Horn

Early crescent-shaped horns had, by at least the 16th century, become hoop-shaped, ideal for mounted hunters to wear over their shoulders. Horns were first used in opera in Venice in 1639: primitive instruments capable of playing only one key. 'Crooks' were invented about 1703. These metal tubes were added to the horn, allowing another key to sound. Thus, a hornist changing key in mid-movement, even up to Beethoven's day, was a protracted and noisy procedure. Before then, the only way to escape from the basic key without changing grooks was to modify certain notes by placing a fist in the bell, or by ascending to the the top range were available notes were closer together. Realizing this, composers concentrated on the horn's high register and a school of horn virtuosos, many from Bohemia, emerged to play concertos and the breathtakingly high parts in opera and symphony.

Various devices, some of amazing complexity, were tried to make to horn more versatile. The breakthrough came in 1815, when Silesian instrument makers Stolzel and Bluhmel invented a piston valve horn. The double horn arrived in 1865, a design which has been refined to the modern F/B flat horn with four rotary valves.

Midi: Mozart's Horn Concerto No.4 in E flat Major, K.495, 3rd Movement

The horn, the horn, the lusty horn. Is not a thing to laugh to scorn. -- William Shakespeare in As You Like It

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