I began in band
I played French horn in high school. I fell in love with this instrument at an event put on by my school band director, where some music company brought in new instruments for us to admire and possibly try out. I was in fifth grade, ten and a half years old. I loved the French horn’s round shape and shiny golden brass. I especially loved that it was reputed to be hard to play, and that there were not many French horn players, no one that I knew. I didn’t want to play any easy instruments; I was different. I didn’t fit in and I didn’t think I ever would; that was part of my identity. The other girls and boys at the event chose other things, trumpets and drums for the boys, clarinets and flutes for the girls. I think they may have chosen so they could sit together, or because their parents could afford the rental on a clarinet or flute more easily. The French horn cost 3000 dollars, which was out of the question; when the time came for me to play one, the school loaned me one free of charge. But to begin, I used my mother’s cornet.
Someone expressed concern that my lips were too full, too fat to fit effectively into the tiny mouthpiece. Two of my brothers played tuba and one the trombone; I could have done that. But those didn’t seem elegant, to me, and they had already been done. The band director pointed out that Louis Armstrong played trumpet really well, and his lips were fatter than mine. I had no idea who Louis Armstrong was, but I knew I could play a small mouthpiece. I would play it. Besides, my parents already owned a cornet; they didn’t have to go into debt for an instrument.
My mother had been a school band director herself, years ago. In the top of my bedroom closet, in the storage space, sat a trombone, a violin, and a cornet. I had heard the trombone. I saw my youngest brother play the school’s tuba and their Sousaphone. I had held and tried to make noise with the violin. I hated the violin with a passion; it felt like scratching nails on a chalkboard or filing my fingernails, grating and painful. I had a viscerally unpleasant reaction to playing out of tune, and violins were inherently iffy. I liked the round sound of the brass, and the way it had set tones that sounded at intervals, without worrying about exact finger placement. Tuning would be easy.
When I had been playing for a year or so on the cornet, my brother was awarded the John Phillip Sousa award by our band director, Mr. Case, a man I adored. I vowed I would earn that award, too. And I did, eventually, from a different band director. Mr. Case departed for a time, and returned as a school administrator. I asked him once why he switched, since he was an excellent band director. He told me it was for a higher salary, which I reluctantly accepted. I didn’t know then the economics of a small Wyoming school, but yeah, more money was a good thing generally.
