French Horns
Early Horns
As the name implies, early horns were made from animal horns. African horns were traditionally made from antelope, with cattle horn considered a poor substitute.One of the earliest horns that has survived until today is the Jewish shofar, which is made from a ritually killed sheep or goat; the small end is pierced with a long, narrow passage connecting to the main cavity of the bore. Two notes are possible, usually pitched a fifth apart. The shofar is the instrument said to have brought down the walls of the city of Jericho.
Shofar
Over the years, various shapes were used. Serpent horns, horns with finger-holes and cup-shaped mouthpieces were popular in churches and military bands in the nineteenth century. Below is a picture of a serpent horn, from the Institut für Musikwissenschaft der Universität Erlangen Nürnberg.
Serpent Horn
Horns have been used for hunting since the saxon times. By the seventeenth century, there were two types of horns: the English preferred straight horns, and the Germans, curved horns.
Posthorn
Crooks and Valves
Early horns had a problem, in that without hand-stopping, they could only produce one set of harmonics. About 1750, Johann Werner, an instrument maker from Dresden, introduced the slide crook--each crook was a separate coil of tubing of the appropriate length for each tonality. Thus, with the correct crook fit to the instrument, the horn could play in any key. The drawback, of course, was that the player had to travel with up to 13 separate crooks, and have to pause in the performance to change crooks, if the music demanded it.
By 1815, the invention of valves had revolutionized horn playing. By that time, horns were fitted with two valves--meaning that only two crooks were then needed.
Boosey French Horn with Four Crooks (1879)
Modern Double Horn
A perennial problem for horn players is the ease of hitting wrong notes, because the high harmonic notes are very close together. In 1898, Fritz Krupse invented the double horn, which is really two horns in one; they share a mouthpiece and bell, but there are two complete sets of tubes and valves. The two instruments are pitched in F and B-flat, and the player chooses the pitch by depressing an extra valve. The specific advantage of this horn is that the twelfth harmonic in F is the same as the ninth harmonic in B-flat, rendering it much safer to play.
Holton Double Horn
Today's French horn is unique among the brass instruments in several respects: the keys are played with the left hand, and it is played "backwards"--i.e., the bell faces away from the audience. While the French horn is the most expressive of the brass instruments, it is also the most difficult to play. Normally, the right hand is cupped inside the bell with all fingers (including the thumb) close together; flattening the hand sharpens various harmonics, and increasing the cup flattens them.
Information Sources
Information on this page was derived from the following sources:
Diagram Group (1976): Musical Instruments of the World. New York, NY: Facts on File, Inc.
Kruckenberg, Sven (1993): The Symphony Orchestra and its Instruments. Gothenburg, Sweden: AB Nordbok (Crescent Books edition distributed by Random House).
Wade-Matthews, Max (2000): The World Encyclopedia of Musical Instruments. London, UK and New York, NY: Lorenz Books.
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