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This horn is far from noisy
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The French horn was christened in England. But strangely enough, the Frenchmen called it the German horn and the Germans called it the hunting horn. But the English name finally stuck.
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ALTHOUGH THE trumpet is the best known and the most visible member of the brass family, the brass instrument that is almost indispensable and gets the most tunes to play in a symphony orchestra is the French horn.
The horn has its origin in the pre-historic days, along with the trumpet that is considered anthropologically older. Men have blown through the horns of dead animals, especially that of the domesticated buffalo/cow to produce sounds that can echo for miles around. Hence the name. This was originally used as a communicator while hunting. The curved shape of the horn was developed further down the line in wood and then in metal, a bell added at the end to give it the megaphone effect, like the trumpet, till the immediate predecessor of the modern French horn came into being around the 15th Century.
The French horn was christened thus in England. But strangely enough, the Frenchmen called it the German horn and the Germans called it the hunting horn. But the English name finally stuck. The predecessor of the French horn is one you might see in a movie featuring bloodhounds and hunters on horses. The Frenchmen used it extensively in the 16th Century. In the mid-17th Century, composers such as Pietro Cavalli and Jean-Baptiste Lully used these in operas. Handel in Water Music and Bach in Mass in B Minor and Brandenburg Concerto No.1 also used these hunting horns in the 18th Century, which was what they were known as then. Then there were improvisations. The crooks were invented and added. Crooks are pieces of different-sized, coiled tubing that are attached to the lead pipe of the horn. They alter the pitch to a desired key. These were the horns that were used extensively by classical musicians such as Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. The more sophisticated, rounder, and mellower sound of this horn blended with that of the gentler string and wind sections of the orchestra, without sounding dominating or martial like the trumpet or its variants of those days. The horn also sounded more sensuous. From Beethoven's days, there have been three horns in the orchestra.
Then came the valves, in 1813. Like with the trumpet, valves changed everything. Each of the valves enabled the player to change the pitch and the range of notes that could be played, making crooks unnecessary. The horn now had eight or more feet of tubing coiled round, with three valves regulating the pitches. But composers such as Beethoven wrote exclusively for the old natural horn.
The valve horn of those days changed the tonal colour slightly, which made Berlioz forbid the valve-fitted horns from playing in his compositions as late as 1840. In his Symphonie Fantastique, he wanted only natural horns to play (later on, he admitted that it was more nostalgia rather than the tone colour that played its part). Thanks to Berlioz's reputation as the father of modern orchestration, this edict went on to delay the formal induction of the valve-fitted horns into the orchestra, though the horn players were using these from the time they were invented.
Fritz Kruspe invented the modern horn that combined the pitches of the horn in F with the horn in B Flat in 1900 (different pitches that the horn was set to till then), and put an end to this debate once and for all.
The horn is today an important part of the orchestra. The three horns in the orchestras of today keep playing together for much of the time, giving the orchestra a harmonic richness with their tone. It is hard to find a significant composition from Mozart to Stravinsky where the horns have not had melodies and lengthy parts to play throughout the composition. The concertos by Mozart for the horn are among his best written for any instrument. We cannot imagine a symphonic work without the horns constantly droning in the background or playing a lusty melody - mostly romantic as in the case of Tchaikovsky or heroic as in Wagner or Mahler. The horns can blast out a tune almost as well as a trumpet, but they are usually played softly for that warm and rich sound.
Like the trumpet, the horn too has its variations like the mellow-phone, a smaller softer sounding variant, used mostly in brass bands. But French horn is a pure classical instrument. You don't find horns in jazz or popular music. For the record, the horn is also the most treacherous of all brass instruments that misbehave badly at times!
SATISH KAMATH
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