The Horn

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that, during the first third of the 18th century, horns were making their way into the theater and ballet; a new horn, the Waldhorn, or "forester's horn", first made by Michael and Johannes Leichnambschneider in Vienna in the 1690s, was created for indoor orchestral use and eliminated the problems presented by parforce-horns (hunting horns). The author points out that an example of one of the earliest uses of the horn in a score is in the opera "Le Nozze di Tito e di Peilei" by Cavalli, first produced in the Teatro San Cassiano in Venice in 1639 and again in Paris in 1654. The paper relates that George Frideric Handel was the first to use horns in concert music in England as evidenced in the orchestral suite "Water Music" of 1717, written for George I in which a pair of horns playing in horn-fifths appears in the third and ninth parts of the suite and is set apart from the rest of the ensemble.

From the Paper:

"Until about 1700, parforce-horns, or hunting horns, were the instrument used. They were short in length for ease of carrying on the hunt and only delivered single-note hunting signals. They were not yet used in a musical fashion. Around 1700, new longer instruments were made that allowed more overtones to be played. These hunting horns were known by the names Cor de chasse in France, Jagdhorn in Germany and corno da caccia in Italy. They could play twelve or more harmonics and had a narrow bore, thus producing a bright strident sound. The mouthpieces were shallow and conical, like those of the modern trumpet. The first hunting calls in which they were used musically are played in 6/8 time to imitate the galloping of horses. The players used the overtones in a manner we call "horn fifths". The first horn plays scale degrees 3,2 and 1 successively while the second horn plays a third, fifth and sixth below those tones, and the same in reverse."

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