Chords for Instrument: Horn

_ _ _ _ _ [Bb] _ _ _
_ _ _ [N] Hello, my name's Katie and I'm one of the two principal horns of the Philharmonia Orchestra.
So I'm going to talk to you about the French horn.
It's in the brass group of orchestral instruments.
Sits on the right hand side, slightly away because we're slightly special.
We're slightly special for a couple of reasons.
I mean fundamentally it's the same because you make that bit of weird buzzing sound with your lips.
We vibrate our lips to create the sound.
That vibration then hits the mouthpiece and then travels through the horn like that.
So it goes from an ugly sound _ _ _ _ to_
Now the horn is quite special in that firstly it's played with the left hand, so the right hand.
That is because a while back before the valves were invented a couple of hundred years ago,
we used to change the note with our hand.
So like this.
_ _ [C] _ _
[D] That doesn't really give you an even tone.
So they added some valves so we can get all the notes without having that fuzzy sound.
Another difference is that it's conical.
So it starts smaller here and winds around and eventually gradually gets bigger until
you get to the bell.
_ [Eb] So that's why it's slightly different to other brass instruments.
It's great fun to play.
One of the things I love most about the French horn is the variety you get.
So in an orchestral situation you can play some beautiful, beautiful quiet tunes, kind
of creeping melodies, very haunting, very romantic.
But also you can get some really exciting moments when the horns come blasting and you
get a bells out bit and it just creates that little bit of extra added excitement.
This is the natural horn.
This was a member of the orchestral family from about, I don't know, 16th century to
17th century or maybe up to 18th century even.
It was before the modern horn had valves.
Over here.
This used to be played with the right hand because there were no valves so you had to
get the notes in between by going. _
_ _ _ _ The natural horn works on the harmonic series which means it can only get a few notes at
a time such as this. _ _ _ _
Like that.
As you get higher the notes get closer together. _ _ _
Like that.
So generally most of the tunes you'll hear will be in that upper octave where you can
get more of the tuneful notes really.
Now it wasn't the most useful of instruments in that you can only get a couple of notes
like that and to get the notes in between you have to cover your hand.
_ _ _ [Bb] Like that.
Another reason it's not so useful is that for every key you have to be in you have to
have a different crook.
So that is one crook.
And _ [N] here are some more.
One per key really.
This is just a selection.
That's not very good.
Firstly they're rather loud.
So as you change it interrupts the orchestral music and also you just have to have them all there.
It's really heavy to carry around.
_ So gradually after time they added valves so you didn't need all of those.
On a normal French horn there are two sides.
An F side and a B flat side.
You change these sides by using this valve, thumb valve here.
Like that.
Now that changes the airflow.
So it all starts going in there and coming out there.
But in between it's all rather complicated.
So there are two sides I was talking about.
The F side and the B flat side.
The F side is tubing of 12 feet long and that's the top level.
So when you have two layers here the longer ones are the F side and the shorter ones are
the B flat side.
Now you can change your mind which one you want by that and also depending on which valve
you press air goes down different tubes here.
So you press the first valve.
It goes round here, through here and then first slide.
Second goes round here, then through here.
Third round there and then through this one, the longest one.
Or any combination of all or both. _
Before valves were invented you couldn't play chromatically.
You could just play the harmonic series which the horn and any brass instrument is based
on or you could play with your hand slightly getting a couple of notes in between.
But now we have the valves we can play chromatically from the very bottom to the very top of our register. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ One of the problems with the French horn is its awkward shape.
So when we want to carry it around the bell gets in the way so you're carrying it at
each side and you whack your leg and bruise your shin, that kind of thing.
People have created an excellent solution to this by having detachable bells.
_ _ [Am] It comes off so you pack it away, goes neatly like that and it's a nice little box. _ _ _ _
_ _ [F] _ [Am] _ [F] _ The role of the French horn player has changed over the years quite a lot.
When we used to only be able to play the harmonic series we just used to be the kind of filling
in the middle or the tonic and dominant.
_ [Bbm] _ _ [F] That [Gm] kind of thing, rather boring, in between notes.
Then gradually as we got to be firstly better with our right hand and as our valves came
up we got the tunes and the melodic beautiful side of the horn started to shine through.
Gustave Mahler was one of the best horn writers in his time and actually maybe of all horn writing ever.
He had some beautiful loud tunes but also some beautiful quiet ones and this is one
of the more melodic pretty ones. _ _
_ _ [Eb] _ _ [D] _ _ [Eb] _ _
[D] _ _ [Em] _ [G] _ _ _ [Gb] _ _
[Gm] _ _ [G] _ _ _ So in the same symphony Mahler also wrote some rather loud bits of the horn and this
is a tutti so there's quite a lot of us playing it so imagine this times about a million.
_ [A] _ _ _ [Am] _ _ _ _
[D] _ Most of the parts we read are in the key of F so we see horn in F written which means
that our C _ actually comes out as an F.
So when we see a scale of C major, _ if you were to play it on the piano that would be
an F major scale.
The reason it's an F was because back in the day when we used crooks it was the crook
which basically had the most appropriate sound so the ones [Eb] which are a bit lower are a bit
waffly and not very clear and the ones which are a bit higher are a bit shrill so there's
a good balance.
To produce a clear start to the note we quite often tongue them so we go, we use our tongue
behind our teeth sometimes through our teeth depending on how long your tongue is and you
just kind of give it a bit of a kick start.
_ _ _ So you can do quite sharp tonguing like _ that which isn't very attractive so we generally
tone it down a bit.
Some people don't use the tongue at all and produce a note just by vibrating their lips
_ [N] _
which gives you a softer articulation.
Unlike other brass instruments we have our hand up the bell so that's kind of a hangover
from when it was a natural horn that's how we used to change the notes.
Nowadays it just kind of keeps that sound which they're all familiar with and we're
all familiar with now.
It's a good way to hold it instead of like that, that looks a bit silly.
Also we can change the tuning so say you're a bit sharp, _ [Fm] you cover over slightly and it
hopefully goes in tune [Em] _ like that so it goes flat or sharp and composers sometimes use
it to kind of create a funny sound.
[Eb] _ [E] _ _ So there are two main composers who spring to mind when I think about people who are
excellent horn writers.
The first from a while back is Mozart.
He had a very good friend called Josef Leutgeb and he wrote four concertos [Eb] for him, one of
which was made very famous by Flanders and Swan which goes a bit like this.
_ _ [Bb] _ _ [Gm] _
Lasts a bit longer than that but you get the idea.
The other one is Richard Strauss who's a bit later on and his father was a horn player
so he probably grew up with the sound of horn floating around the sitting room in the kitchen
that kind of thing so he knew what sounded good and knew what sounded bad.
A good example is Heldenleben which starts on a low B which within the space of about
10 bars goes up to high B so from very low to very high but he knew how to do it.
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