Today's contextless random-find entry
"Disillusioned by my lion taming defeat, I decided that the time was right to fall back on my secondary passion: the French horn. Due to my abnormal proficiency in the field of tooting, I was quickly snapped up as the primary French hornist for the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (no, not that Vienna, obviously).
Although the French horn is among the smallest of the stately medium-sized instruments (only slightly larger than a rotary harmonica and about the same size as a one-handed cello), it’s one of the most complicated instruments to play. The French horn, like the human circulatory system, is composed of thousands of interconnected brass tubes, roundabouts, mirrors, and switches which supply sound (or blood) to the open end of the device (or, on a human, to a gushing wound).
If you were to uncoil a French horn and lay it out to its full length, it would be over six miles long. Unlike most instruments, the French horn is played by blowing into the big end; since any sound blown into the horn has to wend o’er dell and vale and round Robin Hood’s barn before notes are emitted, there is a twelve-second delay between blowing in the instrument and receiving music from the small end.
This delay can be widened by playing more rapidly. The faster the musician plays, the more slowly the music is produced, which can lead to a vast backlog of stored music within the instrument. This creates both difficulties and benefits for the instrument’s handler. Inexperienced musicians often lose track of the timing of the piece of music they’re playing, because they’re playing several bars ahead of the rest of the orchestra.
The skilled musician, however, can use this delay to his advantage. I was usually able to play the horn rapidly enough that I could be done with most symphonies about half an hour early. After that, I would just suspend my horn from a wire coat hanger and leave. Generally, I would be in the conductor’s lavishly furnished van playing backgammon with one or both of his handsome wives while he was still conducting the final movement (conductors are allowed by law to have either two wives or two houses, but not one of each).
My own arrogance and greed cost me my position in the orchestra, however. Eager to test my limits as an artist, I decided to blow twelve hours of silence followed by a musical performance into the instrument. I calculated my pre-blown playing such that the horn would remain silent until the next night’s performance, and then play its part in the symphony right on schedule. I would suspend the horn from its coat hanger and watch my own deviously post-modern performance from the wings.
The symphony began right on schedule, with my majestic horn blaring away exactly on time. However, only moments into the performance, the horn began to make a sound like a whistling teakettle, getting louder and louder. A shocked murmur ran through the crowd, as the horn began to violently vibrate on its hanger. I had overloaded it!
I rose to my feet to shout a warning to the musicians near the instrument, but it was too late- as I stood, the instrument’s silver speculum, white hot from the strain of the stored music, shot out like a champagne cork and punctured the soft gristle of the conductor’s eyeball. Destroyed by my own hubris, I slunk out of the building, never to return."