French Horn Music Instruments
French Horn Fast Facts
Commonly called the French horn, because it was developed from the trompe de chasse, a type of hunting horn that came into existence in France during the second half of the 17th century. The modern horn is a transposing instrument in F (a tube length chosen for its practicality). Its notes are therefore written out a perfect fifth higher than they sound. It has three valves and a total sounding length (including the valves) of about 17ft (518cm), so the available range is considerable. Interesting orchestral horn parts abound, but the works of Richard Straus, whose father was a horn player, are especially notable – the opening of the symphonic poem Don Juan (1888), for example. Mozart’s four horn concertos give an excellent idea of what horn playing could be in the 18th century, as Strauss’s two concertos (1883 and 1942) do for more recent times.
A Brief History of French Horn Musical Instruments
Horns are a symbol of power and strength as were the horned beasts – elephants, bulls and boars – from which they were first made. At first these horns were used as signaling instruments, principally for hunters of anything from the stag to the hare and the fox. Messages about sightings and killings were conveyed by series of rhythmic codes which gradually became more elaborate and developed into tunes based on the harmonic series. For early theater and opera goers one blast on a horn or two and they know they were in for a merry hunting scene. The shapes and sizes of those early horns varied, but the hoped cor de chasse is no doubt the one from which the orchestral one derives. It is called French by English speaking people because that is its country of origin; it is called plain cor by the French.
The history of the development of the horn from the 17th century onwards can be divided into four main stages, throughout which the objective was to produce a chromatic instrument.
One length of coiled tubing can produce only one
set of harmonics that gapped scale of very unequal temperament. At first
additional lengths of tubing called crooks were used to extend the compass.
By the end of the 18th century there were individual crooks for every
key. Crooks were very impractical on account of having to carry all the
heavy ironmongery about, and also because of having to change crooks mid-music
if there was a change of key or an accidental. Up to this period the sound
of the horn was considered coarse and vulgar. Then something happened
which promoted it ‘at one bound from the stables to the drawing room’.
The French horn is today held with the hand in the bell, but not always
for the purpose of changing the length of the air column. Who invented
the valve horn in the early 19th century is open to question, but the
name Heinrich Stolzel is the one most associated with it. There are two
types of valve used on brass instruments, both with the same function
of opening and closing different lengths of tubing and producing different
sets of harmonics: the piston valve and the rotary. The piston valve is
operated by a finger button which depresses a sort of plunger. The rotary
valve is a disk operated by a finger plate which opens or closed the air
routes. Valves did away with hand stopping but they also did away with
‘elf-like’ sounds and truly brilliant open notes.
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