Get
Sponsored
Scandinavian Lur. Bell points forwards above the head. Used to make a lot of noise in battle. Etruscan Cornu and Roman Bucina the same, but the sound doesn't seem to have been as impressive. None of these could produce more than one or two notes.
Shells and animal horns used for signalling, particularly in hunting. These were gradually replaced by metal instruments which were made longer in order to get more notes to give more complicated signals. As they increased in length, they were coiled up to make them easier to handle and to use on horseback. Known as cor de chasse, trompe de chasse, corno da caccia, jagdhorn or parforce horn. They were only used outdoors.
First known use of horns indoors for special effects in an opera by Rossi. They were used separately from the rest of the orchestra because of tuning problems and also probably because they were played very crudely.
Horns gradually accepted into the orchestra, but still usually only for special effects and often used on their own. Lully uses them in his music for "La Princesse d'Elide". Many aristocrats start to engage horn players in order to keep up with French fashion and send their servants away to learn how to play the "French horn".
Use of the horn spreads widely, particularly to Bohemia (now Czechoslovakia) where many very expert players play in the horn bands and wind bands of rich patrons. In England it becomes very fashionable to have one or two French horn players among the servants of rich people, to play fanfares at dinner time or when travelling and entering buildings. The most famous was a black footman called Cato, who moved from one rich master to another for a "transfer fee" and eventually ended up in the service of the king. It was also very fashionable to hire a horn player and row out in a boat under the arches of London Bridge to hear the echoes. Bach, Handel, Telemann and Vivaldi write many works with important horn parts. Vivaldi only writes 2 concertos for 2 horns - probably due to lack of good players in Italy. Many very difficult concertos written by Bohemians and Austrians (e.g. Knechtl, Graun, Röllig).
Horns start to be made (in Austria and Bohemia) specially for playing in orchestras, i.e. not mainly for hunting. This type of horn is called a Waldhorn, to distinguish it from a hunting horn. It is wider in bore and has a more mellow, less strident sound.
Crooks are developed for horns to put them into different keys. Before this, horns were made in different keys in one piece, so a set of complete instruments was needed to cover all the keys used. For lower keys, 2 systems were used - either several shorter crooks were added to each other to make up the extra length of tubing or one long length of tubing was coiled up. The second system was easier for the player but more expensive as one crook was needed for each key.
Hand stopping "invented" by Hampel, allowing scales and chromatic notes to be played over nearly the whole range of the instrument. Hampel probably did not invent hand stopping but perfected a technique that had been used before by many brass players to correct out of tune harmonics. Horn players divided into two types - Corno secondo (who were expert in the use of hand stopping in the lower register and in big leaps where the harmonics are further apart) and Corno primo (who were expert in the high register where there is not much need for hand stopping). Each type of player used a different mouthpiece (large cup-shaped for corni secondi and small and shallow for corni primi) Concertos were nearly always written for corni secondi, because the music could be more interesting if it did not just involve scales and arpeggios on open harmonics. Bach's solo horn parts are nearly all for corni primi, as they are high and do not need hand stopping. The development of hand stopping changed the way the player held the horn, i.e. resting against the body with the hand in the bell rather than supported on the arm or held with the bell up.
Omnitonic horns developed, incorporating crooks for all keys in one instrument, usually with some sliding mechanism to select the appropriate crook. There were problems with the mechanisms and with air leakage and these instruments do not seem to have had any real influence on the way composers wrote. From 1830 , composers still wrote basically for natural horns, but increasingly added notes only available on horns with one or more valves.
Valves first mentioned in a letter from Stölzel. Blühmel also worked on valves at the same time. They got a patent in 1818 for piston valves.
Vienna piston valves invented. Still in use today in the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
Rotary valves developed by Riedl in Vienna.
Valved horns used more and more. There was some confusion to start with as to how to write for valved horns; some composers (e.g. Wagner in particular) thought that players would use the valves as a quick way of changing crooks but then play as though they had a natural horn, handstopping certain notes. Others (e.g. Schumann) wrote fully chromatic parts from the start. There was initially a lot of reluctance to use valved horns because of the quality of the sound; Brahms always wrote for natural horns as did Berlioz. There were still composers who preferred the purity of tone and the special handstopped effects of natural horns right up to the beginning of the 1900s (e.g. Ravel in the Pavane pour une Infante défunte), but by 1880 most parts were written for valved horns, often with crooks to put them into different keys.
First double horn in F and Bb built by Kruspe. This was developed to give the characteristic warm tone in the middle register and safety in the high register needed for the increasingly difficult parts being written by composers such as Richard Strauss. As with most new developments, there was some resistance to using double horns as the sound on the Bb side was reckoned to be inferior. They were not fully accepted in England or France until after 1945 and the Vienna Philharmonic still uses their own type of single F horn (or a special F/F alto instrument for very high parts).
Narrow bore "French" instruments gradually replaced by wider bore "German" models to give more weight of sound in the orchestra (trombones and tubas also develop along the same lines).
Triple horn in F/Bb/F alto developed by Dick Merewether of Paxman's.
Click here to go back to the Home Page
Up to c.1600
1633
1640 - 1700
1700 - 1800
c.1690
c.1720
c.1740
c.1790 - 1870
1814
1830
1832
1840 - 1880
1898
1900 - 1945
c.1960
(Many thanks to Graham Stroud (and Barry Tuckwell!), without whom this page about the history of the horn would not have been possible)