| From Turbevile’s Noble Art of Venerie (1576), by permission of the Clarendon Press. |
| Fig. 3.—Hunting Call. |
The hunting-horn, whether in its simplest form or with the one spiral, was held with the bell upwards on a level with the huntsman’s head or just above it.[31]
A horn of the same fine calibre as the French horn, 3 or 4 ft. in length, slightly bent to take the curve of the body, was in use in Italy, it would seem, in the 15th century.[32] It was held slanting across the body with the bell already slightly parabolic, at arm’s length to the left side.
The hunting- and post-horns were favourite emblems on medieval coats of arms, more especially in Germany[33] and Bohemia.
It is necessary at this point to draw attention to the fact that the French horn is a hybrid having affinities with both trumpet and primitive animal horn, or with buccina and cornu, and that both types, although frequently misnamed and confused by medieval writers and miniaturists, subsisted side by side, evolving independently until they merged in the so-called French horn. Both buccina and cornu after the fall of the Roman Empire, while Western arts and 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.[34]
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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,[35] 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.[36] 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,[37] 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,[38] 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[39] 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,[40] 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:[41] “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,[42] 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,[43] in the Bavarian National Museum in Munich,[44] but although fine examples, one in silver, the other in brass (fig. 6) by Raoux, they turn out on inquiry[45] 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. The horn (a post-horn) did not appear in the arms of the family in question until 1699, when the first peer Casimir Johann Friedrich was created hereditary Post-Master. The influence of such erroneous statements in the work of noted writers is far-reaching. Inquiries at the department of National Archives in Paris concerning Raoux, the founder of the afterwards famous firm of horn-makers whose model with pistons is used in the British military bands and at Kneller Hall, proved fruitless. Fétis states that he worked during the second half of the 18th century. Albert Chouquet[46] states that he has seen a trumpet by Raoux, “seul ordinaire du Roy, Place du Louvre” dated 1695. The inscriptions on the horns in question are: For No. 105, a silver horn of the simplest form of construction in D, “Fait à Paris par Raoux”; for No. 106, a brass horn engraved with a crown on an ermine mantle with the initials C. A. (Carl Albert), “Fait à Paris par Raoux, seul ordinaire du Roy, Place du Louvre.” Both horns measure across the coils 56 cm. and across the bell 27½. They are practically the same as the cors de chasse now in use in French and Belgian military bands, the large diameter of the coil enabling the performer to carry it over his shoulder. The orchestral horn was given a narrower diameter in order to facilitate its being held in front of the performer in a convenient position for stopping the bell with the right hand. No. 107 in the same collection, a horn of German construction, bears the inscription “Macht Jacob Schmid in Nürnberg” and the trademark “J. S.” with a bird. A horn in E♭] of French make, having fleur-de-lys stamped on the rim of the bell, and measuring only 15 in. across the coils to the exterior edge of the bell—therefore a very small horn—is preserved in the Grand Ducal Museum at Darmstadt.[47] A horn in F♯ (probably F in modern high pitch), having the rim ornamented as above and the inscription “Fait à Paris, Carlin, ordinaire du Roy,” readily gives the harmonics from the 3rd to the 12th.[48] The extreme width is 20 in.[49] Carlin, who lived at rue Croix des Petits Champs, died about 1780. The earliest dated horn extant is believed to be the one preserved in the Hohenzollern Museum in Sigmaringen, “Machts Wilhelm Haas, Nürnberg, 1688.”[50] Another early German horn engraved “Machts Heinr. Rich. Pfeiffer in Leipzig, 1697,”[51] formerly in Paul de Wit’s museum in Leipzig and now transferred with the rest of the collection to Cologne, is of similar construction.
| From a Photo by K. Teufel. |
| Fig. 7.—Early Raoux Horn (Munich). |