As we now get to looking at horn repertoire (especially solo and chamber literature) more directly, a critical first topic is playing the natural horn.
Remember: Music is composed with an instrument (and players) in mind
Composers, especially from earlier times, were writing pieces to be played on concerts or at events that were coming up soon, and writing them so that they could be played by the performers they had available and the instruments those players had available. Thus, understanding the natural horn is a key to understanding a big chunk of music that is important to our repertoire. The music was written for the natural horn and has specific characteristics that were driven by the capabilities of the instrument.
Introducing the natural Horn
UPDATE 2025: The following section is based on materials from my 1995 dissertation, with modified citations, and was posted for many years within the Horn Articles Online website as a standalone article. It could be updated with reference to more recent sources, especially The Horn by Meucci and Rocchetti.
By the end of the eighteenth century two types of natural horns were in general use in Europe, the most common being the orchestral horn. The earliest instruments of this type were seen as early as 1703 but lacked a central tuning slide which was added to the instrument in the 1760s [Fitzpatrick, 32-33, 229]. This design features terminal crooks, which lie between the mouthpiece and the body of the horn, and can be made in various lengths to place the horn into keys as high as C alto and as low as B-flat basso. An example of this type of instrument is shown in figure 1.
Figure 1. Orchestral horn, as illustrated in Georges Kastner, Manuel Général de Musique Militaire (Paris: Didot Frères, 1848), plate XIV.
The other type of natural horn was known as the Cor Solo. This particular model was introduced by the Paris maker Raoux in 1781, but is derived from the German Inventionshorn, introduced in Dresden in the 1750s [Fitzpatrick, 228, 127]. This type of horn features crooks which are inserted into the middle of the instrument in the manner of tuning slides. These crooks are variously called internal, insert, or sliding crooks, and were normally made to crook the instrument only in the central keys of G, F, E, E-flat, and D. An example of this type of instrument is shown in figure 2.
Figure 2. Cor Solo, as illustrated in J. F. Gallay, Méthode pour le Cor (Paris: Schoenberger, [ca. 1845]), 5.
The basis of the technique of the natural horn is the harmonic series. These are the pitches that one may sound on an open tube, and are the following.
The Harmonic Series.
Several of these pitches are out of tune with equal temperament. The worst pitches are the written b-flat’, f-sharp”, a-flat”, and b-flat”, all of which tend to be nearly a quarter step flat. Written e’, e”, and d” also tend to be somewhat out of tune, e’ and e” lying slightly flat and d” slightly sharp. The relative intonation of all of these pitches depends primarily on the construction of the instrument, and can vary widely from theoretical models. Modern brass instruments generally possess better intonation than comparable early instruments due both to their more efficient internal tapers and the avoidance, through the use of valves, of the most out of tune harmonics, which had to be used on the natural horn to obtain a complete scale.
Players discovered that by inserting the hand into the bell of the horn they could alter the pitch of the instrument for improved intonation and additional pitches, and that they could also make the tonal color darker and more mellow. This technique was known by hornists in the 1720s at the latest [Hiebert, 122-23]. Dresden hornist Anton Joseph Hampel (ca. 1710-1771) is generally credited with codifying this innovation, on the testimony of his pupil, the horn virtuoso Johann Stich (1746-1803, better known under the Italianized name of Giovanni Punto). By gradually closing the hand in the bell one can lower any sounding pitch one half step with moderate stopping, and any pitch may be lowered to a half step above the next open pitch by combining full stopping and “lipping” the note down. [For an explanation of this phenomena please read the article Understanding Stopped and Muted Horn and Right Hand Position]. This is not the type of hand-stopping used to perform stopped notes on the modern horn; instead of a harsh quality, the stopped notes had only a more covered tonal color.
While it was possible to perform a chromatic scale on the natural horn through hand horn technique, composers avoided using an excessive number of covered tones and instead centered horn parts around the open notes out of a concern for projection. In order to use the most open notes composers usually called for horns pitched in either the tonic key of a work or a closely related key. Instead of building a series of horns in many keys, manufacturers quickly designed a system of crooks–additional pieces of tubing which could be added to or subtracted from the horn. Through the use of crooks a given instrument was thus not tied to a fixed pitch level. This possibility of being crooked into many keys gave the horn much more musical flexibility, as the horn could be placed in any key and could function either melodically or as harmonic support.
It was quickly noted that there was a great difference of tonal color between the low and the high crooks. For example, a horn crooked in B-flat basso is twice as long as a horn crooked in B-flat alto and produces a somber, very dark tonal color in contrast to the bright and brilliant color of the B-flat alto crook. Composers and performers exploited these contrasts. By the early nineteenth century soloists in particular especially favored the medium crooks of F, E, and E-flat, which were noted for their superior tonal color and playing qualities.
SOURCES
Horace Fitzpatrick, The Horn and Horn Playing and the Austro-Bohemian Tradition from 1680-1830 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970).
Thomas Hiebert, “Virtuosity, Experimentation, and Innovation in Horn Writing From Early 18th-Century Dresden,” Historic Brass Society Journal 4 (1992), 112-139.
A valuable resource: Method books
In the early 19th century, method books were first published for the horn. In particular the comments found in the method of Heinrich Domnich (1767-1844) are especially important to study today. My article is a bit of a long read, but well worth the trouble, as it clearly lays out the state of natural horn playing at a high level in the early 19th century.
Oh, I now have a book out on the natural horn
Students taking this class at Arizona State will be given a copy of my recent publication, Introducing the Natural Horn. The book is introduced here, with a short video for reference:
As I also state in my method, the natural horn is not for everyone, but it really can be a valuable part of the overall process to working out your horn technique, and certainly in terms of understanding our repertoire it is something you have to have tried to play at least a little if you are an advanced horn student.
The topic of mouthpiece choice
I will demonstrate this in class as well, but for those only reading this class online it is important to note that mouthpieces used on the natural horn differed a great deal from those used today. They were made of sheet metal and were very deep, complementing the design of the natural horn in terms of tone and flexibility. A typical modern mouthpiece does not sound or work that well on natural horn. The one illustrated here is a reproduction made by Richard Seraphinoff.
In my own playing on natural horn I typically use a “compromise” mouthpiece. If you are interested in more on the topic, the following article has some useful information:
Next week we will begin our look at the horn as it was in the Baroque period. The class sessions as they go forward also involve listening to portions of works together, and looking at the music. How readers following along solely over the Internet manage this element of the course is up to you, but much of the music we will study is standard repertoire that may be found on YouTube and many other places.
A fun video from a movie
Finally, readers might find this short article and video of interest:
Continue to Week 4 of repertoire course
This is week 3 of a fourteen week course in horn repertoire, the second semester of a broad overview of horn repertoire, performance, and pedagogy. The introductory article is here, and the series is presented for the educational purposes of our readers.
