After the fall of the Roman Empire, when instrumental music had fallen
into disrepute and had been placed under a ban by the church, the art
of playing upon such highly-developed instruments gradually died out
in western Europe. With the disappearance of the civilization and
culture of the Romans, the skilled crafts also gradually vanished, and
the art of making metal pipes of delicate calibre and of bending them
was completely forgotten, and had to be reacquired step by step during
the middle ages from the more enlightened East. The names of the
instruments and representations of them survived in MSS. and monuments
of art, and as long as the West was content to turn to late Roman and
Romano-Christian art for its models, no difficulties were created for
the future archaeologist. By the time the Western races had begun to
express themselves and to develop their own characteristics, in the
11th century, the arts of Persia, Arabia and the Byzantine Empire had
laid their mark upon the West, and confusion of models, and more
especially of names, ensued. The greatest confusion of all was created
by the numerous translations and glosses of the Bible and by the
attempts of miniaturists to illustrate the principal scenes. In
Revelation, for instance (ch. viii.), the seven angels with their
trumpets are diversely represented with long tubas, with curved horns
of various lengths, and with the buisine, busaun or posaune, the
descendant of the buccina.
We know from the colouring used in illuminated MSS., gold and pale
blue, that horns were made of metal early in the middle ages. The
metal was not cast in moulds but hammered into shape.
Viollet-le-Duc[27] reproduces a miniature from a MS. of the end of the
13th century (Paris, Bibliotheque du corps legislatif), in which two
metal-workers are shown hammering two large horns.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Medieval Hunting Horn with the