HORN, a class of wind instruments primarily derived from natural animal horns, and having the common characteristics of a conical bore and the absence of lateral holes.
Modem horns may be divided into three classes: (I) the short horns with wide bore, such as the bugles (q.v.), and the post-horn. (2) The saxhorns (q.v.), a family of hybrid instruments designed by Adolphe Sax, and resulting from the adaptation of valves and of a cup-shaped mouthpiece to instruments of the calibre of the bugle. (3) The French horn, one of the most valuable and diffi cult wind instruments of the orchestra, having a very slender conical tube wound round in coils upon itself.
The French horn consists of four principal parts—the body, the crooks, the mouthpiece, and the slides.
(a) The body is the main tube, having a bore of the form known as trunco-conical measuring approximately 7ft. 4in. in length. The body is coiled spirally, and has at one end a wide mouthed bell from II to 12in. in diameter, with a parabolic curve, and at the other a conical ferrule into which fit the crooks.
(b) The crooks are interchangeable spiral tubes of varying lengths, by attaching which to the mouthpiece the total length of the tube can be varied at will, and the pitch and key of the instru ment thereby altered. The principle of the crook was known early in the I7th century, and it had been applied to the trumpet, trombone, and Jagertrummet before being adapted to the horn. From the crook, in turn, was developed the system of valves, which is but an instantaneous application of the same general principle to the individual notes of the harmonic series, each of which is thereby lowered a semitone, a tone, or a tone and a half as long as the valve remains in operation. The body of the horn without crooks is of the length to produce 8f t. C, and forms the standard, being known as the alto horn in C, which is the highest key in which the horn is pitched.
(c) The mouthpiece of the horn differs substantially from that of the trumpet. There is, strictly speaking, no cup, the inside of the mouthpiece being, like the bore of the instrument itself, in the form of a truncated cone or funnel.
As regards the fundamental tone, to set in vibration a column of air some 16 or i 7ft. long, is a feat of extreme difficulty; hence it is quite exceptional to find a horn-player who can sound the fundamental on the low C or Bb basso horns.
The practical aggregate compass of the natural horns from Bb basso at the service of composers therefore ranges (actual sounds) Scale.—By means of hand-stopping, i.e., the practice of thrust ing the hand into the bell in order to lower the sound by a tone or a semitone, or by the employment of valves, this compass may be rendered chromatic almost throughout the range.
The valve system consists of valves or pistons attached to addi tional lengths of tubing, the effect of which is almost invariably to lower the pitch.
Horns are made with either two or three valves by means of which the pitch can be lowered at will a semitone, a tone or a tone and a half. The three devices—crooks, valves, and slides—are, it will be seen, all based upon the same principle, that of providing additional length of tubing in order to deepen the pitch of the whole instrument at will, and to transpose it into a different key. But valves and slides, being instantaneous in operation, give to the instrument a chromatic compass, whereas crooks merely enable the performer to play in many keys upon one instrument instead of requiring a different instrument for each key.
Before civilization had dawned in classic Greece, the Egyptian, Assyrian and Semitic races were using wind instruments of wood and metal which had left the primitive ram or bugle horn far behind.
Among the Romans there were four instruments known by the name of cornu: (1) the short animal horn used by shepherds; (2) the longer, semicircular horn, used for signals; (3) the still longer cornu, bent and carried like the buccina, which had the wide bore of the modern tuba; and (4) a small instrument like the mediaeval hunting-horn, or post-horn, with a single spiral turn. A terra-cotta model of one of the last named, slightly broken, but with the spiral intact, was excavated at Ventoux, in France, and is preserved in the department of Greek and Roman antiqui ties at the British Museum.
All these wind instruments, to which may be added the lituus or cavalry trumpet, and the long straight tuba, seem to have been used during the classic Greek and Roman periods merely to sound fanfares, and therefore, in spite of the high degree of per fection to which they attained as instruments, they scarcely pos sess any claim to be considered within the domain of music.
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 instru ments gradually died out in Western Europe. With the disap pearance 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 lost, and had to be re-acquired step by step during the middle ages from the more enlightened East.
During the middle ages the bugle-horn or bull's horn was extensively used as a signal instrument on land and sea (see BUGLE), by the night-watchmen in cities, in the watch tower of the feudal castle, and by foresters and huntsmen. The hunting horn is generally represented as small and crescent-shaped in the hunting scenes which abound in illuminated mss. and early printed books, and when played it was held with the wide end curving upwards in front of the huntsman's head.
Cesti's operas of the same period likewise contain many pas sages evidently intended for the horn, although the instruments are not specified in the score, which was nothing unusual at the time. Later Lulli, in 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 Ver sailles, on May 7, 1665, introduced a piece entitled "Les violons et les cors de Chasse," written in much the same style as Cavalli's scena, by which, indeed, it is believed to have been inspired. The introduction of the natural horn into the orchestra of the French opera did not occur, however, until much later, viz., 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 of Germany, and had been introduced by Handel into the orchestra in London in his Water-music, composed in honour of George I.
Horns were also employed by Bach, while it scarcely needs saying how largely they have been used since by modern com posers from the time of Beethoven (who had an especial fondness for the instrument) onwards.