The horn must have been well known at this time in England, for there
are 17th-century horns of English manufacture still extant, one, for
instance, in the collection of the Rev. F. W. Galpin by William Bull,
dated 1699.[52] In 1701 Clagget[53] invented a contrivance by means of
which two horns in different keys could be coupled and played by means
of one mouthpiece, a valve or key opening the passage into the airways
of one or the other of these horns at the will of the performer.
Another horn of English manufacture about 1700 was exhibited at the
South Kensington Museum in 1872, bearing No. 337 in the catalogue, in
which unfortunately no details are given. Enough examples have been
quoted to show that, judging from the specimens extant, Germany was
not behind France, if not actually ahead, in the manufacture of early
natural horns. Data are wanting concerning the instruments of Italy;
they would probably prove to be the earliest of all, and as brass
wind instruments are perishable are perhaps for that very reason
unrepresented at the present day.
The horn at the present stage in its evolution was also well
represented among the illustrations of the musical literature in
Germany[54] during the first half of the 18th century, and references
to it are frequent.
Music.
The earliest orchestral music for the horn occurs in the operas of
Cavalli and Cesti, leaders of the Venetian Opera in the 17th century.
Already in 1639 Cavalli in his opera _Le Nozze de Tito e Pelei_ (act
i. sc. 1) introduced a short scena, "Chiamata alla Caccia"[55] in C
major for four horns on a basso continuo. An examination of the
scoring in C clefs on the first, second, third and fourth lines shows,
by the use of the note [music notes] in the bass part and in the
second tenor of [music notes] the 5th harmonic of the series, that the
fundamental could have been no other than the 16-ft. C; the highest
note in the treble part is [music notes], the 12th harmonic of the
8-ft. alto horn in C, now obsolete. It is clear therefore that horns
with tubing respectively 8 ft. and 16 ft. long, which must have been
disposed in coils as in the present day, were in use in Italy before
the middle of the 17th century, fifty years before the date of their
reputed invention in Paris.
In the same opera, act i. sc. 4, "Coro di Cavalieri" is a stirring
call to arms of elemental grandeur, in which occur the words: "all'
armi, o la guerrieri corni e tamburi e trombe, ogni campo ogni canto,
armi rimbombe." There are above the voice parts four staves with
treble and C clef signatures above the bass, and, although no
instruments are indicated, the music written thereon, which alternates
with the voices but does not accompany them, can have been intended
for no instruments but trumpets and horns, thus carrying out the
indications in the text. The horn is here once again put to the same
use as the Roman cornu, and associated in like manner with the
descendant of the buccina in a call to arms. It may be purely a
coincidence that the early illustration of a horn with the tubing
wound in coils round the body in the Strassburg Virgil mentioned above
was put to the same use and associated with the same instrument.
Cesti's operas likewise contain many passages evidently intended for
the horn, although the instruments are not specified in the score,
which was nothing unusual at the time. Lulli composed the incidental
music for a ballet, _La Princesse d'Elide_, which formed part of
Moliere's divertissement, "Les plaisirs de l'ile enchantee," written
for a great festival at Versailles on the 7th of May 1664. A copy of
the music for this ballet, made about 1680, is preserved in the
library of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The music contains a
piece entitled "Les violons et les cors de chasse," written in the
same style as Cavalli's scena; there are but two staves, and on both
the music is characteristic of the horn, with which the violins would
play in unison. The piece finishes on B[flat][music notes] and to play
this note as the second of the harmonic series, the fundamental not
being obtainable, the tube of the horn must have been over 17 ft.
long. Among Philidor's copies of Lulli's ballets preserved in the
library of the Paris Conservatoire of Music (vol. xlvii., p. 61) is a
more complete copy of the above. The second number is an "Air des
valets de chiens et des chasseurs avec les cors de chasse," which is
substantially the same as the one in the Fitzwilliam Museum, but set
for five horns in B[flat]. Here again the use of D, the fifth note of
the harmonic series, indicates that the fundamental was [music notes]
a tone lower than the C horn scored for by Cavalli, and known as
B[flat] basso. Victor Mahillon[56] considers that the music reveals
the fact that it was written for horns in B[flat], 35 degrees
(chromatic semitones) above 32-ft. C, or [music notes] having a
wave-length of 1.475 m. To this statement it is not possible to
subscribe. The quintette required four horns in B[flat] over 8 ft.
long and one B[flat] basso about 17 ft. long. It is obvious that the
present custom of placing the bass notes of the horn on the F clef an
octave too low, as is now customary, had not yet been adopted, for in
that case the bass horn would in several bars be playing above the
tenor.
