coast Youth Orchestra - not the one that toured in South America (that one became quite famous) but the NYA Orchestra of Southern California that was conducted by Leopold Stokowski. He was the one who gave me my first break. He recommended me to Walt Disney Studios and the first picture I played in was before the war started."

³⁹The U.S.S. California was used as a decoy to lure the remainder of the Japanese navy out of hiding, which resulted in the destruction of the Japanese fleet.

⁴⁰Speaking of an orchestra that played at the Shrine Auditorium, James Decker recalled: "There were a lot of Fox Studio men playing in that orchestra at the time during the war because there were a lot of regular players who had been drafted."

⁴¹The best instruments at that time were made in Europe, particularly in Germany.

⁴²Robert R. Faulkner, Hollywood Studio Musicians: Their Work and Careers (Chicago: Aldine Atherton, 1971), p. 22.

⁴³Robert R. Faulkner, Music on Demand: Composers and Careers in the Hollywood Film Industry (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1983), p. 5.

⁴⁴Viennese born composer who came to Hollywood in 1929 and produced over 300 scores.

⁴⁵Russian born composer who also came to Hollywood in 1929 and left in 1968. He produced over 140 scores and earned four Oscars.

⁴⁶Fred Fox played principal horn with the National Symphony, Minneapolis Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, as well as first horn at Paramount and RKO studios.

⁴⁷Faulkner, Hollywood, Op. cit., p. 23.

⁴⁸Jon Burlingame, For the Record: The Struggle and Ultimate Political Rise of American Recording Musicians Within Their Labor Movement (Hollywood: Recording Musicians Association, 1997), p. 5.

⁴⁹Ibid., p. 10.

⁵⁰This was done by the National Labor Relations Board that certified union representation.

⁵¹Faulkner, Hollywood, op. cit., p. 209.

⁵²At least one studio cellist bought a van with a bed so he could park it on the studio lot and work morning through night without ever having to go home.

⁵³The descant is a shorter version of the horn that facilitates notes in the extreme high register. It began as a single high F instrument, one half the length of the traditional F horn, and later evolved into a more sophisticated double horn in B-flat and high F. It also comes in various lengths: B-flat and high E-flat, B-flat and high B-flat (the same length as the trumpet), as well as the single high F.

⁵⁴Known also as the "Wagner tuba" because it was developed for Wagner's cycle of operas Der Ring des Nibelungen. It was designed to bridge the sound gap between the bass tuba, trombones, and the horn. Tuben come in two lengths: the tenor is pitched in B-flat and the bass is pitched in F. The works of Bruckner, Richard Strauss and Stravinsky include this instrument.

⁵⁵James Decker, "Double or Nothing: How Tight Money in Hollywood is Popularizing Deskants and Tuben." The Horn Call, Vol. II, No. 2 (May 1972), p. 36-41.

⁵⁶The amount of residuals is calculated by the amount of reuse or sales. Residuals are often a substantial percentage of a studio player's income that can easily exceed $100,000.

⁵⁷Anton Horner was principal horn of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1902-1930 and played in the section until 1946.

⁵⁸A reliable scale has to do with the feel of the spacing of the scale. An irregular spacing between the notes would make the player work harder to remember where the notes are. In addition, if the spacing between the notes was too close it would require finer embouchure accuracy. If the spacing between the notes was too wide it would require more effort to move from note to note.

⁵⁹Conn began production of the 8D in 1936.

⁶⁰Fred Fox, Essentials of Brass Playing: An explicit, logical approach to important basic factors that contribute to superior Brass Instrument performance (Pittsburgh, Volkwein Bros, copyright transfer 1976).

⁶¹Da Losa was a Philadelphia mouthpiece maker whose mouthpieces were funnel shaped and deep with a medium small to medium inside diameter. They were often produced as custom mouthpieces and were often paired with the Kruspe and early Conns. Later the Chambers' series Giardinelli mouthpiece from New York, which is very similar, became popular among the many hornists who used the Conn 8D.

