Instrument
French Horn
The brass family's mellowest voice, and its bridge to the woodwinds.
The French horn descends directly from the hunting horn, and still carries some of that ancestry in its long, tightly coiled tubing (often well over 12 feet, wound into a compact circular shape) and in its characteristically mellow, rounded tone - noticeably softer-edged than the trumpet or trombone elsewhere in the brass family.
Why it sounds the way it does
That blending tone is exactly why composers frequently use the horn as a bridge between brass and woodwinds, seating it near the woodwind section in many orchestras and writing horn parts that combine naturally with both groups. Unlike the other brass instruments, the horn's bell points backward, away from the audience, and the player keeps a hand inside it - both of which soften and round off the sound.
The instrument is also notoriously difficult to play accurately - its very long tubing packs many available pitches close together in the overtone series, leaving little margin for error in lip control. Even professional players occasionally "crack" a note, and horn players are famous for their nerves of steel.
The name
Despite the name, the instrument isn't especially French: the English term probably comes from the French hunting horns admired in 17th-century England. In most other languages it's simply called "the horn," and many musicians call it that in English too.
From crooks to valves
For most of its orchestral history the horn had no valves at all: players changed pitch largely by inserting different lengths of tubing (crooks) and by "hand-stopping," partially covering the bell with the right hand to bend the pitch and alter the tone. Valves, added in the 19th century, finally gave the horn a full chromatic range without constant retuning, though many players still keep a hand resting in the bell today, partly out of habit and partly because it still shapes the tone.
Most modern players use a double horn, introduced around the end of the 19th century, which combines horns pitched in F and B-flat in one instrument; a thumb valve switches between them, making the high register safer.
The horn's repertoire
Mozart wrote four horn concertos for his friend Joseph Leutgeb, an early sign of how far the instrument's expressive range had already come even before valves existed - his manuscripts are full of affectionate insults aimed at Leutgeb. Beethoven gave three horns a famous hunting-call trio in the "Eroica" Symphony, and Richard Strauss, whose father was a professional horn player, later gave the instrument some of its most prominent orchestral and concerto writing. In film, the heroic sound of a section of horns has become a staple of adventure scores.
Essential horn music
- Mozart - Horn Concerto No. 4 (with its galloping "hunting" finale).
- Brahms - Horn Trio (1865), for horn, violin, and piano.
- Wagner - Siegfried's horn call, from the Ring.
- Strauss - Horn Concerto No. 1 (1883) and the opening of Till Eulenspiegel.
- Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 5, slow movement.
Where to start listening: the horn solo that opens the second movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 shows the instrument's warm, lyrical solo voice. Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 4 is a good way to hear the instrument as a soloist rather than an ensemble voice.