Several months ago I contributed to a fundraising project on Kickstarter created by Jay Anderson, a software engineer and horn player. Anderson’s goal was to create clean, accurate type settings of several dozen public domain works for horn. For more information about his project, follow this link. In short, the project was fully funded, and Anderson delivered a great product with these new editions. The engraving is crisp and clean, and very easy to read. The PDF files display quite well on a tablet device, but I’m also looking forward to the printed and bound volume, which is scheduled for delivery later this year. The collection contains a good bit of the standard solo repertoire, but what interested me the most about Anderson’s project were the pieces I didn’t know. I’ve compiled a list of those works below, along with links to brief bios and copies of the scores on IMSLP. Be aware that these are not the new, and far superior, type settings created by Anderson. While I had heard of a few of the composers on this list, I was not familiar with any of their horn music. While these works probably won’t take the place of Strauss or Mozart in our repertoire, they would make excellent additions to recitals, and I could easily imagine an entire lecture recital or recording project devoted to them (“Forgotten Solo Horn Works from the 19th Century”, or something like that). Because of their relative obscurity, very few of these works have been recorded (one notable exception is Felix Draeseke’s Romanze for Horn and Piano – see the link below). Bravo and thanks to Jay Anderson for making this largely forgotten repertoire more accessible to today’s horn players!

• Alfred Bruneau (1857-1934)
  Romance for Horn and Piano
• Camille Chevillard (1859-1923)
  Allegro
• Felix Draeseke (1835-1913)
  Adagio for Horn and Piano
  Romanze for Horn and Piano  Score  Recording
• Theodore Dubois (1837-1924)
  Cavatine
• Carl Matthias Kudelski  (1805-1877)
  Concertino
• Franz Paul Lachner (1803-1890)
  Introduction et Variations
• Karl Matys (1835-1908)
  Concertpiece Nos. 1-4 for Horn and Piano
  
• Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870)
  Introduction et Rondeau Ecossais