In 1647 Cardinal Mazarin, wishing to create in France a taste for
Italian opera, had procured from Italy an orchestra, singers and
mise-en-scene. That he was not entirely successful in making Paris
appreciate Italian music is beside the mark; he developed instead a
demand for French opera, to which Lulli proved equal. The great
similarity in the style of the horn _scene_ by Cavalli and Lulli may
perhaps provide a clue to the mysterious and sudden apparition of the
natural horn in France, where nothing was known of the hybrid
instrument thirty years before, when Mersenne[57] wrote his careful
treatise on musical instruments.
The orchestral horn had been introduced from Italy. It is not
difficult to understand how the horn came to be called the _French_
horn in England; the term only appears after Gerber and other writers
had repeated the story of Count Sporken introducing the musical horn
into Bohemia.[58] By this time the firm of Raoux, established in Paris
a hundred years, had won for itself full recognition of its high
standard of workmanship in the making of horns.
This use of the horn by Lulli in the one ballet seems to be an
isolated instance; no other has yet been quoted. The introduction of
the natural horn into the orchestra of the French opera did not occur
until much later in 1735 in Andre Campra's _Achille et Deidamie_, and
then only in a fanfare. In the meantime the horn had already won a
place in most of the rising opera houses and ducal orchestras[59] of
Germany, and had been introduced by Handel into the orchestra in
London in his _Water-music_ composed in honour of George I.
Although the Italians were undoubtedly the first to introduce the horn
into the orchestra, it figured at first only as the characteristic
instrument of the chase, suggesting and accompanying hunting scenes or
calls to arms. For a more independent use of the horn in the orchestra
we must turn to Germany. Reinhard Keiser, the founder of German opera,
at the end of the 17th century in Hamburg, introduced two horns in C
into the opening chorus of his opera _Octavia_ in 1705, where the
horns are added to the string quartette and the oboes; they play again
in act i. sc. 3, and in act ii. sc. 6 and 9. The compass used by the
composer for the horns in C alto is the following:--
[Illustration: Music notes.]
Wilhelm Kleefeld draws attention to the characterization, which
differed in the three acts. In _Henrico_ (1711), in _Diana_ (1712) and
in _L'Inganno Fedele_ (1714) F horns were used. This called forth from
Mattheson[60] his much-quoted eulogium, the earliest description of
the orchestral horn: "Die lieblich pompeusen Waldhorner sind bei
itziger Zeit sehr _en vogue_ kommen, weil sie theils nicht so rude von
Natur sind als die Trompeten, teils auch weil sie mit mehr _Facilite_
konnen tractiret werden. Die brauchbarsten haben F und mit den
Trompeten aus dem C gleichen _Ambitum_. Sie klingen auch dicker und
fullen besser aus als die ubertaubende und schreyende Clarinen, weil
sie um eine ganze quinte tiefer stehen."
Lotti in his _Giove in Argo_, given in Dresden, 1717, scored for two
horns in C, writing for them soli in the aria for tenor[61] (act iii.
sc. 1). Examples of C. H. Graun's[62] scoring for horns in F and G
respectively in _Polydorus_ (1708-1729) and in _Iphigenia_ (1731) show
the complete emancipation of the instrument from its original
limitations; it serves not only as melody instrument but also to
enrich the harmony and emphasize the rhythm. A comparison of the early
scores of Cavalli and Lulli with those of Handel's
_Wasserfahrtmusik_[63] (1717) and of _Radamisto_, performed in London
in 1720, shows the rapid progress made by the horn, even at a time
when its technique was still necessarily imperfect.
