ok follow up question: what's the ideal number of horns to have integrated with a full orchestra?
i gave this some serious thought. its the most important question in the world to me. ok so schoenberg's guerre-lieder has 10 horns which really lent strength behind everything However i didnt feel like it was very "horn forward"... vs mahler 4 has only 4 hours and yet it Does feel horn forward (to me). aka i can hear it clear as a bell and it has solos i love etc. this could be my own mahler bias tweaking my perception but anyway what i want to say is that the way the horn is used is more important to me than how many there are. which can also of course be influenced by the conductor and what they are bringing out. and of course what the listener is listening to... 🤡
anyway all that to say i dont much care how many there are as long as they're the star of the show. but then again i do get really excited when im watching a recording of a piece and i see the horn section is absolutely loaded up. since that is usually a symptom of the composer wanting to bring it forward 📯🩷











