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

In Part I (here) I mentioned that I only recently have had the opportunity to play a Vienna horn that, to my feeling of responsiveness, plays well. It is borrowed from a local collection, and I’ve played on it for the majority of my practice in recent weeks.

A key thing was I rebuilt a crook that had been left incomplete by a prior user. The horn itself is a Haagston Pizka model. With the original crook the horn was just stuffy no matter what mouthpiece I used, but the new crook brought things much more into focus. The story of that new crook and rebuilding it is told more fully in my personal blog (here).

I’m enjoying playing this horn, but there are a number of almost “elephant in the room” topics worth looking at one by one. The first one having already been touched on, you need a good crook, it can make a huge difference. Related to that we have

Intonation and fingerings

So, with a modern horn, you pick one up with the very reasonable expectation that if you have the slides adjusted correctly and an appropriate mouthpiece the horn should play in tune.

On the original crook and the new crook there are a couple rather bad notes on this Haagston/Pizka horn. The A on the second space, it is pretty out fingered 12 but is good fingered 3, so that I can work with. (I was interested to see a video of the Vienna Philharmonic playing the opening of Mahler 3, some players fingered the note 12, some 3, must be dependent on the horn what is better).

The really bad note is D on the fourth line. Fingered open it is incredibly sharp and every other alternate fingering is very flat. And you play D a lot! The solution seems to be to play it open (which is very stable) but either bend the note down with the lip or cover it more with the hand (or a combination of both). When it goes by quickly you don’t notice the intonation, most of the correction is done on more sustained, key notes.

Why this note is so bad I have no idea but it must be something to do with the construction of the horn body. This joint being a bit suspect, the ferrule is a bit off, it makes one wonder what is going on inside there acoustically.

For more on the topic of fingerings, see this article for the fingerings used by the great Vienna horn master Roland Berger.

The F on the top of the staff

On this horn the F on the top of the staff is really quite good. Back a year ago I had another article related to Vienna horns, inspired by a quote in an article in the May 2022 issue of The Horn Call on Vienna horns. In a section of tips, authors Kulmer, Dorfmayr, and Nuzzo present a potentially useful trick:

Wire. A trick commonly used on the Wiener Horn is to insert a wire in the tube, just a normal electric wire you can buy in any electrical equipment shop. The reason for this is to adjust the note f” [written F at the top of the staff], which is played by pressing the 1st valve on the Wiener Horn, making it much more centered. This trick, although used by many players, is usually not supported by manufacturers. The fun fact is that it not only fixes the precision of f”, but inexplicably, the sound of the whole instrument is just better. The theory is that the wire helps the soundwave float (or floating knots). As weird as it sounds, but also the fact that the wire is harder, softer, with or without the internal metallic part has a big influence. It is also likely that the induced physical change is actually minimal, yet enough to give the player a better feeling of playing, leading to a better sound.

Again, I feel that F is pretty good on this Haagston/Pizka horn, but I tried the wire anyway, who knows, would it be even better? An electrical wire with the insulation on placed in the first valve crook was really not good, but a wire with the insulation stripped was pretty decent on the F, maybe better. But every action has consequences, the high Bb became very unstable. So, for this horn, no wire is best, but for yours, who knows? They are pretty emphatic about this being helpful.

Adjustments I make (automatically)

The key thing in my personal bag of tricks would be an adjustment I make automatically at this point in how I tongue. This was really perfected when I made my CD on the single F horn and played nothing but that horn for months; I have to tongue lighter and higher in the mouth in the higher range. If I approach it like I would on a double horn, the articulations will be nothing but rough. Related to that, overall, on historic horns I tongue lighter, adjusting to the horn, listening for the results I want.

[The CD is of course on YouTube, the full album is here.]

There is one other adjustment I make automatically that works against me on this horn. Most of the historic horns I use have Seraphinoff tapers in the crooks and have a similar feel and intonation tendencies. Both of the crooks I have for the Haagston/Pizka horn have similar but very different tendencies compared to my other horns, and I have to use a tuner a lot as I sort out those different tendencies.

