Is the French Horn the Hardest Instrument to Play?

I can’t say how many times I have heard or read this phrase. The presumption being that because horn players make mistakes and “crack” notes that the instrument is difficult to play.

And almost every time I hear people claim that the French horn is the hardest instrument, I think, “no, not really…” While I would agree that the French horn can be a difficult instrument for beginners to start out with, there is very little in the Horn repetoire that can compare in technical difficulty to something … say, like a Sibelius Violin Concerto.

A few months ago I was teaching beginning band at a local elementary school. Next door to the band class was the beginning orchestra. The orchestra teacher was playing piano accompanying the students in their studies. They were sounding pretty good.

One of the band students asked, “why do the strings sound so much better that we do?” I thought about this for a second. I responded that at least at first, beginning strings sound better as an ensemble because they general play only open strings or first position fingerings and that their instruments are tuned by their teacher.

A beginning wind ensemble is comprised of a variety of instruments from several different families. Each instrument has unique properties that at first, do not blend as easily as a string orchestra.

This aside, the main point that I made to this class was that “good” and “bad” is all about time and perspective. Comparing one instrument’s difficulty level to another is not a simple game of apples and oranges.

The same might be said for tagging the French horn as the “hardest” instrument. In reality, it is no more difficult than learning any other instrument; it is just different. This myth needs to be busted once and for all.