Horn Matters | A French Horn and Brass Site and Resource | John Ericson and Bruce Hembd

Ever visit a horn makers shop? I have been fortunate to visit several, but never the shop of Carl Geyer. Fortunately, Milan Yancich and Thomas Bacon both have stories that paint the picture for us today of his original shop and the later shop.

The shop at 218 S. Wabash Ave.

Most Geyer horns were produced at this location, as he was here the longest, from ca. 1918-1955. Continuing his story as started in part II, Yancich recalls,

Painted on his shop door was the sign Carl Geyer – Horn Maker. The anteroom to his shop had a showcase displaying such items as mouthpieces, mutes, oil, cases, and instruments. Pictures of famous horn players hung on the walls. His desk was littered with hundreds of unanswered letters and hanging on a peg above the desk was a hunting horn …

An odd assortment of tools covered three work benches. Only Geyer knew where to find a tool in that disorder. The yellow flame of his torch burned from morning to night. Many a visitor had the sorry experience of burning his coat or jacket while engrossed in Geyer’s work. Over in one corner of the shop sat the machine lathe. Although most of his work was done by hand, the lathe was an indispensable tool, for on it he turned out mouthpieces for countless hundreds of performers, both French horn and trumpet.

I’ll return to the topic of mouthpieces in a later installment. Resuming the description of the shop itself,

In the rear of the shop was a cold buffing machine for polishing instruments. Beyond that was a small room which contained a wash basin. We called this room the Cellar – here we kept such staples as bread, butter, and coffee. Cups hung on pegs – enough to accommodate extra guests. There were also two ten-gallon crocks. One crock held acid for cleaning metals …. The other crock contained liquid of another sort. This was the alcoholic-type used for emergency medical and entertainment purposes.

That second crock would have been rather handy during prohibition, 1920-33! Yancich describes his typical working day.

Geyer’s talent for repairing and improving instruments gained him such a reputation and kept him so busy that time was of the essence in his shop. His day began at 7:00 a.m. There were very few days he left his bench before 7:00 p.m. Yet, whenever a customer came into the shop, especially if he were an out of towner, Geyer always laid aside his work to visit.

Interlude: How quickly could he build a horn?

Geyer is quoted in the IHS website bio saying that each horn took three to four weeks to build. But he could go faster in certain situations. Yancich left Chicago to play in the Cleveland orchestra for a season, when, unfortunately, his contract was not renewed. Continuing the story,

After my adverse Cleveland experience I returned to Chicago and it was then I discovered the true measure of his friendship. My horn was stolen from my automobile in 1953. When I telephoned Geyer about the tragic event, tearfully explaining my predicament, he calmed me by saying, “Don’t worry, I will make you another in a week.” He was true to his word. He put aside all his other work, he closed his shop to all customers, and after a frenzy of activity and work, he presented me with a new horn. It was a work of dedication and love.

Yancich further elaborates that “What always impressed me about Carl Geyer was his genuine interest in the person playing the horn, no matter whether that person was amateur or professional.”

The shop at 228 S. Wabash Ave.

Geyer turned 75 in 1955! Perhaps in relation to that, in 1955 he sold his business to the Kagan & Gaines Music store. He continued to build horns in a small shop in the back of their store until he retired in 1970 at the age of 90! The arrangement of them taking care of his business affairs suited Geyer, giving him freedom to keep building.

As a high school student Thomas Bacon was looking for a new horn, but could not find what he wanted. At that point he was told by his band director to “go to Kagan and Gaines downtown, ask for Joe, and tell him you want to meet Mr. Geyer. If they’re not too busy, maybe he’ll take you back to Geyer’s shop.” Continuing his story as shared on his Hornplanet website,

If I had been a string player, I would have known that Kagan and Gaines was the place in Chicago to go for instruments, accessories, and repairs. And Joe, it turned out, was the guy who worked the front of the store and took care of Mr. Geyer’s business. Carl Geyer, German born and living in the United States since 1903, had somehow become affiliated with Kagan and Gaines as a maker of horns. And tucked away back in a forest of dust covered string basses was the small workshop where this elderly artisan made “the best French horns in the world.”

He spoke with a thick German accent and had a sparkle in his eye that enchanted everyone who came into his shop. He was surprised to be visited by such a young player, he was used to dealing with all the pros from the Chicago Symphony and any visiting orchestra that came to town. Seldom did young students come to him wanting to try out one of his horns. He must have been amused by the chubby little high school kid that had come to visit, so he took pause from his work to introduce me to his latest creation.

Of trying that horn Bacon recalled,

What happened then was a feeling that could only be described as love. The horn played like a dream, had the most velvety smooth sound I had ever produced on any instrument. I knew that I had found what I was looking for and told Mr. Geyer so. I asked if I could buy one of his horns. He said that he had a lot of orders to fill, but if I would wait six months he would make one for me.

As to the shop itself, Bacon paints a vivid picture.

