Low and High Horns in Film Scoring

In spite of the popularity of French Horns in film scoring, many learning composers and orchestrators underestimate how tricky it actually is to play this instrument and overlook things that would make life for your players and your music easier.

Due to the fact that the players constantly need to move between very high harmonics in their overtone series the distance between each harmonic (and the required change of embouchure) becomes really small which makes hitting the right notes on larger intervals very tricky. To help that, Horn players use specific mouth pieces that make it easier to create these higher notes as well as give them a more brilliant sound.

However, the horn is also capable to play very low and has a quite large range. For lower passages, a different mouthpiece does work better.

That is the reason why traditionally horns are being separated into high and low horns. In a classical 4 Horn setup, usually Horns 1 and 3 are the high and Horns 2 and 4 are the low horns. Each group of players plays with specific mouthpieces. Historically speaking these roles were quite strict. You would not write low registers for Horn 1&3 and would not force Horn 2&4 to play in the higher register.

In film scoring this strict approach has been abandoned. Usually you would expect from every session Horn player to be able to play in every register of the Horn. However it is still a good idea to orchestrate with high and low horns in mind.

Session players will still bring different mouthpieces and while it is no problem to ask for all four Horns to play on high heroic lines, whenever you start to write in chords you should stick to the high to low order. So a four part harmony on horns would best be distributed from top to bottom: 1,3,2,4.

In spite of all players being able to play in all registers, the high horns will sound more brilliant in the high register and the low horns will sound more substantial in the low register, so it is wise to use this to your advantage.

In larger horn section it gets a bit tricky. With 6 Horns you might see 1,3,5 to be high and 2,4,6 to be low, but also 1,2,3 high and 4,5,6 low is common. The important thing is to stay consistent throughout a piece or score.

I personally often tend to split a 6 Horn section into 3 note harmony with 2 instruments on each note. In these cases is write for 1/2, 3/4 and 5/6, basically asking for 1,2,3 to be high and 4,5,6 to be low. 

With even more horns this whole idea becomes even more tricky. With 8 horns, splitting into 2 or 4 parts would either be 1/3/5/7 and 2/4/6/8 with two parts or 1/3, 5/7, 2/4, 6/8 with four parts which would be quite easy. However, splitting into uneven numbers of parts would need more complex strategies to a) balance out the chord and b) still use the favourable registers of your high and low horns.

As a side note, the preference of high or low horn is not only based on the choice of mouth piece but also the anatomical properties of your players might favour one or the other. 

There is no specific need to announce which horns to play high and which horns to play low in sessions. Your musicians will figure out themselves which mouthpiece will be most appropriate for them to use and which player plays which Horn part. 

However, as mentioned above, if you stay consistent in your voice distribution, you will get the best results.