How to Buy a French Horn

By  DEBORAH SCHMIDT

Composers write for the French horn to show heroics (The Star Wars theme), exude melancholy introspection (Saving Private Ryan), portray the prankster (Till Eulenspiegel), and evoke the out- doors through, for example, the frolic of the hunt (Cesar Franck’s Le Chasseur Maudit), the motion of the river (Smetana’s The Moldau), and the rush of the open air (Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony). The French horn has also been given a starring role by popular artists as diverse as the Beatles, the Who, Duke Ellington, Harry Connick Jr. and Stan Kenton. The regular- 1y played orchestral literature requires the hornist to have a range of four octaves, the same range as a chorus of mixed voices, and to be able to play with the finger dexterity of a cellist, the agility of a clarinetist,

the volume and brightness of a trumpet, and the soft whisper of a flute. Dennis Brain was the first modern-day French horn virtuoso, bringing the horn back to prominence as a solo instrument in the 1940s and SOs. Not only did he revive concertos by Mozart, Haydn, and Strauss, he commissioned many new works for the instrument. This solo tradition continued with artists such as Barry Tuckwell and Hermann Baumann. In the United States, Myron Bloom, Dale Clevenger, James Chambers, Mason Jones and Julie Landsman, among others, have raised the bar for orchestral horn playing.