The Music of Thomas Coates

If you follow me on twitter you know that I play French Horn and Alto Horn in a few groups in the Baltimore area. An Alto Horn is a kind of instrument used in modern British style brass bands that, oddly enough, plays the alto line of the music. I play it primarily in the Benfield Brass Band as one of the Solo part players. The other is long time member and section leader Beryl Flynn. I am in no shape way or form close to a professional player. We have some awesome musical moments in the group and from hearing our live recordings and audience reactions we do pretty well.

Out of the blue back in June I got an email from a person I didn't know, Michael O'Connor with the subject of "Alto Horn Needed".

I’m looking for a solid alto horn player to help with a professional recording of Civil War Band music in August. The group recording is my 47th PA Regt Band. The group is made up of professional brass players (some don’t actually make their living in music, but could have) from NY, PA, NH, MD, and I’m in FL. We are recording mostly the music of Thomas Coates, who led the 47th PA band from 1861-62. We can provide an authentic 1860s instrument and mouthpiece for you and pay [you].

A professional that I have played with in a few groups referred me which is how they knew to reach out to me. The idea of doing a recording was pretty scary but wasn't something I was going to pass up.

So a few weeks ago I got in the car, drove for 5 hours and showed up at a church in Pawling, NY to play an instrument I've never played before for a professional recording. The instrument in question, pictured below, is over 100 years old.

From Thomas Coates Recording

This horn is tuned 'high pitch'. At the time there was some disagreement on what frequency to tune instruments to. The music we recorded was all tuned to A = 452, which gives it a very interesting sound (A is usually 440 or 441 in modern orchestras). If you check out the rest of the pictures in the link above you will see that it has a strange pigtail. This can be replaced with a elbow to convert it from a rear-facing 'field' configuration to an upright 'concert' configuration. I played it rear facing which meant I had my very own microphone!

I took a few qik.com videos including this one which has pretty good sound quality. Most of the others are too poor to link to but you can see them all if you dig around. We played for 45 minutes to an hour at a time and then took 15 minute breaks, taking each song section by section until everyone was at least satisfied they got a few good takes.