⁶²Jack Cave was born in 1911, so he was about a decade older than the others; William Hinshaw was a few years younger than Cave.

⁶³Christlieb, op. cit., p. 75.

⁶⁴An excellent example of this is the recording he made on Capitol Records of Bach's Partita in B-flat transcribed for and performed with the guitarist, Laurindo Almeida.

⁶⁵A good example of this is the long horn solo from the sound track to Rocky III written by Bill Conti. This solo was released on an album that included a rare mention of de Rosa's name among the credits.

⁶⁶De Rosa remembers: "When I first became interested or involved in music I was four or five years old. I was involved in singing in solfeggio. I could read in all of the clefs and the whole thing."

⁶⁷Faulkner, Hollywood, op. cit., p. 78.

⁶⁸It is easy to confuse Robert (Bob) Craft who wrote several books on Stravinksy and William (Bill) Kraft who wrote one of the major works performed on the second Horn Club album. Both have recorded as conductors and both have connections to Los Angeles.

⁶⁹Craft had to come to Stravinsky's aid during the recording sessions and do major portions of the conducting and rehearsing. Because the selling point of the recording project was Stravinsky conducting Stravinsky, Craft never received the billing he deserved.

⁷⁰Stephen Pettitt puts the inaugural meeting on January 5, 1952. In e-mail correspondence with Howard Hilliard in March of 1997, founding officers James Decker and Arthur Frantz recall that the officers were invested in December of 1951. "The first dinner of the club was held at Nicodell's on Argyle St. in December of 1951. That's when the first officers were sworn in. Yes, Al Brain was the host."

⁷¹These were protectionist measures taken by the AFM to create more employment among musicians.

⁷²In addition to a fine career as a hornist, his beginning method book may be the most-used private instruction book on the market today, even though it has been in print for over half a century.

⁷³The reference to a surge of interest in the horn undoubtedly refers to Dennis Brain, who had just passed away but whose records were selling extremely well.

⁷⁴Decker, James. Los Angeles Horn Club home page. http//www.usc.edu/dept/Lahorn/, updated 3/2/98, accessed 3/17/98. This internet posting is quoted in almost its entirety due to the transitory nature of the medium.

⁷⁵This quotation comes from Stephen Pettitt's book Dennis Brain, op. cit., p. 41. In a footnote he identifies the MTA as a musician's union. If the acronym is correct, it probably refers to the Music Teachers Association.

⁷⁶George Hyde states: "Wendell was known as a fine soloist and chamber music player, but he was known [primarily] for his teaching. He had a lot of students." Hoss also transcribed and edited music for Southern Music Co.

⁷⁷This was released later on Seraphim S-60095 as The Horn Club of Los Angeles: Music For Horns. Works included are Tarantella from Songs Without Words by Mendelssohn arranged for six horns by Frederick Steiner, Variations on a Five Note Theme by Russell Garcia for ten horns, Stabat Mater by Palestrina transcribed for sixteen horns by Huntington Burdick, Echo Song by Roland de Lasssus transcribed for sixteen horns by George Hyde, Color Contrasts by George Hyde for eight horns, Suite for Eight Horns by Ronald lo Presti, Morning Revisited for twelve horns, four tuben, baritone, two bass tubas and percussion.

⁷⁸This was released on Angel S-36036 as New Music For Horns: The Horn Club of Los Angeles. Works included are Lines and Contrasts for sixteen horns by Gunther Schuller, Madrigal by Lassus transcribed by Huntington Burdick, O Che Splendor by Palestrina transcribed by Huntington Burdick, Nonet for Brass by Alec Wilder, Games: Collage No. 1 by William Kraft, Suite for Horns by Roger Johnson, Ave Maria by Victoria transcribed by Leon Donfray and Fanfare de Chasse by Rossini.