Valve feel and action

Here is another topic that is a difficult one to describe. When you change valves in slurs, the feel is excellent in terms of the sound. But the valve action itself is slow and heavy, which may be why people have made rotary valve versions of Vienna horns.

If it was all you ever used I’m sure you would get used to it, but I’d really rather not play anything very technical on Vienna valves.

Tone in the upper range

This horn has a lovely tone with the better crook. A common feature I think of all vintage single F horns is that in the upper range the sound is distinctive and unmistakable – it is different than the modern horn for sure.

On the modern double horn, at least as typically used in the USA, we play on the F horn mostly from second line G down, and above that note we play on the Bb horn. The Bb horn has also a very distinctive sound in that range and we are totally used to hearing that as it is normal to us.

You can get some of the impact of that distinctive F horn sound on your double horn by using the F side, but it is not the same as the instrument is heavier and your articulations will have a rougher quality.

To experience this F horn sound is one of the reasons to seek out a Vienna horn or any other quality, crooked horn from the 19th century.

Volume

A final playing topic I’d bring up is volume. It is difficult to quantify exactly in just personal practice in the spaces I use. But I’d offer these observations.

This Vienna horn, relative to my rotary valve single horns, it can also put out a lot of sound without breaking up. I would credit that to the heavy bell present on this horn and the wide nickel silver garland.

That having been said, my perception is that my Patterson Geyer double puts out a LOT more actual sound. Which is to say, there are reasons why you don’t see Vienna horns mixed in sections with conventional double horns or even single horns of different designs. The sound I think would get lost in a conventional, modern orchestral horn section.

Is it a Vienna horn?

This photo brings me back to a topic mentioned in Part I and touched on again above, is a Vienna horn with rotary valves a Vienna horn? This photo is a well-known portrait of the horn section the Johann Strauss orchestra in 1869. From left to right the horn players are Morawetz, Sabaz, Radnitzky, and Schantl – the great Josef Schantl (1842-1902), Principal Horn of the Imperial and Royal Court Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic, credited also with founding the Vienna Waldhornverein. Among many significant performances he performed on the premieres of Brahms second and third symphonies, and also the third and eighth symphonies of Bruckner. Look closely at his horn in the photo – it is one of those rotary valve horns made on the pattern of a Vienna horn. I believe he had no issue blending with these colleagues. And I should add, other portraits of Shantl show him holding a conventional Vienna horn, he made use of both types. A horn merely being a tool in the hands of the artist.

[There is a nice article on a horn of this general type in the R. J. Martz website, which also credits this photo to the Pizka collection, published in the April 1984 issue of The Horn Call.]

In any case, I’m enjoying playing this Vienna horn. Drawing inspiration from Schantl, I’ve been playing his etudes often (especially the ones reprinted as the Pottag Preparatory Melodies and the additional ones I included in my publication, 35 Melodic Etudes) and also excerpts from Brahms and Bruckner. When the series returns, we will look more at where the Vienna horn fits in the musical world of the 19th century.

Continue to Part III of the Vienna Horn series

Astute readers of Horn Matters might have noticed that I have rarely written about Vienna horns. Not that there is no content, but relative to the deep and continued interest in the Vienna horn I have not written much at all.

Like most Horn Matters readers, I first noticed the unique design from videos of the Vienna Philharmonic. A Vienna horn is a single F, but much more exciting than any standard single F you might have played as a beginner.

Blame my dissertation

By the time I was thinking about dissertation topics I had decided to focus on the early valved horn in Germany – which means I was focused mostly on horns with rotary valves. I looked at it all pretty deeply in “The Development of Valved Horn Technique in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany: A Survey of Performers and Works Before 1850 With Respect to the Use of Crooks, Right Hand Technique, Transposition, and Valves” (Indiana University, 1995).

