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Re: Other Instruments

The idea of using french horns in bands certainly seems to have been around for
a long time. I remember when I was at college we even had an orchestral brass
brass band. There were some phenomenal players in it but it never really sounded
like a brass band. Even the euphs and Baritones were played by trombone players
and so, with one notable exception,sounded more like trombones than euphs and
baritones.

So I still come back to asking Is there really any good reason to put french
horns into a band.

I can think of lots of reasons NOT to -both musical and pragmatic.

Musical.

The timbre is so different that there is absolutely no way that a blend could be
achieved between tenor horns and French horns.

The vibrato wgich can be achieved on a french horn can at the lips of a very
good player be a beautiful sound but it is so reminiscent of one country at one
time that it would be completely out of place in aBrass Band.

If one were to import a choir of French horns into a band as well as tenor and
baritones you would need a significant number. Blend between the two families of
instruments is almost impossible but finding 4 or 5 French horn players who
could play as nimbly as the average championship sectiopn horn player out side
the realms of pros would be very difficult.

Pragmatic.

The French Horn is technically far more prone to splits than the tenor horn. i'm
trying to avoid saying that it is a more difficult instrument but there are so
many things that are so different.  that it would almost make more sense to
include saxophones in a brass band than French horns. To start with a good
French horn player has a useable range of over three and a half octaves. And if
we include low grunts and high squeaks done in extremis the range is
approaching five octaves. The problem that this presents is that the basic
character of this sound changes very much over the range. Although the tenor
horn is not completely immune form this there is no doubt that in writing
sectionally these changes in timbre through the range would make the two
families of instruments very unhappy bedfellows.


No-there is no doubt that it is a particularly silly idea.

However I do feel strongly that it is more helpful to discuss this matter in the
terms that I have outlined above rather than resorting to abuse. I feel this
particularly strongly as, although having played trombone and euph in Brass
Bands and conducted and composing for them I have recently switched my main
instrument to French Horn, The conversion to get to the point where I am not
ashamed of the sound that comes out of the bell has taken about 4 years of
practicing 2 - 3 hours a day. But it has been worth it!. This isn't really the
time or place to discuss the reasons for this but I can say that strangely
enough I have actually gained in respect for the tenor horn as a result of this
swap.  Why . Well The French Horn is as incapable of providing an appropriate
sound in a brass band as a tenor horn is of providing the appropriate sound in
an oechestra. End of story!!!! Unless one is prepared to rubbish orchestras per
se or Brass Bnads per se any condemnation of either instrument is both
irrelevant and actually says more about the person doing the condemning than it
does about the instrument.

All the best


Steve Watkins





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