The Horn, often called the French Horn, is thought by many to be the most beautiful sounding instrument in the orchestra. Its mellow sound can turn a simple tune into something that both soothes and lifts the spirit. They can also be tremendously powerful and when the whole section plays loudly the sound will break through any orchestral texture. Before the 20th century most people recognised the horn's strong relationship with the hunting horns of the past and composers frequently included rustic hunting-style music for the horns. However in our modern, urbanised times the horn has lost its rural connotations and the traditional style of writing is for us.
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Listen to some horn sounds
Discover what a wide variety of sounds the horn makes by listening to these clips from Philharmonia Orchestra recordings.
clip 1 -
When played loud the horns can sound really brassy as in this exciting example from El Amor Brujo by Manuel de Falla.
clip 2 -
Horns often provide very quiet background support as in this example from The Planets by Holst.
clip 3 -
Hear the contrast between the 'open' and 'stopped' horn sounds half way through this clip from Mahler Symphony No 5.
How the horn is used in the orchestra
Cormac ó hAodáin of the Philharmonia Orchestra discusses general aspects of horn playing in the orchestra:
High and Low Horn Players
The horn is longer than any other brass instrument. Possibly the bass tuba will have a similar length, but the horn is maybe three times as long as a trumpet and twice as long as a trombone. If trumpets or trombones had to play in a similar register to the one we play in, it would be unbelievably high for them. So that´s largely why horn players find a niche for themselves depending on whether they are more comfortable on the lower or the higher register, because the range is actually so big that they usually specialise. The aim of all horn players really should be to try and cover the whole register, and be able to do everything but certainly in the Philharmonia Orchestra, at the standard that I have to play at, I have to do what comes easiest to me, and that is playing in the lower register.
Numbering
In Mozart and Haydn´s day, the orchestra usually used two horns, first and second horns, as a pair. They would almost always play at the same time, very rarely in unison, and usually in octaves or fourths and fifths. In Beethoven´s time (and may be a tiny bit of Schubert), they began to use four horns. In fact, in Beethoven´s Third Symphony, the Eroica, there are three horns, which is a very unusual combination. Usually it´s either two (in the early classical period), or then four (from the late classical period into the romantic period). The four horns are usually numbered, and first and third horn are high horns, and second and fourth are considered low horns. I think the way composers thought of it initially was as two sets of first horns and two sets of second horns.
Fifth Horn
First horns have very sensitive lips, and they´re not big workers, and they like other people to do most of the work so they can save themselves for the big tunes! I'm joking of course, but I think in the way that the orchestras work in
A difficult instrument?
Apart from the very wide range of the instrument I think a major reason that playing the horn is fraught with difficulty is that, particularly in the high register, the natural harmonics of the instrument are very close together, so you have to be extremely accurate when you´re trying to play on one harmonic that you don´t flip onto another harmonic: which is actually what a ´split´ note is. A split note happens when you aim for one harmonic but you aim slightly too high or too low and you hit another harmonic and then you get the one that you wanted.
A bridge between wind and brass
The horn acts as a bridge between the woodwind and the brass sections. The brass are very much a unit within themselves - the trombones, tuba and trumpets act as a unit - and then the woodwinds are a very definite unit as well. I think that the horn section act as a bridge between the two. It´s part of the difficulty of being a horn player that the brass, as a general rule, play in all the loud bits but not in the quiet bits, where the horns will play in the loud bits as well, but then they also play all the quiet bits with the woodwinds. It´s fantastic to be involved in so much of what´s going on in an orchestral piece. We almost always sit with the woodwind section, either behind or to the side of them, whereas the brass are usually quite far away on the other side of the orchestra.