Published in September 2017 at the Brass Arts
1st Prize winner at the Twin Cities Horn Club Composition Competition (2017)
It was premiered by the Twin Cities Horn Club on September 10th 2017
at Woodbury - Peaceful Grove United Methodist Church, 7465 Steeple view Road, Woodbury MN
This piece was composed for a 12 horns ensemble having in mind a broad spectrum of performers and thought to be played by students and amateurs, however it includes also musical content and integrity to honor the professional hornists. This was truly a compositional challenge but being a horn player myself, I thought on the horn and all its wonderful possibilities to give it a great effect with the least effort. As you listen this piece the final result looks difficult, but each part was crafted to be as simple as possible.
There were used two types of orchestration, in the beginning for example the ensemble is used as a large group including spacial effects right-left on bar 1 and left-right-left on the bars 4-5. If this piece is performed in 12 players, the players can fit in a single row in the tipical setting as shown bellow.
For largers settings that require more than one row, please exchange parts so that the first 12 bars can achive the desired spacial effect. For the rest of the piece, most of the time it is orchestrated in 3 quartets.
The difficulty of the 1st quartet (1-4) is moderate, the second (5-8) slightly easier and the last (9-12) considerably easier. The range setting is the traditional 1&3 high horn and 2&4 low horn players.
On the high range parts the horn 1 require a player abble to play a high Bb (optional high C), and an high A for the 3rd horn. As for the bass players horn 4 and 8 are required to play a pedal F. The other parts present a smaller range.
The piece beggins with a 5th horn introspective solo transformed in a duet on the repeat while the other players perform spacial effects.
After the first 2 minutes the mood starts to change, and around letter B, it transforms into an heroique theme. Around letter E it adquires a funky style with written improvisations on 1st and 2nd horn, responses from the 3-8 horns and rythmic horn percussions on the 9-12 horns but most of the horns get contagiated and join the percussions too around letter G.
The tittle of this piece is a word game that can be read both as “born to win”, “born twin”, “b horn twin” or even “b horn to win”. So this piece was born to win the Composition Competition, the twin comes from the Twin Cities Horn Club, and the born can also be transformed in b horn, refering to the german Bb, because most of the piece, specially the fast passages of were thought to be played on Bb horn fingerings. I have included several fingering suggestions to make to make the hard passages, very playable.
The blowing effects on horn 3, 6, 9 and 12 can be more effective if the player sligthly displace the mouthpiece from the lips (ca. 0,5 cm). On the contrary, the blowing effects on horns 8 and 11 should be played with the air going straight into the horn.
Mutes are required for horn 2, 3 and 4.
Ricardo Matosinhos