Eventually I recorded a CD on a rotary valve single horn with crooks (more on that here), and I have modified several horns to imitate 19th century rotary horn designs (especially during my sabbatical), including horns with crooks, that I use often and enjoy playing (more here).

So, what is a Vienna horn?

Visually, it is a very 19th-century design. There are a number of features to consider, including the use of a crook, pitch level in F, and the bore and bell size. But when you get to it the most central feature is that a Vienna horn has Vienna valves.

Vienna valves are a type of piston valve, sometimes referred to as double piston valves. They operate as pairs of small valves that are connected together, as seen in this illustration. The historical summary of the design I included in my dissertation (as subsequently posted in Horn Articles Online) is as follows:

This valve design, patented [see endnote] in 1823 by Viennese instrument maker Joseph Riedl (d. 1840) and hornist Josef Kail (1795-1871), had actually been produced as early as 1819 by instrument maker C. F. Sattler (1778-1842) of Leipzig and possibly earlier by Stölzel and Blühmel [Dahlqvist, 111, 114, and 123. Leopold Ulhmann of Vienna also held an 1830 patent on an improved Vienna valve]. The use of two pistons for each valve loop made for a more consistent bore and eliminated the potential problem of back pressure found in the single-piston Stölzel valve. However, when a Vienna valve is depressed it introduces two sharp 90-degree angles into the windway, and also introduces two sudden constrictions of approximately 8% in the bore, neither of which assist in the response of the instrument [Merewether, 31]. It should be noted that the Stölzel valve shares these same defects of design. German players favored the Vienna valve until the 1850s [Carse, 222], while Austrian players continued to used it throughout the nineteenth century and beyond.

SOURCES:

Adam Carse, Musical Wind Instruments (London: Macmillan, 1939; reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1965).

Reine Dahlqvist, “Some Notes on the Early Valve,” The Galpin Society Journal 33 (March, 1980), 111-124.

Richard Merewether, “The Vienna-Horn–And Some Thoughts on its Past Fifty Years,” The Horn Call 15, no. 1 (October, 1984), 31-35.

Reflecting now, I’m a bit skeptical of that final statement drawn from Carse, it would be one that could be researched out more. And reality is you don’t notice the 8% constriction that Merewether mentions.

Are there Vienna horns with rotary valves?

Worth also mentioning, there are horns built with the same layout as a Vienna horn, but with rotary valves. They have been around since the early years of valves and are interesting horns for sure. I’d love to own one or build one someday.

Without the distinctive Vienna valves they are not considered by some to be Vienna horns. Vienna horns have Vienna valves! Personally, I would call them a type of Vienna horn, as so many of the other design features are the same — only the valve section is different — and historically these rotary instruments existed alongside the Vienna valve instruments.

However, if the layout of a rotary valve horn is otherwise different, it is not a Vienna horn. It is a crooked, rotary valve horn, of the type that I have worked with the most personally. A rotary valve Vienna horn would certainly have the valve section placed in the same location as the Vienna valves and take exactly the type of crook used on a Vienna horn. If the crook is larger or smaller, the design has clearly diverged significantly away from that of the Vienna horn.

Finally, I would add that this is a topic on which opinions differ, but for sure the pro players of the Vienna horn today all use horns with Vienna valves, and you are safest to stick with that as what we call a Vienna horn today. I’ll have a bit more on this in Part II.

And I didn’t have a Vienna horn

Another reason I have not looked at the Vienna horn that much is I did not have a Vienna horn to use beyond very limited testing.

When one became available to me recently I was also initially not very impressed. I’ll talk about that more in Part II, as I was able to rework an unfinished crook for that horn and it plays rather better on the finished crook! A good crook is a necessity! Made a huge difference. A sneak peek look at that crook may be found here. 

Another introduction to the instrument

To close Part I of this series, Anneke Scott presents a great introduction to the Vienna horn in this video, and I’ll be back soon with Part II.

Continue to Part II of Vienna Horns series