Talk:German horn

Redundant Page

The entire page is unfortunalte redundant as it covers the exact same topics as [French Horn] and should just be linked to [French Horn]. Redxdevil (talk) 14:42, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Unfortunately there is a great deal of debate around this topic and very little consensus. Probably both pages should be combined into an article called "Orchestral Horn," as very few professionals refer to the modern orchestral horn as a French Horn and almost none use German Horn. French vs. German vs. Viennese Horn should likely be relegated to a subsection of this hypothetical page. Regardless, I am hesitant to simply capitulate to those who would rather call it the French Horn as it is both factually incorrect and has not been standard usage for several decades. I'm not well enough versed in Wikipedia procedures to know where to start that proposal though. AsimovtheCat (talk) 21:08, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

Merge Proposal

Resolved

 – The German Horn article will be merged into the French horn article, then a discussion over the name can take place.

I propose merging the article French horn into German horn. These articles are duplicates covering identical topics.Explodingtnt30 (talk) 16:21, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

• Comment What about Horn (instrument)? Perhaps the common info should go there, and shorten the French/German articles accordingly. LizardJr8 (talk) 17:48, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

A key phrase in the German horn article lede is the expression "French horn" is still used colloquially in English for any orchestral horn. Given WP:COMMONNAME, and ngram, and that French horn is linked to 70 other language editions (with the German horn article not linking at all), I suggest that the preferred direction of merge would clear be to French horn. Horn (instrument) is a very broad article, and I think that there is still scope to have orchestral horns discussed separately. Perhaps a new, neutral title might be best, such as Horn (orchestral); there, both the French and German types can be discussed, along with differences in common (colloquial) and technical meanings. I accept that (orchestral) horns are also played in some bands, but I think that that's tolerable, and easily discussed in the lede of a combined article. Klbrain (talk) 09:40, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

@Explodingtnt30 a possibility is that Horn should be the article about the orchestral horn, which French horn, Vienna Horn, and German horn redirect to (or are shorter articles that defer to it, e.g. soprano trombone and trombone), esp. given modern orchestral horns are German, despite being called French, and the recommendation of the International Horn Society; the current Horn article could be "Horn (instrument family)" and some of its content could be included in the History section of the main horn article. — Jon (talk) 11:33, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Support (partial) — after a bit more thought, I support this but we need to do it in several renames:

• "Horn (instrument)" → "Horn (instrument family)" which describes wider Hornbostel-Sachs 423 classifications of essentially any labrosone with a conical bell, with or without valves; this makes room for a sensible "Horn (instrument)" article that covers the modern instrument;
• "German horn" → "Horn (instrument)#German horn" where we can note the origin of the term "German horn" to denote the modern instrument;
• "French horn" → "Horn (instrument)#French horn" and note that we don't really call them "French horns" any more unless it's an historical French instrument with Périnet valves;
• Optionally we could redirect "Vienna horn" and "Natural horn" as well, but these may be different enough to warrant separate articles.

There is a ton of scope to merge, condense, update, deduplicate and rewrite a lot of it, which I'm keen to do some time when I've got euphonium and possibly tuba up to WP:GA. I'm reading the Meucci & Rocchetti tome at the moment, which is full of seriously interesting nuggets. — Jon (talk) 05:49, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

This sounds reasonable. What I would do is move the horn instrument family of Horn (instrument) to something like Horn Instruments and use Horn (instrument) for the merged article of French Horn and German horn. We did the same in german Wiki where we had Horn under its old fashioned term of "Waldhorn" and changed it to "Horn (Instrument)" Redxdevil (talk) 23:03, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

This sounds about right, however after thinking about it, under common name it probably should be under the French Horn article. It is by far the most used name by the general public, even though just Horn is used by Horn players. Perhaps an article could be under the French Horn title with alternate names listed would work best. Explodingtnt30 (talk) 03:22, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

@Explodingtnt30 I'm not sure that's true anymore if we dig into the numbers, and doing that would just exacerbate the incorrect terminology. Jon (talk) 09:41, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Support — How about this: we merge the contents of German horn into the current French horn article now, job done. After that, we can then separately debate the merits or otherwise of renaming the "French horn" article to something else, like "Horn (orchestral)" or similar, since there's no consensus here yet. Besides, the whole German vs. French thing is a distraction anyway, since the history of the valved horn is more about the double and triple horn, and various wraps—Kruspe, Geyer, Knopf—rather than necessarily where they came from. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 05:23, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

I've tagged the articles as having consensus to merge. I agree with Jonathanischoice that right now the next step is to merge the articles, and deciding the titles can be done after. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 00:44, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, sounds good Explodingtnt30 (talk) 03:50, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Just to add some more diseisel to the fire, we could possibly entertain renaming the current disambiguation page Horn → "Horn (disambiguation)" and then using "Horn" for the modern instrument. This would however involve more soul-searching around uses of the word "horn"; would someone looking for "horn" expect a musical instrument, an animal horn, a car horn, a suburb of Hamburg, or a slang term for a telephone? — Jonathanischoice (talk) 12:25, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

References