Lets talk about the horn!

The natural horn developed from a hunting horn that was used to signal hunters on horseback. Horn history itself has a very detailed and extensive history of signalling particularly in battle and in the hunt itself. Later the horn was brought indoors by a French king giving the German instrument the name “French horn” . In German the horn is actually refereed to as “forest horn”  and there is really nothing french about it.

The modern horn we see today often looks like the photo below. Complete with rotary values and all chromatic notes.

 

 

The natural horn below, looks like a post horn or a horn you may see on a Christmas decoration and does not have all the chromatic notes as the modern horn because it does not have valves. These horns however can play chromatic pitches by using hand horn technique and closing off the end of the horn bell with your hand half way and completely changing the pitch. You could also change the crook to change the overall pitch of the instrument and play in other keys. Carrying these around though got heavy, thus the modern horn with all the tubing was invented. Though we often play on the modern horn today many people are bringing the natural horn and historical horns to the performance setting to achieve different timbres and color that is produced by this historical horn.

Our discussion in class about different synthesizers, colors, and sounds got me thinking about how even in pop music we think about color and in the horn world color is everything as is sound. There are so many different “genres” or avenues to the horn world similar to that of Rock and Roll. Is rock and roll horn next? 😉