Robert Douglass, French Horn player, 1982-2002: a music archive

I am Robert Douglass. I am a former French Horn player. It was in 5th grade, at the age of 10, that I decided what my career would be, and the decision I made then held utter power over my life for decades.

Robert Douglass, French Horn Player, circa 1996

To understand this at all, I must say that I am intensely emotionally connected to music, particularly classical music. From the earliest days to the present, classical music has been able to excite me to the point of jublilation, or invoke such a sense of tragedy and pathos that I might burst into a river of tears. Some of my friends refuse to go to concerts with me because they don't want to sit next to the guy who has lost it, emotionally 😭

I attribute this emotional connection to many things, but the main factor is how deeply I am bound to my father through music. Since my father is also a musician, my involvement and success in music not only allowed me to interact with him in a wonderful and inclusive way, but also formed an important approval and validation feedback channel that I eagerly craved to feed. In other words, I really loved it when Dad was proud of me.

Being a French Horn player unlocked many experiences that would not have come to me otherwise, which was another feedback channel that reinforced my decision. I traveled widely performing music. I went to China, saw much of Europe, performed throughout the United States. My social life revolved around the people I played in bands and orchestras with, not the people I went to high school with. I won awards at competitions, which was meaningful since I was winning neither academic nor athletic awards to fill that space.

But being a French Horn player also had an enormous price attached. As I got more and more involved in the career aspect of being a classical musician, I became boundlessly willing to sacrifice other parts of my life for the sake of "the career". Being a "successful" french horn player became the most important goal that I was pursuing. It pushed out all other goals that I could have had in those years, such as attaining financial security, forming and maintaining meaningful relationships with friends and lovers, developing myself athleticly, keeping up with the changing world and its technology, and many more.

I missed my best friend's wedding for a gig. When my girlfriend visited from overseas for a short, precious time, I took hours out of our days to practice. I amassed enormous student debt over 8 years of college studying a career which held no plausible path for paying it off. And, as a person, I highly filtered my interactions with other people based on whether they were similarly passionate about classical music.

Eventually, I became a "successful" French Horn player. I moved to Germany, had lots of gigs, made some CDs, won an audition for a full-time job in an orchestra (the ultimate dream), and played most of the repertoire that I love so dearly. But I couldn't pay rent, and I had somewhere lost the drive and urge to keep getting better. So I called it quits and switched careers just in time to really enjoy the explosion of the Internet that happened from 2000 onwards. I got lucky.

I give you this long background before presenting these recordings that follow. If you listen to them, that is kind of you, and you might do so to satisfy some curiosity that you have about me based on this story. I do not expect you to hear what I hear, but I will describe my experience of listening to these recordings, decades later, so that you will know why I choose to preserve them.

When I listen to this archive, I hear a truly gorgeous, expressive musical soul who is deeply connected to the medium and to the composers who wrote these glorious pieces. But I also hear how deeply, indelibly flawed the technical execution is. I hear the constant struggle to produce the sounds that the soul is imagining. The difficulties are not just with sound production, but also a temporal fog that sometimes blankets the soul's sense of rhythm and time. I hear sacrifice. I hear pain. And I hear the chorus of missed opportunities that never came to be so that this archive could exist.

It was a privilege to be a French Horn player. The decision was made by a 10-year-old, but once made, I was unwilling to let go of that decision for a very, very long time. Now that I've lived more of my life, I do not regret it. But quitting and moving on was inarguably the right choice to make.

Enjoy the archive. (it is on Audius, Soundcloud, and 3speak.tv as well. I'm listing all here,)

https://audius.co/robertdouglass/album/the-french-horn-archive-of-robert-douglass-73194