Back in 2008, the British journalist Jasper Rees wrote a charming book called (in the U.S.) “A Devil to Play,” the funny story about his quest to play a Mozart concerto on the French horn — an instrument officially known these days simply as “horn,” with the Parisian taint removed. Those of us who’ve played the instrument know that its upside — a golden, rich tone that adds a special color to almost any music — is often difficult to reach through all the downsides, which include cracked notes, bad intonation and less-than-persuasive passagework. But as Rees says, all the masters of the horn have fallen under the same spell as the journeymen:

“It may be an accident, but once they chance up on the horn, it seems there is no question of a choice, no possibility of turning back. It’s as if there is a call of nature, an atavistic summons. The instrument works its magic.”

This afternoon at Clarke Recital Hall on the University of Miami campus, Festival Miami’s 28th edition gets under way with a lecture by a composer who began his musical career as a horn prodigy. Gunther Schuller, now better-known for his composing and conducting, will be the special focus of the first three days of the festival, which continue Saturday night with a Frost Symphony Orchestra concert and then Sunday night with a Frost Chamber Players concert.

Schuller’s Horn Concerto No. 1 is on Saturday night’s program, played by the fine American hornist Richard Todd, whose own “ceLebrACiOn” is also on the schedule (the acronym hinted at in the title is that of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, for whom Todd wrote his seven-minute work). Two other horn-heavy works, Haydn’s Symphony No. 31 and Richard Strauss’ “Till Eulenspiegel,” round out the evening.

Todd is there for Sunday night’s concert, too, as soloist in Schuller’s Quintet for Horn and Strings, which he will play with the Bergonzi Quartet. The UM resident quartet also does Dvorak’s beautiful String Quintet No. 2 (in G, Op. 77), joined by bassist Brian Powell, and the Chamber Players take on Darius Milhaud’s “La Creation du Monde,” which is not as well-known as it used to be, and that’s true of most music by Milhaud. So, it’s nice to see this well-crafted 20th-century French music make a return.

Like Schuller, Todd also freely mixes other styles into his compositional aesthetic, as a review in the Los Angeles Times by Richard Ginell had it when the piece premiered in 2008:

“Less than seven minutes long, it finds Todd, one of just a handful of jazzers among French hornists, playing good, soulful tunes over a variety of swinging Afro-Cuban grooves and big-band riffing from the trumpets. You could call this Todd’s ‘Cuban Overture,’ with a dash of cinema built in.”

That sounds attractive, and when you call up Todd’s website, you get a sound clip of his impressive jazz playing. Again, that fits in with Schuller, whose advocacy of Third Stream music – a phrase he coined – was a prophetic precursor of the wide-open classical scene we have today, where almost anything goes, even if there’s still a good deal of traditional performance practice going on as well.

Most of all, I’m happy to see the horn be the guest of honor for a couple days. The horn actually has a large and excellent solo repertoire, as well as some of the most treacherous but lovely orchestral solos in the canon. Maybe we don’t think of it that way very often, but in bringing two hornist-composers to Coral Gables to kick off Festival Miami, organizers are reminding us why we should.