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Before a recent faculty meeting, our first of the semester, we were challenged to be ready to share about “One thing in your discipline/area that fills you with pride.”
One thing I’m proud about is the generally even balance between male and female horn players.
My experiences
As I reflect on all my teaching, I believe the students I have taught must be very close to balanced between male and female. In the big picture of the college teaching world today there is a similar faculty split. Arizona is a great example; we have three state universities, and two of the three horn professors are female.
As a player, I can’t remember a horn section I played in regularly that was all male at any point in my life. Honestly, I can hardly think of anything specific I did as a student or as a professional that was all male in terms of horn.
During the entire time I played in The Nashville Symphony, the section was either 3/2 or 2/3 in the male/female split. Currently it is 2 female/3 male. Many professional orchestras in the USA have a similar mix.
We have come a long way
To illustrate more how far we have come, the most recent IHS symposium artist roster was clearly set up to highlight female hornists and hornists of color. The horn world is as diverse a group as any in the classical music world.
Back in the day it was not like this
Of course, years ago horn was a male dominated instrument. That began to break down in the era starting around WWII, some females broke into the professional ranks. Certainly, by the 1970s things were racing toward an essentially even gender balance in the student and amateur horn worlds.
Some notable exceptions to the equality
In some places, things seem to be lagging.
Where things are lagging the most is at the top level of the orchestral world. If you look at major orchestras in the USA for example, there are certainly fewer female horn players than seen in the average music school or community group.
We can do better
Which brings me to the reason I wanted to write this post. One day not long ago I was scrolling through social media and noticed a post showing a very large horn section, and I was struck that it was all male.
It is dumbfounding to me that such a section could even be assembled in 2022. How is this even possible? You would almost have to intentionally be excluding female players, unless the work environment was so toxic that women did not want to work with certain of the males involved. In either case it is a terrible look, and outside the norms of the field today.
That group should have done better. Be sure your groups do better! We can do better, as the French horn is the most gender balanced of all the brass instruments.
