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What Makes The French Horn Notoriously Difficult?

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To the unfamiliar, the French horn can be a perplexing instrument. Its body looks like a meticulously-folded brass funnel cake. Its ring can blare alongside piercing trumpets, but it can also be soft, and croon with the flutes and the clarinets. “The horn has the ability to be the chameleon of the brass section,” says Dan Culpepper, the New York Pops’ principal horn player. “That’s the strength in the horn, and that’s why it’s fun to play. You’re not pigeonholed.”

But the mechanics — and history — behind the horn’s incredible range have made the instrument notoriously difficult to master. Playing it is a matter of endurance, and requires pushing steady air through 12- to sometimes nearly 30-feet of tubing, all from a mouthpiece just a few millimeters wide.

The horn’s ancient musical ancestors are the conch shell and shofar, but its unique shape stems from its origins as a hunting horn in Europe. “A really important part of hunting is teamwork, and you need to be able to communicate. Shouting isn’t going to do it, and that’s where the horn comes into play,” explains Dr. Bradley Strauchen-Scherer, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Musical Instruments (the exhibit, which reopened last March, is home to more than 20 horns). Back then, she says, it resembled a brass “hula-hoop,” and could be up to a meter wide.

Nobles and royals, including France’s King Louis XIV, were known for purchasing and using these horns to show off their wealth. That ostentatious reputation propelled the instrument’s value as a collectable, and decorative versions were produced in ceramics, silver, and even glass. (One contemporary example of this: the television show How I Met Your Mother’s infamous blue French horn).

“At that point, the horn had no valves. It’s like the bugle. It could play a whole series of open notes that we produce with our lips,” says Strauchen-Scherer. Highly sophisticated horn calls helped hunters share important information across long distances — they could signal a deer had been located, or, alternatively, that a nearby stag had bolted. “When the horn first comes into the orchestra, it’s usually in works like opera or programmatic pieces that are trying to remind the concert listener of the outdoors.”

It was played much like it is today, by vibrating the lips against each other into the mouthpiece (the particular mouth position is called “embouchure”). That air-powered buzzing travels throughout the instrument’s tubes, and eventually emerges from the horn’s bell as a shimmering clangor.

Like the trumpet or tuba, valve keys (the instrument’s flat buttons) help players adjust the distance the moving air travels without changing one’s embouchure and airflow. The longer the tube, the lower the note (and vice versa). But for the French horn, a steady supply of air and pressing the right keys isn’t always enough to hit the right tone. Especially at the higher end of its range, certain notes can be played with the same valve key combinations, meaning it’s up to the player to maintain the exacting muscle memory and airflow to land a pitch correctly.

“The target is a lot easier to hit on a trumpet, trombone, or tuba. Whereas, on a horn, the notes are a lot closer together, and there is a lot more possibility of cracking something,” says Culpepper. The French horn’s register plays in a higher range of the harmonic series (essentially, the notes that are naturally playable without the use of valves), compared to other brass instruments. At higher pitches, it is incredibly sensitive to even small changes in the position of the mouth and air volume. That’s one of the main causes of so many blunders, and the reason brass players joke that the best way to make a trombone sound like a French horn is to stuff your hand into the bell and miss all your notes.

The French horn’s increasing role in the orchestra eventually inspired several engineering innovations. Before valves were invented in the early 19th century, players carried around several long sets of tubes — called crooks — to extend the length of the instrument, allowing them to switch keys during a performance. In 1897, a German instrument maker realized that two (and eventually three) horns of different lengths, could be incorporated into one instrument, as long as they were connected to the same mouthpiece and bell. Today, using a type of valve called a trigger, double and triple horns allow players to switch between horns in different keys, all layered inside the instrument, with the simple push of the thumb.

Naturally, this evolution added even more tubing, exacerbating another, lesser-known challenge: the accumulation of spit. Playing any brass instrument is a moist process, and in the horn, dribble is frequently lost in its seemingly endless curving piping. If it’s not found and emptied, notes can sound blubbery and harsh, almost like scratches on a vinyl record.

Finally, to land a note perfectly, a horn player must remain conscious of the wide, brassy bell.  Counterintuitively, it faces backward, away from the audience. “We are pointed in the opposite direction, to the back of the orchestra, so what’s behind us is really important,” explains Culpepper. “We have to anticipate the tempo sometimes just because there’s a slight delay.” Meanwhile, the right hand, placed in the bell to hold the instrument up, can also influence pitch. Sometimes, composers will even call for players to stuff the entire hand inside, like a sock-puppet, trapping the air into a muffled buzzy ring.

The instrument’s mechanics make the horn challenging, and, in the case of stray saliva, a bit gross. But understanding the logistics make hearing its glorious sound all the more impressive. “Be aware when you’re listening to a movie, or going to an orchestra concert — listen to the individual instruments, and especially the French horn,” says Culpepper. “It’ll be all over, and in a lot more places than you really think.”


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