crafts were in their infancy, were made straight, being then known as the busine or straight trumpet (busaun or posaun in Germany), and the long horn, Herhorn, slightly curved.[1]
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| Fig. 4.–Medieval Circular Horn. |
Fig. 5.–Medieval Circular Horn, 1589. |
From two medieval representations of instruments like the Roman cornu one might be led to conclude that the instrument had been revived and was in use from the 14th century. A wooden bas-relief on the under part of the seats of the choir of Worcester cathedral,[2] said to date from the 14th century, shows a musician in a robe with long sleeves of fur playing the horn (fig. 4). The tube winds from the mouth in a circle reaching to his waist, passes under the right arm across the shoulders with the bell stretching out horizontally over his left shoulder. The tube, of strictly conical bore, is made in three pieces, the joints being strengthened by means of two rings. The other example is German, and figures in the arms of the city of Frankfort-on-Main.[3] Here in the two opposite corners are two cherubs playing immense cornua. The bore of the instruments (fig. 5) is of a calibre suggestive of the contrabass tuba; the circle formed is of a diameter sufficiently large to accommodate the youthful performer in a sitting posture; the bell is the forerunner of that of the modern saxophone, shaped like a gloxinea; the mouthpiece is cup-shaped. It is possible, of course, that these two examples are attempts to reproduce the classic instrument, but the figures of the musicians and the feeling of the whole scheme of ornamentation seem to render such an explanation improbable. Moreover, Sebastian Virdung,[4] writing on musical instruments at the beginning of the 16th century, gives a drawing of a cornu coiled round tightly, the tubing being probably soldered together at certain points. Virdung calls this instrument a Jegerhorn, and the short hunting-horn Acherhorn (Ackerhorn—the synonym of the modern Waldhorn). The scale of the former could have consisted only of the first eight harmonics, including the fundamental, which would be easily obtained on an instrument of such a large calibre. Mersenne,[5] a century and a quarter later, gives a drawing of the same kind of horn among his cors de chasse, but does not in his description display his customary intimate knowledge of his subject; it may be that he was dealing at second-hand with an instrument of which he had had little practical experience. Praetorius[6] gives as Jägerhorn only the simple forms of crescent-shaped horns with a single spiral; the spirally-wound horn of Virdung is replaced by a new instrument—the Jägertrummet (huntsman’s trumpet)—of the same form, but less cumbersome, of cylindrical bore excepting at the bell end and having a crook inserted between the mouthpiece and the main coils. The tube, which could not have been less than 8 ft. long, produced the harmonic series of the cavalry trumpet from the 3rd to the 12th. The restrictions placed upon the use of the cavalry trumpet would have rendered it unavailable for use in the hunting-field, but the snake-shaped model, as Praetorius describes it, was a decided improvement on the horn, although inferior in resonance to the cavalry model. Here then are the materials for the fusion of the trumpet and hunting-horn into the natural or hand-horn of the 17th and 18th centuries. There is evidence, however, that a century earlier, i.e. at the end of the 15th century, the art of bending a brass tube of the delicate proportions of the French horn, which is still a test of fine workmanship, had been successfully practised. In an illustrated edition of Virgil’s works published in Strassburg in 1502 and emanating from Grüninger’s office, Brant being responsible for the illustrations, the lines (Aen. viii. 1-2) “Ut belli signum Laurenti Turnus ab arce Extulit: et rauco strepuerunt cornua cantu” are illustrated by two soldiers, one with the sackbut (posaune, the descendant of the buccina), the other with a horn wound spirally round his body in three coils, which appear to have a conical bore from the funnel-shaped mouthpiece to the bell which extends at the back of the head horizontally over the left shoulder (fig. 6). There is ample room for the performer’s head and shoulders to pass through the circle: the length of the tube could not therefore have been much less than 16 ft. long, equivalent to the horn in C or B♭ basso. In the same book (pl. ccci.) is another horn, smaller, differing slightly in the disposition of the coils and held like the modern horn in front.
Fig. 6.–Spirally Coiled Horn from Virgil’s Works (1502), folio cccviii. versa.
These horns were not used for hunting but
for war in conjunction with the draw-trumpet.
Brant could not have imagined these instruments,
and must have seen the originals or at
least drawings of them; the instruments probably
emanated from the famed workshops of
Nuremberg, being intended mainly for use in
Italy, and had not been generally adopted in
Germany. The significance of these drawings
of natural horns in a German work of the dawn
of the 16th century will not be lost. It
disposes once and for all of the oft-repeated fable
that the hunting-horn first assumed its present
form in France about 1680, a statement
accepted without question by authorities of all
countries, but without reference to any pièce
justificative other than the story of the Bohemian
Count Spörken first quoted by Gerber,[7] and
repeated in most musical works without the
context. The account which gave rise to
this statement had been published in 1782
in a book by Faustinus Prochaska:[8] “Vix
Parisiis inflandi cornua venatoria inventa ars quum delectatus
suavitate cantus duos ex hominibus sibi obnoxiis ea instituendos
curavit. Id principium apud nos artis, qua hodie Bohemi excellere
putantur.” In a preceding passage after the count’s name, Franz
Anton, Graf von Spörken, are the words “anno saeculi superioris
octogesimo quum iter in externas provincias suscepisset,” &c.
