Orchestration Quick Question

[nmitchell076]

(Skip to Paragraph 3 if you don't care about the introduction)

Okay, so I recently bought the Gershwin Facsimile Edition of the (Ferde Grofe's) original orchestration of Rhapsody in Blue and (mainly because of the illegibility of some of the pages) have been attempting to punch the whole thing into Finale.  I figured in doing so I could learn some Orchestration.

Another purchase I made was the miniature full score of the Concerto in F (since I'm preparing that one for a competition this December) and was doing basically the same thing (just to get an idea of what sort of colors he might have been going for in certain spots, etc.) and I noticed something strange in both scores.

(QUESTION)

For some reason, in both of these scores (both of which are primarily in F major and related keys), the French Horns remain in a key signature with no sharps or flats.  I understand this for passages in F major or D minor, but no matter what key the rest of the instruments are in, the French Horns remain with the neutral key signature and the notes are adjusted with accidentals to bring them into key. In contrast, the English Horns (also in F) change keys with the rest of the orchestra.

So I'm confused, is this just a discrepancy that Gershwin and Grofe have used in these works for no apparent reason? Or is keeping the French Horns in a key without sharps and flats the norm when orchestrating?

[mikey6]

If you look through any other score, this will be the same.  Horns don't use key signatures.  Before the standard F horns, composers used to write for the horn in the key of C, no matter what the key of the piece - If the piece was in in Eb, they would use Horns in Eb (play a C, sound and Eb) and so on.

[Bob]

I never noticed.  I thought horns were written like any other instrument.  At least that's what I'm familiar with.  Weird. 

If the older style is to have the horns written out in C, Gershwin may have been copying from something -- I heard he got a "how to write a concerto" book for Concerto in F and used that book to help him write.  It could be he did the same for horn writing.  And if the book is older or something he studied was older, that might make sense.