Nowhere are the considerable performance difficulties of Milton Babbitt's music more evident than in his solo French horn work Around the Horn. Throwing away all traditional notions of the horn's technical capabilities, Babbitt conceived a ten-minute tour de force that presents a colorful exploration of the timbres and gestures possible throughout the entire range of the instrument. Cast in two parts, the work is full of sudden shifts in register and startling juxtapositions of various aggregates, tempi, dynamic levels, and textures. From an aesthetic point of view, Around the Horn leaps from gentle to triumphant, from witty to mundane. Babbitt makes occasional reference to some of the instrument's more "traditional" functions; the result is a surprising number of tonal figures within the work's entirely non-tonal context, lending Around the Horn an almost eerie atmosphere.

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