Kathleen Schlesinger

“ The common characteristics which link together these widely different modern families of instruments are: (1) the more or less pronounced conical bore, and (2) the property possessed in a greater or lesser degree of producing the natural sounds by what has been termed overblowing the harmonic overtones. If we follow the evolution of the animal horn throughout the centuries, the ultimate development leads us not to the French horn but to the bugle and tuba. ”

“ Those accustomed to deal with instruments having fixed notes, such as the piano and harp, hardly realize the extreme difficulties which confront both maker and performer in intricate wind instruments such as the horn, on which no sounds can be produced without conscious adjustment of lips and breath, and but few without the additional use of some such contrivance as slide, crook, piston or of the hand in the bell, in the case of the natural or hand horn. ”

“ Thanks to the valve system the performer is able to have the extra lengths of tubing necessary to give the horn a chromatic compass permanently incorporated with the instrument, and at will to connect one or a combination of these lengths with the main tube of the instrument during any interval of time, however short. The three devices, crooks, valves and slides, are in fact all based upon the same principle, that of providing additional length of tubing in order to deepen the pitch of the whole instrument at will and to transpose it into a different key. ”

“ In an open pipe, the wave-length is theoretically equal to the length of the tube. The pitch of the note depends on the frequency per second with which each vibration or complete sound-wave reaches the drum of the ear. The longer the wave the lower the frequency. The velocity of the wave is independent of its length, being solely conditioned by the rate of vibration of the particles composing the conveying medium: while one individual particle performs one complete vibration, the wave advances one wave-length. ”

“ The word “horn” when used by modern English musicians always refers to the French horn.
Modern horns may be divided into three classes: (1) the short horns with wide bore, such as the bugles (q.v.) and the post-horn. (2) The saxhorns (q.v.) , a family of hybrid instruments designed by Adolphe Sax, and resulting from the adaptation of valves and of a cup-shaped mouthpiece to instruments of the calibre of the bugle. The Flügelhorn family is the German equivalent of the saxhorns. The natural scale of instruments of this class comprises the harmonics from the second to the eighth only. ”

“ It is obvious that the present custom of placing the bass notes of the horn on the F clef an octave too low, as is now customary, had not yet been adopted, for in that case the bass horn would in several bars be playing above the tenor.
In 1647 Cardinal Mazarin, wishing to create in France a taste for Italian opera, had procured from Italy an orchestra, singers and mise-en-scène. That he was not entirely successful in making Paris appreciate Italian music is beside the mark; he developed instead a demand for French opera, to which Lulli proved equal. ”

“ We may therefore add this proposition: the rate of vibration of a tube varies as the number of segments into which the vibrating column of air within it is divided. In order to obtain the fundamental, the performer’s lips must be loose and the wind-pressure gentle but steady, so that the exciting current may issue forth in a broad, slow stream. To set in vibration a column of air some 16 or 17 ft. long is a feat of extreme difficulty; that is why it is quite exceptional to find a horn-player who can sound the fundamental on the low C or B♭ basso horns. In the organ, where even a 32 ft. ”

“ The buccina developed directly into the trumpet and trombone during the middle ages, losing no characteristic of importance but the bent form, which was perforce abandoned when the art of bending hollow tubes was lost after the fall of the Roman Empire. The name clung through all the changes in form and locality to the one type, and still remains at the present day in the German Posaune (trombone) . There were four instruments known by the name of cornu among the Romans: (1) the short animal horn used by shepherds; (2) the longer, semicircular horn, used for signals ”

“ The origin of the horn must be sought in remote prehistoric times, when, by breaking off the tip of a short animal horn, one or at best two notes, powerful, rough, unsteady, only barely approximating to definite musical sounds, were obtained. This was undoubtedly the archetype of the History. modern families of brass wind instruments, and from it evolved the trumpet, the bugle and the tuba no less than the horn. ”

“ Valves and slides, being instantaneous in operation, give to the instrument a chromatic compass, whereas crooks merely enable the performer to play in many keys upon one instrument instead of requiring a different instrument for each key. The slide is the oldest of these devices, and probably suggested the crook as a substitute on instruments of conical bore such as the horn. ”

“ It is evident that the greater the tension of the lips, the greater the force of wind required to set them vibrating; therefore the force and velocity of the air must vary with the tension of the lips in order to produce a steady or musical sound. ”

“ The Inventionshorn, although embodying an important principle which has also found its application in all brass wind instruments with valves as a means of correcting defective intonation, did not add to the compass of the horn. At some date before 1762 it would seem that Hampel [72] also discovered the principle on which hand-stopping is founded.
By hand-stopping (Fr. sons bouchés, Ger. gestöpfte Töne) is understood the practice of inserting the hand with palm outstretched and fingers drawn together, forming a long, shallow cup, into the bell of the horn ”