While Bach was conductor of the prince of Anhalt-Cothen's orchestra
(1717-1723), it is probable that horns in several keys were used. In
Dresden two Bohemian horn-players, Johann Adalbert Fischer and Franz
Adam Samm, were added to the court orchestra in 1711.[64] In Vienna
the addition is stated to have taken place in 1712 at the opera.[65]
It is probable that as in Paris so in Vienna there were solitary
instances in which the horn was heard in opera without attracting the
attention of musicians long before 1712, for instance in Cesti's _Il
Pomo d'Oro_, printed in Vienna in 1667 and 1668 and performed for the
wedding ceremonies of Kaiser Leopold and Margareta, infanta of Spain.
A horn in E (former F pitch) in the museum of the Brussels
conservatoire bears the inscription "Machts Michael Leicham Schneider
in Wien, 1713."[66] Furstenau[67] gives a further list of operas in
Vienna during the first two decades of the 18th century.
It will be well before the next stage in the evolution is approached
to consider the compass of the natural horn. The pedal octave from the
fundamental to the 2nd harmonic was altogether wanting; the next
octave contained only the 2nd and 3rd harmonics or the octave and its
fifth; in the third octave, the 8ve, its major 3rd, 5th and minor 7th;
in the fourth octave, a diatonic scale with a few accidentals was
possible. It will be seen that the compass was very limited on any
individual horn, but by grouping horns in different keys, or by
changing the crooks, command was gained by the composer over a larger
number of open notes.
An important period in the development of the horn has now been
reached. Anton Joseph Hampel is generally credited[68] with the
innovation of adapting the crooks to the middle of the body of the
horn instead of near the mouthpiece, which greatly improved the
quality of the notes obtained by means of the crooks. The crooks
fitted into the two branches of U-shaped tubes, thus forming slides
which acted as compensators. Hampel's _Inventionshorn_, as it is
called in Germany (Fr. _cor harmonique_), is said to date from
1753,[69] the first instrument having been made for him by Johann
Werner, a brass instrument-maker of Dresden. The same invention is
also attributed to Haltenhof of Hanau.[70] Others again mention
Michael Wogel[71] of Carlsruhe and Rastadt, probably confusing his
adaptation of the _Invention_ or _Maschine_, as the slide contrivance
was called in Germany, to the trumpet in 1780. The Inventionshorn,
although embodying an important principle which has also found its
application in all brass wind instruments with valves as a means of
correcting defective intonation, did not add to the compass of the
horn. At some date before 1762 it would seem that Hampel[72] also
discovered the principle on which hand-stopping is founded.
By hand-stopping (Fr. _sons bouches_, Ger. _gestopfte Tone_) is
understood the practice of inserting the hand with palm outstretched
and fingers drawn together, forming a long, shallow cup, into the
bell of the horn; the effect is similar to that produced in wood wind
instruments, termed _d'amore_, by the pear-shaped bell with a narrow
opening, i.e. a veiled mysterious quality, and, according to the
arrangement of the hand and fingers (which cannot be taught
theoretically, being inter-dependent on other acoustic conditions), a
drop in pitch which enables the performer merely to correct the faulty
intonation of difficult harmonics or to lower the pitch exactly a
semitone or even a full tone by inserting the hand well up the bore of
the bell. J. Frohlich[73] gives drawings of the two principal
positions of the hand in the horn. The same phenomenon may be observed
in the flute by closing all the holes, so that the fundamental note of
the pipe speaks, and then gradually bringing the palm of the hand
nearer the open end of the flute. As a probable explanation may be
offered the following suggestion. The partial closing of the opening
of the bell removes the boundary of ambient air, which determines the
ventral segment of the half wave-length some distance beyond the
normal length; this boundary always lies _beyond_ the end of the tube,
thus accounting for the discrepancy between the theoretical length of
the air-column and the practical length actually given to the
tube.[74] Hampel is also said to have been the first to apply the
_sordini_[75] (Fr. _sourdine_) or mute, already in use in the 17th
century for the trumpet,[76] to the horn. The original mute did not
affect the pitch of the instrument, but only the tone, and when
properly constructed may be used with the valve horn to produce the
mysterious veiled quality of the hand-stopped notes. No satisfactory
scientific explanation of the modifications in the pitch effected by
the partial obstruction of the bell, whether by the hand or by means
of certain mechanical devices, has as yet been offered. D. J. Blaikley
suggests that in cases when the effect of hand-stopping appears to be
to raise the pitch of the notes of the harmonic series, the real
result of any contraction of the bell mouth (as by the insertion of
the hand) is always a flattening of pitch accompanied by the
introduction of a distorted or inharmonic scale, of such a character
that for instance, the _c_, _d_, _e_, or 8th, 9th and 10th notes of
the original harmonic scale become not the c[sharp] d[sharp] e[sharp]
of a fundamental raised a semitone, but D[flat], E[flat], and f due to
the 9th, 10th and 11th notes of a disturbed or distorted scale having
a fundamental lower than that of the normal horn.
