Richard Seraphinoff: Horn Player Injuries, or Making Lemonade

Early on, more than ten years ago, if asked to share the story of my experiences with a brass player injury, my first thought would have been “No Thanks! I didn’t really survive the injury that I experienced, and can’t play horn in any serious, marketable way anymore. Who wants to hear about that? People want inspirational stories about those who did make it through difficult times and came back to play again. They want to hear how to recover, or how to avoid injury from someone who successfully recovered.”      

Ten years later, I look at the whole experience very differently, and even though I now very seldom sit on a stage and play the horn, since I can only play the most easy-going, non-strenuous second horn part of a Haydn or Mozart symphony, and only if it has a limited range and lots of rests, everything that I do professionally has to do with the horn, and may very well be of more use to the horn world than the performing and recording that I did. These things include teaching horn at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, making horns, writing and lecturing about the history of the horn, and even writing a historical novel about – yes, you guessed it – historical horn players. 

There are many different situations that can put a horn player out of business, either temporarily or permanently, the most common being an overuse injury, which most often manifests itself in the form of a stretched or torn muscle in the embouchure. There are many other conditions of the lips, teeth, jaw, respiratory system, fingers, and back pain, etc., that can make playing difficult or impossible. Neurological conditions such as focal dystonia have sidelined instrumentalists of all kinds. There are also injuries from accidents, which was the case for me. As the result of a blow that essentially crushed the left side of my upper lip between the mouthpiece and my teeth while playing, I suffered a torn muscle that didn’t want to heal on its own. The blow didn’t break a tooth, though my front teeth were quite sore, and it hardly broke the skin, but the internal damage to the muscle was such that by trying to continue playing over the next weeks and months, it got worse and worse until I was unable to play at all. And I admit to being a stupid brass player and thinking that it was going to take care of itself. The result was that I finally went to see a specialist for brass player injuries who gave me a series of lip exercises to do away from the horn, and I gradually started to play horn again very gently. I went slowly and took my time, but to no avail, and after a few months, had surgery to fix the torn muscle. In spite of the muscle having been expertly repaired, the result was not what I had hoped for, and to this day I can’t play for more than a few seconds at a time without a burning pain and swelling in the very spot where the injury occurred. I have consulted quite a number of medical professionals who specialize in different areas, but no one has been able to come up with a solution, or even agree on what makes it hurt.

That’s the history part of the story, and now for a guided tour of the inside of my brain and what happened there. For thirty years, starting around the age of twenty, I had the time of my life playing horn, and the majority of it was in the world of historical performance on natural horn with the best period instrument groups around the country. That isn’t to say that it wasn’t a lot of work, and I wasn’t at all immune to the stresses of performance. It always took a great deal of effort to make myself stand up and play the Quoniam of Bach’s Mass in B Minor, or Brandenburg Concerto no. 1, but after setting it into motion, and especially when it was over, there was nothing I would rather do. I loved that rollercoaster ride of the ups and downs of performance, the successes and near successes, and always coming back for more to share the music and see if I could do it better next time. All of a sudden, the ability to do all of that was gone, and with it, a part of my identity. Previously, if someone asked me what I did, I would say without hesitation “I’m a horn player,” and it never occurred to me that if I couldn’t say that, I wouldn’t know what to say. The first year of not being a horn player was the most difficult. I didn’t want to talk about it and take myself out of the performing world, in the hope that it would all come back. That transition was all the more difficult, because for years in our horn department at IU, I was the one who was away playing the most, but at the point of being injured, something else happened that totally freaked out my brain. An older colleague in our department retired, and Jeff Nelsen joined our faculty at IU. This was immediately daunting in the extreme – I suddenly couldn’t play, and my new colleague was a world-class horn soloist! In fact, when we first met, I had big black stitches in my upper lip, which was a visible affirmation, in my mind, that my identity as a horn player was gone. If it hadn’t been for Jeff’s support, and the fact that we became best friends very soon, with mutual respect for each other’s skills, knowledge, and teaching abilities, it would have been an even more difficult time. 

