Looking for a bit of online horn reading for your summer break?

A new (to me, at least) resource on the University of Iowa’s Horn Studio page has a fairly comprehensive list of instruments played by today’s biggest names in horn playing. It doesn’t have every single horn player, of course, but it does cover a wide swath of professional horn players playing today (along with instrument lists of some sections, and some deceased players).

A similar (though a bit more outdated) list of current horn sections across the world can be found over on the International Horn Society’s web page. While some listings have instruments given, this is primarily a listing of section personnel, and not quite as thorough if you’re looking for instrument specifics. You don’t have to be an IHS member to access this information, either.

Unfortunately, the once-massive horn information archive that was taken from the old Horn mailing list and hosted on Hornplayer.net is still mostly MIA. While a few of the discussions have been added on the IHS site, it’s been more than 5 years since the IHS took over for Hornplayer.net, and they are still not finished with the “A” questions. Hopefully, at some point in the near future, this will become a priority, since I remember getting lots of useful information from these discussions back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. It’s certainly a lot easier to navigate and more useful than most of what you find on the Facebook horn group.

Enjoy!