As a player, Bram wrote, in Sounding Brass, he had an unusual embouchure, “a rather narrow but deep mouthpiece set well into a tightly-drawn smile… The truly extraordinary thing about his playing was the consistent quality of his sound. Whatever the register, whatever the dynamic, the sound itself never varied. Dynamically, even in 1953, he commanded a fortissimo which was nearly unbearable in a sizeable room, but the tone never seemed to distort. It was a remarkably beautiful sound in itself, somehow all ‘centre’ with no rough edges at all, and a peculiar sweet intensity which gave one the impression that every nook and cranny of the tube was producing sound. His attack, when roused, amounted almost to physical assault. Yet at the other end of the scale the ultimate piano never failed to speak, bright and clear. His range? Well, I have heard a fine F from him, out of practice too. Notes below bottom C, he said, were not his business. He made rather a good show of the prelude to Carmen, though…”
1 min. read
Ernest Hall, OBE (1890-1984)
Ernest Hall
Ernest Hall is remembered with affection and admiration by many generations of players and students.
His career began at the age of 14 in a theatre orchestra in Liverpool, his home town. At 22, after two years at the Royal College of Music, he went into the London Symphony Orchestra, becoming principal trumpet in 1924. In 1930 he was appointed first trumpet of the newly founded BBC Symphony Orchestra, where he remained until 1950.
He was Professor of Trumpet at the Royal College of Music from 1924 to 1960 and continued to direct wind repertory classes until 1970. He edited two volumes of Difficult Passages for the Trumpet and other instructional works.
Malcolm Smith, now co-principal trumpet of the LSO, once said of him as a teacher:
He was more interested in musical playing than in technical problems. If those had been enormous I’m not sure he’d have been able to put them right. But he gave you something you wanted to get hold of. After three years of him you could play musically. And he was “hot on transposition". Sometimes I’d want to throw things at him and run out of the room.
Another pupil, Bram Gay, Orchestra Director at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, remembers his indefatigable common sense.
It’s not a new trumpet you need, just more long notes on this one!
Brass Bulletin 49, I / 1985 pages 87–89
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