[Illustration: Music notes.]
With regard to the discovery of this method of obtaining a chromatic
compass for the horn, which rendered the instrument very popular with
composers, instrumentalists and the public, and procured for it a
generally accredited position in the orchestra, the following is the
sum of evidence at present available. In the Kgl. offentliche
Bibliothek, Dresden, is preserved, amongst the musical MSS., an
autograph volume of 152 pages, entitled _Lection pro Cornui_, bearing
the signature A. J. H[ampel], the name being filled in in pencil by a
different hand. There is no introduction, no letterpress of any
description belonging to the MS. method for the horn, nor is any book
or pamphlet explaining the Inventionshorn or the method of
hand-stopping by Hampel extant or known to have existed. He has
apparently left no record of his accomplishment. A few typical
extracts copied and selected from the original MS., courteously
communicated by the director of the Royal Library, Hofrath, P. E.
Richter (a practical musician and performer on horn and trumpet), do
not prove conclusively that they were intended to be played on
hand-stopped horns, with the exception, perhaps, of the A, 13th
harmonic from C, which could not easily be obtained except by
hand-stopping on the hand-horn. On the blank sheet preceding the
exercises is an inscription in the hand of Moritz Furstenau, former
custodian of the Royal Private Musical Collection (incorporated with
the public library in 1896): "Anton Joseph Hampel, by whom these
exercises for the horn were written, was a celebrated horn-player, a
member of the Orchestra of the Electoral Prince of Saxony. He invented
the so-called Inventionshorn. Cf. _Neues biog.-hist. Lexicon der
Tonkunstler_ by Gerber, pt. i. col. 493; also _Zur Gesch. der Musik u.
des Theaters am Hofe zu Dresden_, by M. Furstenau, Bd. ii." It will be
seen that Furstenau gives Gerber as his authority for the attribution
of the invention to Hampel, although he searched the archives, to
which he had free access, for material for his book.
The first possessor of the MS., Franz Schubert (1768-1824), musical
director of the Italian opera in Dresden, wrote the following note in
pencil on the last page of the cover: "Franz Schubert. The complete
school of horn-playing by the Kgl. Polnischen u. Kursachs.
Cammermusicus Anton Joseph Hampel, a celebrated virtuoso, invented by
himself in 1762." Judging from the standard of modern technique, there
are many passages in the "Lection" which could not be played without
artificially humouring the production of harmonics with the lips, and
it is an open question to what extent this method of correcting
intonation and of altering the pitch was practised in the 18th
century. When, therefore, Franz Schubert states that the method was
_invented_ by Hampel, we may take this as indirectly confirming
Gerber's statements. Further confirmation is obtained from the text of
a work on the horn written by Heinrich Domnich[77] (b. 1760), the son
of a celebrated horn-player of Wurtzburg contemporary with Hampel.
