In memoriam Vincent DeRosa (1920-2022), Horn player extraordinaire

July 29, 2022 1:54 PM

The French Horn player you don't realize you've heard your whole life, Vincent DeRosa is easily the most heard and most influential Horn player ever, with a discography that is simply astonishing, including:

Pioneering work as a jazz sideman with Art Pepper, Stan Kenton, Mel Tormé, Frank Sinatra; movie scores like Days of Wine and Roses (Mancini had DeRosa in mind when he composed his Academy Award-winning theme to the film), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws; and TV themes like The Magnificent Seven, Bonanza, Dallas, Hawaii Five-O, Peter Gunn, Star Trek, The Rockford Files, and The Simpsons.

About his work, composer John Williams said:

"Vince DeRosa's contribution to American music can't be overstated. He was the premier first horn player on virtually every recording to come out of Hollywood for over forty years. He represented the pinnacle of instrumental performance and I can honestly say that what I know about writing for the French horn, I learned from him. DeRosa was an inspiration for at least two generations of composers working in Hollywood and beyond. He is respected world-wide and universally regarded as one of the greatest instrumentalists of his generation. It has been a privilege to have worked with him all these many years."

DeRosa passed away on July 18 at the age of 101.

posted by LooseFilter (13 comments total)

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posted by gauche at 2:06 PM on July 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

A giant.
posted by aiq at 3:00 PM on July 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

I see his presence on The Monkees' recordings is noted in the links; he's on nine songs in that catalog (mostly Davy's). He carries the bridge of Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil's wistful Shades of Grey and is prominent in the horn section of Roger Nichols & Paul Williams' underappreciated Someday Man.
posted by jocelmeow at 3:28 PM on July 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

Everybody loves the mellow sounds of the French horn and the cello.

The horn is particularly hard to master because of 1) The length of the tubing 2) The shape of the mouthpiece--funnel-shaped instead of cup-shaped and 3) The limited number of valve fingerings.

I was a crappy horn player, but it was pretty easy to get a decent chair in a community orchestra, because few people choose such a difficult instrument.

I chose it because the band needed more French horn players, and being the only boy in the flute section in junior high school was not fun for someone who was finding it difficult to master the cis het macho way of life.

Wonderful to see a horn player lauded here.

I switched back to piano because jazz. But I still love the French horn.
posted by kozad at 5:22 PM on July 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

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posted by JoeXIII007 at 6:13 PM on July 29, 2022

Fuck the French Horn.

Sincerely,
A kid who was moved from percussion to FH in 6th grade.
posted by nestor_makhno at 7:42 PM on July 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

This makes me want to buy a French horn now more than ever! I rented one for a while and had a blast. The thing that gets me is the sound comes from everywhere. It's not a highly directional point source like most of the brass, and you'd struggle to make it sound harsh.
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:11 PM on July 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

The thing that gets me is the sound comes from everywhere. It's not a highly directional point source like most of the brass, and you'd struggle to make it sound harsh.

I didn't struggle at all. Played it for 5 years before switching to trombone (my major instrument in music school).

I can produce a good sound on pretty much any instrument, including clarinet, violin, bassoon (can't play more than a note or two on any, but can produce a good tone). But not on French horn.
posted by Brachinus at 4:10 AM on July 30, 2022

I actively played Horn for almost 20 years and absolutely loved it. Consistently great parts, in band or orchestra, a beautiful, resonant sound through all registers (wonderfully large pitch range, too), and plays well in any combination (brass quintet, woodwind quintet, horn choir, horn & strings, jazz band, etc.). Stopped playing because I chose conducting as my active performance pursuit, but still miss it (the thing about playing most wind instruments is that there is no occasional player--you either keep your embouchure in shape to some degree by playing regularly, or your face stops being able to do all that pretty quickly).

Fuck the French Horn.

There's a very technical explanation for why young players struggle with horn moreso than other brass instruments, beyond just the mouthpiece differences, but I don't know how to explain it in a general-access online comment...the short version is that the horn's primary playing range sits an octave higher in the overtone series than it does for other brass instruments, so the partials are much smaller and closer together (in terms of frequency) and thus trickier to navigate; so a developing horn player has to learn some subtlety and control with their embouchure that other brass players don't have to do until their upper register starts developing. Thoughtful instrumental music teachers know this, and often delay starting young players on horn by starting them on trumpet first and then moving over to horn after a year or so; less thoughtful teachers take a percussion kid, put a horn in their hands, and say 'good luck.' (I had the second kind, and almost quit band because I hated sucking at the French Horn when I knew I could be good at music, but then a friend convinced me to try high school band where there was an actual terrific music teacher, who got me some applied lessons on horn, and I learned how to actually play that sucker (and read notation, too!), and everything was different because I finally had an effective megaphone for my musical imagination.)

Back to the post topic, if one pays attention, the sound of the horn is ubiquitous in our entertainment culture, and as a little kid I wanted to play the horn before I even knew what it was, because it was the sound of Indiana Jones and Luke Skywalker and Superman, and that was John Williams, sure, but more specifically it was often Vince DeRosa. Even if I hadn't become a horn player or a musician at all, the sound of his playing inspired my childhood significantly. RIP.
posted by LooseFilter at 7:40 AM on July 30, 2022 [6 favorites]

This makes me want to buy a French horn now more than ever!

Do it! (Recommend a full double horn, Holton H179, Conn 8D and Yamaha YHR-567 are all solid choices)
posted by LooseFilter at 7:44 AM on July 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

📯
posted by adekllny at 3:11 PM on July 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

De Rosa was a first call studio player for decades. He was a truly excellent hornist and a flexible, sensible musician as studio jobs require. Most don’t know that a session for, say, a film score will be sight reading. In my orchestra job I know most of what I am playing months in advance and have plenty of prep time.

Studio players, especially trombonists and reed players, need to have top level skills on several instruments. They aren’t going to get the music ahead of time to study and listen to a recording. There are no recordings. You’re creating the recording.

Many scoring sessions have two or maybe 3 runs through a section. Sometimes after the first readthru the composer may decide to change something and rewrite parts on the spot to be read on the next runthru.

Vince DeRosa did that sort of studio work for 50 years and always at the highest quality. He was a giant.

I have friends who studied with him. He was kind but very exacting in what he wanted in terms of tone, style, and flexibility.
posted by Warren Terra at 11:45 PM on July 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

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posted by hydropsyche at 3:40 AM on July 31, 2022