French horn

The French horn is a lip-blown brass instrument consisting of tubing wrapped into a coiled form. It is generally known in the rest of the world as simply the Horn, or, in other languages, Cor, Corno, etc.

(Public domain image from Websters Dictionary 1911)

History

(FIXME: needs dates and such...should be looked up)

The original French Horns were much simpler than current horns, which consist of complicated tubing and a set of 3 to 5 valves (depending on the type of horn). These early horns were simply brass tubing wound a few times and flared into a larger opening at the end (called the bell of the horn). They evolved from the early hunting horns and, as such, were meant to be played while riding on a horse. The hornist would grip the horn on the piping near the mouthpiece and rest the body of the horn across his arm so that only one hand was needed to play and the other could be free to guide his steed. The only way to change the pitch was to use the natural harmonics of that particular length of tubing by changing the speed at which the lips vibrated against the mouthpiece.

Later, horns became interesting to composers, and were used to invoke and out-of-doors feeling and the idea of the chase. Even in the time of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, however, the horn player (now a part of the early orchestra) still had a much simpler version of the horn; he carried with him a set of crooks, which we curved pieces of tube of different length which could be used to change the length of the horn by removing part of the tubing and inserting a different length piece. The player now held the horn with both hands, holding the tubing near the mouthpiece with one, and putting the other into the bell, which was either rested upon the right knee of the player or the entire horn was lifted into the air. Now the pitch played could be changed in several ways. First the player could change the harmonic series which the instrument as a whole had by removing and inserting different sized crooks into the instrument, changing the length of the horn itself. Less globally, given a particular crook, the vibration of the lips could be varied in speed, thus moving to a different pitch on the given harmonic series. Finally, now that the player had his hand in the bell, the hand became an extension on the length of the horn, and by closing and opening the space available for air to leave the bell, he could bend the pitch to interpolate between the elements of a harmonic series. This interpolation finally made the horn a true melodic instrument, not simply limited to a harmonic series, and some of the great composers started to write concerti for this new instrument. The Mozart Horn Concerti, for example, were written for this type of horn, called natural horn in the modern literature.

In the late nineteenth century, the horn took on new form, as valves were introduced, which allowed the player to switch between crooks without the effort of manually removing one from the horn and inserting a new one. At this same time, the standard horn came to be the horn on the F harmonic series, and there were then three valves added to it. Using these three valves, the player could play all the notes reachable in the horn's range.

To Do:

• Types of horns
  • B-flat horn
  • Double horns
  • Triple horns

• Modern Orchestral Placement
  • The horn section

• Common Ensembles
  • trio
  • quartet

• Muting techinques
  • Stopped horn
  • Natural horn

• Concerti
  • Classical
  • Romantic
  • Modern

• The Orchestral literature
  • Richard Strauss
  • Sight Transposition