Domnich junior settled eventually in Paris, where he was appointed
first professor of the horn at the Conservatoire. According to him the
mute (sourdine) of metal, wood or cardboard in the form of a hollow
cone, having a hole in the base, was used to soften the tone of the
horn without altering the pitch. But Hampel, substituting for this the
pad of cotton wool used for a similar purpose with the oboe, found
with surprise that its effect in the bell of the horn was to _raise_
the pitch a semitone (see D. J. Blaikley's explanation above). By this
means, says Domnich, a diatonic and chromatic scale was obtained.
Later Hampel substituted the hand for the pad. Domnich duly ascribes
to Hampel the credit of the Inventionshorn, but erroneously states
that it was Haltenhoff of Hanau who made the first instrument. Domnich
further explains that Hampel, who had not practised the _bouche_ notes
in his youth, only made use of them in slow music, and that the credit
of making practical use of the discovery was due to his pupil Giovanni
Punto (Joh. Stich) the celebrated horn virtuoso, who was a friend of
Domnich's.
It may be well to draw attention to the fact that hand-stopping was
not possible so long as the tube of horn was folded in a circle wide
enough to be worn round the body. The reduction of the diameter of the
orchestral horn in order to allow the performer to hold the instrument
in front of him, thus bringing the bell in front of the right arm in a
convenient position for hand-stopping, must have preceded the
discovery of hand-stopping. In the absence of contrary evidence we may
suppose that the change was effected for the more convenient
arrangement and manipulation of the slides or _Inventions_. So radical
a change in the compass of the horn could not occur and be adopted
generally without leaving its mark on the horn music of the period;
this change does not occur, as far as we know, before the last decades
of the 18th century. The rapid acceptance in other countries of
Hampel's discovery of hand-stopping is evidenced by a passage from a
little English work on music, published in London in 1772 but bearing
at the end of the preface the date June 1766:[78] "Some eminent
Proficients have been so dexterous as very nearly to perform all the
defective notes of the scale on the Horn by management of Breath and
by a little stopping the bell with their hands."
Hampel's success gave a general impetus to the inventive faculty of
musical instrument makers in Europe. At first the result was negative.
Kolbel's attempt must, however, be mentioned, if only to correct a
misconception. Kolbel, a Bohemian horn virtuoso at the imperial
Russian court from 1754, spent many years in vain endeavours to
improve his instrument. At last, in 1760, he applied keys to the horn
or the bugle, calling it Klappenhorn (the bugle is known in Germany as
_Signal_ or _Buglehorn_). Kolbel's experiment did not become widely
known or adopted during his lifetime, but Anton Weidinger, court
trumpeter at Vienna, made a keyed trumpet[79] in 1801, which attracted
attention in musical circles and gave a fresh impetus in experimenting
with keys upon brass instruments. In 1813 Joseph Weidinger, the
twelve-year-old son of the above, gave a concert in Vienna on the
_Klappenwaldhorn_[80] (or keyed French horn), about which little seems
to be known. Victor Mahillon[81] describes such an instrument, but
ascribes the invention to Kolbel; there was but one key placed on the
bell, which on being opened had the effect of raising the pitch of the
instrument a whole tone. By alternately using the harmonic open notes
on the normal length of the tube, and then by the action of the key
shortening the air column, the following diatonic scale was obtained
in the third octave:
[Illustration: Music notes.]
In 1812 Dikhuth,[82] horn-player in the orchestra of the grand-duke of
Baden at Mannheim, constructed a horn in which a slide on the
principle of that of the trombone was intended to replace
hand-stopping and to lower the pitch at will a semitone.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Modern Horn (Boosey & Co.)]
The most felicitous, far-reaching and important of all improvements
was the invention of valves (q.v.), pistons or cylinders (the
principle of which has already been explained), by Heinrich
Stolzel,[83] who applied them first of all to the horn, the trumpet
and the trombone,[84] thus endowing the brass wind with a chromatic
compass obtained with perfect ease throughout the compass. The
inherent defect of valve instruments already explained, which causes
faulty intonation needing correction when the pistons are used in
combination, has now been practically overcome. The numerous attempts
to solve the difficulty, made with varying success by makers of brass
instruments, are described under VALVE, BOMBARDEN and CORNET.[85]
(K. S.)