The question of what to do after retiring had an easy answer for Doug Hall. He simply broadened his lifelong love affair with the French Horn.
That process happens in an unusual place, in a garage in a quiet El Cajon neighborhood. While horses enjoy suburban life in their barn and corral across the street, Hall is making and repairing French Horns.
The workshop is in the garage of a retired San Diego Symphony violinist. Hall himself played the French horn in the Symphony for 36 years, before retiring a few years ago and becoming the owner of McCracken Horns.
But years before that, he learned to make French horns under the tutelage of George McCracken, a legendary designer and creator of brass instruments.
“It was like working with Leonard Bernstein in a French horn shop. I called George the Stradivarius of French horn making,” Hall said. “I was with George McCracken in Virginia as an apprentice before I came to California, and we built a lot of horns and I learned a lot. He was my teacher, mentor.”
Hall showed us a variety of French horns hanging on a rack. He said one of the simplest ones is called “a core solo. It’s a natural horn. It’s a copy of a French instrument that was made in the 1800s.”
Then he proceeded to blow out a bit of Beethoven for us.
Over the course of several hours we spent with Hall, videographer Carlos Castillo and I learned a lot about French horns.
You’d be forgiven for thinking a French horn is a French horn. But there are actually myriad varieties, using metal bent into gentle curves, valves letting air in and out of here and there.
Hall showed us what makes a “triple horn” a triple horn, describing its many parts. “You can see 3 sets of tubing and it’ll have valve slides, and this is the change valve and this is something that George designed and you’ll have one on this side and one on this side to send the air between this set, this set and then this set. So, they work together.”
Hall’s musical life began in a rather auspicious way; he was a boy soprano with the Washington National Cathedral choristers. Not long after, the young singer had a watershed moment.
“I went to the National Symphony in Constitution Hall, and the horn player stood up and played Till Eulenspiegel, and I was like, oh, I want to do that. And the rest is history,” he said.
Fast forward to Hall’s apprenticeship with George McCracken, and his desire to play, rather than fix and make horns, was stirring. So, he did something that would bring him to California and change his life.
“I missed playing my horn, and I sent a cassette tape to Leonard Bernstein who hired me to be the principal horn of the LA Philharmonic Institute at the Hollywood Bowl,” Hall said.
That was in 1982. The experience led to stints with various orchestras in the west before he finally landed with the San Diego Symphony.
“After a number of auditions for the San Diego Symphony, I won a job as the fourth horn of the San Diego Symphony,” Hall said.
A few years ago, he got a call from a then 92-year old George McCracken, who was ready to retire.
“And I was a little bit shocked because of course you never want something like that to end,” Hall said.
The mentor and mentee worked together again. “And so we designed these horns, and I helped him finish other instruments that he was trying to get done,” Hall said. “And then he said, ‘You got to buy the shop.’ And I'm like, ‘Okay.' And I end up putting it all in a pod, a moving pod, and moved it here. And it was an adventure.”
Now, the adventure continues for this skilled musician steeped in the tradition of the French horn.
“Most musicians are looking for a sound. How can they make the most beautiful sound that they possibly can? Of course, the French horn is one of the most beautiful instruments. It's very romantic,” he said.
George McCracken died in 2024. Now, the desire to keep French horns in the musical mix continues to power the romance between Doug Hall and his beloved instruments – a fulfilling next chapter in the soundtrack of his life.