There is no reference here to the invention of the horn in Paris or
to the folding of the tube spirally, but only to the manner of eliciting
sound from the instrument. Count Spörken, accustomed to the
medieval hunting fanfares in which the tone of the horn approximated
to the blare of the trumpet, was merely struck by the musical
quality of the true horn tone elicited in Paris, and gave France
the credit of the so-called invention, which probably more properly
belonged to Italy. The account published by Prochaska a hundred
years after, without reference to the source from which it was
obtained, finds no corroboration from French sources. Had the
French really made any substantial improvement in the hunting-horn
at the end of the 17th century, transforming it from the primitive
instrument into an orchestral instrument, it would only be
reasonable to expect to find some evidence of this, considering the
importance attached to the art of music at the court of Louis XIV.,
whose musical establishments, la Chapelle Musique,[9] la Musique de
la Chambre du Roi and la Musique de la Grande Écurie, included
the most brilliant French artists. One would expect to find horns of
that period by French makers among the relics of musical instruments
in the museums of Europe. This does not seem to be the case.
Moreover, in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie (1767) the
information given under the heading trompe ou cor de chasse grand
et petit is very vague, and contains no hint of any special merit due
to France for any improvement in construction. Among the plates
(vol. v., pl. vii.) is given an illustration of a horn very similar to the
instruments made in England and Germany nearly a century
earlier, but with a funnel-shaped mouthpiece. Dr Julius Rühlmann
states that there are two horns by Raoux, bearing the date 1703,[10]
in the Bavarian National Museum in Munich,[11] but although fine
examples, one in silver, the other in brass (fig. 67) by Raoux, they
turn out on inquiry[12] to bear no date whatever. Rühlmann’s
statement in the same article, that in the arms of the family of
Wartenberg-Kolb (now extinct), which goes back to 1169, there is
a hunting-horn coiled round in a complete circle is also misleading.
- ↑ For illustrations see autotype facsimile of Utrecht Psalter, 9th century; British Museum, Add. MS. 10,546, Ps. 150, 9th century; Add. MS. 24,199, 10th century; Eadwine Psalter, Trin. Coll. Camb., 11th century, and Cotton MS., Nero, D.IV., 8th century; also Edward Buhle, op. cit., pl. ii. and pp. 12-24.
- ↑ See John Carter, Specimens of Ancient Sculpture and Paintings (London, 1780–1794), i. p. 53 (plates unnumbered); also reproduced in H. Lavoix, Histoire de la musique (Paris, 1884).
- ↑ See Jost Amman, op. cit.
- ↑ Musica getutscht und ausgezogen (Basel, 1511), p. 30. The names are not given under the drawings, but the above is the order in which they occur, which is probably reversed.
- ↑ Harmonie universelle (Paris, 1636), p. 245.
- ↑ Syntagma Musicum (Wolfenbüttel, 1618), pl. vii. No. 11, p. 39.
- ↑ Historisch-biographisches Lexicon der Tonkünstler (Leipzig, 1790–1792 and 1812–1814).
- ↑ De saecularibus Liberalium Artium in Bohemia et Moravia fatis commentarius (Prague, 1784), p. 401.
- ↑ See Ernest Thoinan, Les Origines de la chapelle musique des souverains de France (Paris, 1864); F. J. Fétis, “Recherches sur la musique des rois de France, et de quelques princes depuis Philippe le Bel jusqu’à la fin du règne de Louis XIV.,” Revue musicale (Paris, 1832), xii. pp. 193, 217, 233, 241, 257; Castil-Blaze, La Chapelle musique des rois de France (Paris, 1882); Michel Brenet, “Deux comptes de la chapelle musique des rois de France,” Intern. Mus. Ges., Smbd. vi., i. pp. 1-32; J. Ecorcheville, “Quelques documents sur la musique de la grande écurie du roi,” Intern. Mus. Ges., Smbd. ii. 4 (Leipzig, 1901), pp. 608-642.
- ↑ Neue Zeitschrift f. Musik (Leipzig, 1870), p. 309.
- ↑ See Die Sammlung der Musikinstrumente des baierischen Nat. Museum by K. A. Bierdimpfl (Munich, 1883), Nos. 105 and 106.
- ↑ Communication from Dr Georg Hagen, assistant director.