At the time, Mr. Geyer was 83 years old, and his shop was extremely disorderly. It was a tiny room with high ceilings. Brass tubes, leadpipes, old horns and horn parts, valve casings, tools, mouthpieces, and lots of other things lay about in seeming disarray. I never once saw him use a more sophisticated measuring device than a frayed and dirty old piece of string that had several marks on it indicating different lengths. He would take a valve mechanism (which he called “die Maschine”), and solder onto it various little tubes which he extracted out of the mess surrounding him. He would eyeball the curves in the tubes he had to shape, and with an air of disdain for “modern” engineering and construction practices, he would instinctively put together, with remarkable consistency, an instrument that was also a work of art. When, on occasion, an instrument turned out with bad notes or a stuffy tone, he seemed to know intuitively where the trouble lay, and would simply take off the leadpipe or valve mechanism or whatever, replace it with another, and presto, the horn was made well.

So that is what things looked like in 1962-63! That is really part of the magic of the Geyer horn today, one man making artist quality French horns in his own small shop, largely to a design he had created, for a lifetime.

When the series returns, we will look a little more at the topic of building a horn in the context of the Geyer shop.

Continue reading Geyer Dreaming series

**The photo of Geyer with Ethel Merker in his shop was found on an inactive Facebook page, Carl Geyer Horns. If you have photos of Geyer in his shop, of early Geyer style double horns, or of mouthpieces that you would be willing to share with Horn Matters readers contact me at my ASU Email.

Continuing our look at Carl Geyer and his horns, as noted in part I he had his own shop running by 1918. At that point he still was making double horns on the Schmidt design, with the piston valve for the thumb valve, but he was experimenting.

A quick look at Geyer serial numbers

Jumping ahead for a moment, Geyer did have a system for serial numbers. As related by Tom Bacon in his Horn Planet website,

Over his lifetime, he made about 1,400 horns, but never did he complete more than one on the same day. It wasn’t until the day my horn was finished that I noticed Mr. Geyer’s interesting way of numbering his instruments. He finished work on my horn on April 9, 1963. The inscription on the bell was:

Carl Geyer
Chicago
4963

I know from private correspondence that a Geyer style Geyer double horn exists with the serial number 223. The system would suggest that it was completed in February of 1923. Where this fits into the experiments that developed the design is unclear, but for anyone with an early Geyer double out there, you should give that serial number a look, it could help pin down the year that the design was perfected.

UPDATE: Geyer however did not consistently follow this system. Please see this article for more. 

Geyer looks back in 1972

According to a July 12, 1972, interview included in a 1975 thesis by Gary Gardner Fladmoe “The Contributions to Brass Instrument Manufacturing on Vincent Bach, Carl Geyer and Reynold Schilke” (major hat tip to Jonathan Ring for posting excerpts on the Horn People group!), Geyer changed the design of his double horn “by the mid-1920s.” Fladmore summarized their conversation as follows.

Geyer’s design was unusual in that he located the change valve after the main valve section instead of in its customary position ahead of the valve section. The valve was operated by the thumb by means of a long rod which connected the thumb key to the valve by bridging the main valve section. Geyer believed the design offered two advantages over the traditional placement of the change valve. Placing the valve after the main valve section simplified the overall design of the horn by eliminating some of the coiling of the smaller tubing. Geyer also believed that the design made the instrument less crowded in the area ahead of the valve section and provide the player with increased leverage in the operation of the change valve.

He then turned to the issue of the Knopf horn being of the same design.

At about the same time that Geyer placed this design on the market, Knopf, a German manufacturer introduced a horn of almost identical design. Geyer maintained that Wunderlich, who had observed Geyer working on the design while he was still at Wunderlich, had taken the idea to Knopf upon a trip to his native Germany.

So, the roots of the design date to before World War I. But…

Who had the patent?

Continuing in the Fladmoe thesis,

Geyer applied for a patent on the design, but probably because the Knopf instrument was in production, calling Geyer’s claim on the design into question, the patent was not granted. … Instead of seeking patents, Geyer’s approach was to indicate that he had applied for a patent on the new design.

In short, the design was not patented by Geyer or Knopf. As Jonathan Ring commented in Horn People, “Many of the large German firms like Kruspe, Alexander, and Schmidt took out patents on their designs for a period of time. I find it interesting that Knopf did not patent the design in question, possibly because it was actually Geyer who came up with it as he suggests in the thesis. I’m not sure we will ever actually know the answer for sure.”

Introducing Carl Geyer

As mentioned in part I, Milan Yancich spent many hours with Geyer in the years during and after WWII. He offers the following introduction.

Geyer was a man of slight build, lean and with no trace of fat on his body. He was physically powerful. There were times when he asked me to take over a task in his workshop. He seemed to be able to work effortlessly at a job that I strained and quickly tired from in the same endeavor. His formula for good health was eating oatmeal every morning for breakfast and it had to be prepared a certain way. … I once asked him why he thought oatmeal was good for one’s health. He came up with the old line that “Horses are strong because they eat oats.”

One thing you might wonder at this point is did Geyer play horn? According to Yancich,

He learned to play some trumpet and he was able to get a few sounds out of a horn; it was his tradition to always play the first few notes on a newly made horn. I had the privilege of testing many of the new horns that he manufactured.

In those days of World War II I never missed the opportunity to visit him when I came into Chicago from Ft. Sheridan [where Yancich was stationed]. It was to be the beginning of a long and meaningful friendship. … Despite some political differences, Carl and I trusted each other about many things. Several years after the war was over, and I had become a member of the Chicago Symphony, his workshop became like a haven, a refuge, my second home.

We will continue that story when the series returns.

Continue reading Geyer series