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French Horn Music and Books

This page is a partial (but regularly updated) list of some of the most valuable music and book resources for French horn players, brass players, and musicians in general. The links in each table take you to SheetMusicPlus, Amazon, or to Woodwind & Brasswind.com to purchase.

If you’re looking for basic exercises to improve tone, lips slurs, scales, or any other technique, head over to my own collection of horn exercises: scales, slurs, long tones, and more – all for free!

If you have any suggestions or thoughts, let me know either in the comments below or use my contact form.

Books

(Music, Peak Performance, Productivity, etc.)

Here you can find all sorts of music and horn-related books! Try searching for the following topics:

Performance
Horn Info
Musicality
Studies

Productivity
Health
Entertainment

Selections with an asterisk (*) are highly recommended.
Put an asterisk in the search bar plus a topic to further refine your search!

entries per page

Search:

Title	Author	Topic	About	Buy
*Peak: Secrets From The New Science of Expertise	Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool	Performance	A book that offers practical ways to get better at any sort of skill – including making music. This book dispels the notion of prodigy or talent, and focuses on ways that anyone can get better at anything.	Amazon
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance	Angela Duckworth	Performance	Similar to “Peak”, this book contains more stories of grit and perserverance rising above innate talent.	Amazon
*Lip Flexibilities for All Instruments	Bai Lin	Studies	These run the gamut from useful to crazy, and many can be modified and extended for horn to challenge your flexibility in different ways.	Amazon SheetMusicPlus
*How to Learn the Alexander Technique	Barbara Conable	Health	Just like “Relaxercise”, this book is an introduction to the famous Alexander Technique.	Amazon SheetMusicPlus
Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything	B.J. Fogg	Productivity	If you’re having trouble getting new habits to “stick”, or getting rid of unproductive habits, B.J. Fogg takes a practical look at avoiding the trap of “willpower” and instead focusing on Behavior Design”	Amazon
Song and Wind	Brian Frederiksen	Entertainment	A biography of maybe the most famous brass musician of all time – Arnold Jacob. A fascinating look into his life, career, and pedagogy.	Amazon
*Deep Work	Cal Newport	Productivity	Look for a way to get hard work done? You need to embrace the idea of Deep Work.
Digital Minimalism	Cal Newport	Productivity	Kind of a “part 2” to Deep Work, Cal looks at how to reduce digital “clutter” to spend your valuable time doing things that matter.	Amazon
A World Without Email	Cal Newport	Productivity	An interesting look at ways to improve efficiency of communication by removing email/messaging apps and replacing them with systems.	Amazon
So Good They Can’t Ignore You	Cal Newport	Productivity	A pushback against the advice to “follow your passion”. Makes a convincing case for being more pragmatic about how you should (and should not) choose a career.	Amazon

Showing 1 to 10 of 57 entries

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French Horn Music

If you’re looking for French horn music, you’ll find it here! This music chart is sorted by type. It’s got:

Etude
Study
Excerpts
Solo
Duet

Trio
Quartet

It’s also sorted by approximate difficulty level:

Beginner
Intermediate

Adv Intermediate
Advanced

You can also search for recommended items for my own personal students, marked with an asterisk (*), search for composers or specific pieces, and combine search parameters.

Selections with an asterisk (*) are highly recommended.
Put an asterisk in the search bar plus a topic to further refine your search!

entries per page

Search:

Title	Composer/Arranger	Type	Difficulty	Description	Buy
*A First Book of Etudes for French Horn	Arthur Goldstein	Etude	Beginner	Simple etudes and tunes in a great range for any beginning horn player	Amazon SheetMusicPlus
*A Second Book of Etudes for French Horn	Arthur Goldstein	Etude	Beginner	More complicated rhythms and an expanded range make this book great for a bit more challenge.	Amazon SheetMusicPlus
*A First Book of Exercises for French Horn	Arthur Goldstein	Etude	Beginner	A great companion to the First Etude books by Goldstein. These focus on establishing good basic playing techniques.	Amazon SheetMusicPlus
First Book of Practical Studies for French Horn	Robert Getchell	Etude	Beginner	A great companion to any beginning band book. In a much better range for a beginning horn player	Amazon SheetMusicPlus
Rubank Elementary Method	Rubank	Etude	Beginner	Basically a beginning band method book. If you have a different one from your band program, don’t worry about this book	SheetMusicPlus WWBW
Pottag-Hovey Method for French Horn, Book 1	Pottag/Hovey	Etude	Beginner	A classic, and still a nice option for young players. Covers lots of fundamentals of playing and music.	SheetMusicPlus
Canadian Brass: Easy Horn Solos	Canadian Brass	Solo	Beginner	A collection of folk and classical tunes arranged for horn and piano. Also includes companion audio with accompaniments to practice (or perform) with.	SheetMusicPlus
*The Horn Collection – Easy to Intermediate Level	Schirmer	Solo	Beginner	A collection of several classical tunes arranged for horn and piano. These are easy to intermediate level.	Amazon SheetMusicPlus WWBW
*A First Book of Solos for French Horn	Arthur Goldstein	Solo	Beginner	Great for young students. Starts VERY easy, and moves logically to more difficult music.	SheetMusicPlus
Going Solo: Horn	Richard Bissel and Arthur Campbell	Solo	Beginner	Original pieces and arrangements. Good for 2nd year players.	SheetMusicPlus

Showing 1 to 10 of 155 entries

This is not a complete list of French horn music for younger students – you can find a lot of other music over at the French horn music result list at SheetMusicPlus.com

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Other Musical Resources

IMSLP.org

The Internation Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) has a large amount of public domain classical music. A list of pieces on IMSLP featuring the horn can be found here.

A word of caution, though. While there are some good things to be found, many of these editions are old, out-of-date, or inaccurate. They are fine to use as an introduction to a piece, but you should be sure to purchase a good edition sooner rather than later!

Horn Orchestral Excerpt Resources

The International Horn Society has taken on the old HornExcerpts.org web page, which you can find right here. This website has a large collection of orchestral excerpts – with the relevant sheet music and several recordings of each excerpt, so you can get a sense of the style (and any traditional variations).
The most comprehensive single resource would probably be The Orchestral Audition Repertoire for Horn: Comprehensive and Unabridged, compiled by David Thompson. It’s not cheap, at almost $100, but it is over 1,000 pages, and complete parts – not just the popular excerpts.
Additionally, I put together a blog entry back in 2020 (during the pandemic) featuring several good orchestral excerpt resources for French horn. You can find that blog entry here.

Other Horn Music Stores

Robert King Music: Now part of Alphonse-Leduc, they have a wide variety of horn music (as well as just about every other ensemble). The website is a bit of a pain to navigate, though.
G. Henle Verlag: A German publisher with some excellent urtext (an edition written to reproduce the original as closely as possible, with minimal editorial editions) editions of Classical and Romantic era horn music. Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Dukas, and others. I linked several Henle editions above – buying these editions from SheetMusic.com has generally faster shipping than buying directly from the publisher.
Thompson Edition: In addition to the above-mentioned orchestral repertoire book, Thompson Edition does have some other music for sale.
RM Williams Publishing: Specializing in new chamber works for horn, this is a good place to find a lot of new works by Paul Basler.
Mountain Peak Music: Wonderful pedagogical musical resources for brass teachers and students.
Robert Ostermeyer Musikedition: A good source for all manner of Classical and Romantic era French horn music. A lot of lesser-known or hard-to-find music is available here. They also have scores for horn concerti as well as offering rental parts for performances.