“ The tube, of strictly conical bore, is made in three pieces, the joints being strengthened by means of two rings. The other example is German, and figures in the arms of the city of Frankfort-on-Main. [36] Here in the two opposite corners are two cherubs playing immense cornua. The bore of the instruments (fig. 5) is of a calibre suggestive of the contrabass tuba; the circle formed is of a diameter sufficiently large to accommodate the youthful performer in a sitting posture; the bell is the forerunner of that of the modern saxophone, shaped like a gloxinea; the mouthpiece is cup-shaped. ”

“ The valves, placed upon the U-shaped slides in the centre of the horn, are worked by means of pistons or levers, opening or closing the wind-ways at will, so that when they are in operation the vibrating column of air no longer takes its normal course along the main tube and directly through the slides, but makes a détour through the extra length of tubing before completing its course. Thus the valves, unlike the keys, do not open any communication with the ambient air. ”

“ If the aperture be narrowed without providing a proportional increase of wind-pressure, the harmonic overtone may be heard, but either the intonation will suffer or the intensity of the tone will be reduced, because the force required to set the tenser membrane in vibration is insufficient to give the vibrations the requisite amplitude as well as the frequency. ”

“ If the shocks or vibrations initiated by the lips through the medium of the exciting current be sharper owing to the increased tension of the lips, and at the same time succeed each other with greater velocity, the wave-length breaks up, and two, three or more proportionally shorter complete waves form instead of one, and traverse the pipe within the same space of time, producing sounds proportionally higher by an octave, a twelfth, &c., according to the character of the initiatory disturbance. ”

“ Each sound-wave consists of two half-lengths, one in which the air has been compressed or condensed by the impulse or push, the second in which, the push being spent, the air again dilates or becomes rarefied. ”

“ The earliest orchestral music for the horn occurs in the operas of Cavalli and Cesti, leaders of the Venetian Opera in the 17th century. Already in 1639 Cavalli in his opera Le Nozze de Tito e Pelei (act i. sc. 1) introduced a short scena, “Chiamata alia Caccia” [55] in C major for four horns on a basso Music. continuo. An examination of the scoring in C clefs on the first, second, third and fourth lines shows, by the use of the note = in the bass part and in the second tenor of the 5th harmonic of the series, that the fundamental could have been no other than the 16-ft. C ”

“ If the force expended be excessive, i.e. more than the maximum required to ensure the increased frequency proportional to the increased tension, the superfluous energy must expend itself in increasing the amplitude of the vibrations so that a note of a greater degree of loudness as well as of higher pitch will be produced. ”

“ When, therefore, Franz Schubert states that the method was invented by Hampel, we may take this as indirectly confirming Gerber’s statements. Further confirmation is obtained from the text of a work on the horn written by Heinrich Domnich [77] (b. 1760) , the son of a celebrated horn-player of Würtzburg contemporary with Hampel. Domnich junior settled eventually in Paris, where he was appointed first professor of the horn at the Conservatoire. ”

“ In the same book (pl. ccci.) is another horn, smaller, differing slightly in the disposition of the coils and held like the modern horn in front.
Fig. 6.–Spirally Coiled Horn from Virgil’s Works (1502) , folio cccviii. versa. These horns were not used for hunting but for war in conjunction with the draw-trumpet. Brant could not have imagined these instruments, and must have seen the originals or at least drawings of them; the instruments probably emanated from the famed workshops of Nuremberg, being intended mainly for use in Italy, and had not been generally adopted in Germany. ”

“ Anton Joseph Hampel, by whom these exercises for the horn were written, was a celebrated horn-player, a member of the Orchestra of the Electoral Prince of Saxony. He invented the so-called Inventionshorn. Cf. Neues biog.-hist. Lexicon der Tonkünstler by Gerber, pt. i. col. 493; also Zur Gesch. der Musik u. des Theaters am Hofe zu Dresden, by M. Fürstenau, Bd. ”

“ An announcement of the invention and of a patent granted for the same for ten years, in which Blümel is for the first time associated with Stölzel as co-inventor. See also Caecilia (Mainz, 1835) , Bd. xvii. pp. 73 seq., with illustrations, an excellent article by Gottfried Weber on the valve horn and valve trumpet. ↑ For a very complete exposition of the operation of valves in the horn, and of the mathematical proportions to be observed in construction, see Victor Mahillon’s “Le Cor,” also the article by Gottfried Weber in Caecilia (1835) , to which reference was made above. ”