During that time, I started to question whether I was still qualified to teach horn to our talented IU horn students, and if I had anything left at all to offer to the world of music and horn playing. It took a while, but as I continued to do everything that I did, except playing, it very gradually dawned on me that it was possible to teach lessons without playing, and to just occasionally play a short duet or do some tuning of intervals with students, while not being able to play the solos and orchestra excerpts that they were studying. I learned that my knowledge of having played them in the past was enough to help them to learn the pieces, and my knowledge of the mechanics of horn playing, good sound, clean playing, phrasing, expression, and repertoire had not gone away, and could be put into words as easily as they had been demonstrated with sound before. I also learned that as a horn maker I was still able, with my minimal ability to play, to test and properly evaluate any horn that I had made. I can also depend on other players for feedback on the playing qualities of an instrument.

After a while (a good long while) of getting used to these new circumstances and convincing myself, with lots of encouragement from everyone around me, that I still had just as much to offer as a teacher, I began to see some actual positive aspects to this new relationship with the horn and music. Being a mentor to my students became more important than ever, and much of the time and energy that I had put into working toward my own success could be channeled into working toward their success. I was also there more often, and could create a regular and consistent lesson schedule, rather than always catching up on lessons missed when I was away. I had more time to do things that I hadn’t done before, like writing warm-up and routine exercises and an organized practice guide for my studio, as well as designing interesting projects for my class to do. We now do class recitals with themes each semester, such as the solos for horn and piano of Gallay, Franz Strauss, Alec Wilder, Jan Koetsier, or Bernhard Heiden’s horn ensemble music, or a concert in which students played new pieces by IU composition students written for each of them. 

On the scholarly side, I’ve done a lot of writing in the last ten years that I definitely would not have done, including a book with Linda Dempf (music librarian at the College of New Jersey) entitled “Guide to the Solo Horn Repertoire” and published by Indiana University Press. I’ve written articles for the International Horn Society and Historic Brass Society, and papers presented at conferences in the United States and Europe on historical performance practice and instrument design. With two other instrument making colleagues, we present week-long instrument making courses in Bloomington and in two European locations each summer in which students build a simple baroque trumpet using 17th century tools and methods. It was also since ceasing to perform that I started making my first attempts at writing fiction.

I have been able to put more time and research into instrument making, and over the past ten years, have developed new models of historical horns that would not have happened if I had been busy performing. Consistent time in the workshop has made it possible to train more students in instrument making, which has resulted in a few former apprentices who are making and repairing instruments professionally. 

Another benefit of my experiences with injuries is that I have talked with just about every expert in the field, and read much on the subject. Now when one of our roughly 150 brass students at IU experiences an injury of any sort, I can often give them advice about how to survive it. My first thoughts to them are:

 - You’re probably doing too many hours of playing in the day. Learn to be efficient and get more done with the instrument on your face fewer hours. 

- Rest is the number one thing that heals an embouchure injury. 

“Silver linings in dark clouds are not necessarily sitting there waiting to be found – they often have to be created.”

- Make sure that the mechanics of your embouchure stay intact and you are doing things correctly and easily. 

- Pain means that you are doing things that you shouldn’t be doing. 

With the things I’ve learned along the way, I hope that I have been able to help some IU brass students recover and avoid hurting themselves permanently over the past ten years. 

Silver linings in dark clouds are not necessarily sitting there waiting to be found – they often have to be created. I’m very thankful that the material to make that silver lining was there already in the things that I had been doing all along, and that there were a lot of people around me who were encouraging and who convinced me that life wasn’t over when horn playing stopped. The transition was one of changing my focus and figuring how I was going to leave a lasting legacy of teaching, research, writing, and instrument making, while no longer performing.   

To all who have experienced a set-back physically, my advice is to do everything you can to overcome the difficulty and not give up trying to find answers and solutions; but if it becomes clear that this is the “new normal,” find out how you can adapt to the new situation and if there are related things that you can still do to contribute to the world of music. And for those students who are training to be performers, take good care of yourself, practice and perform intelligently, but at the same time, think of some other baskets into which you can put your eggs. Develop other skills and interests in the musical world and outside of it, so that if the unthinkable happens, and you are out of business as a performer, you will still have a lot to offer.

Richard Seraphinoff is Professor of Horn at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, maker of historical horn reproductions, and writer on the history and literature of the horn.