Horn parts are written in treble and bass clefs without key signature, accidentals being written in as they occur. The horn is a transposing instrument and sounds a fifth lower than written in the treble clef but a fourth higher in the bass clef.

In his book on the French horn Morley Pegge described the sound of the instrument as ‘the most refined and poetical voice in the symphony orchestra’. Its emotional range certainly covers the moods from martial to melancholy.

A description of the appearance of this noble brass instrument and its timbre seems unnecessary. Technically it has the misfortune to be classed as a lip vibrated aerophone’. The principles of sound production are the same as for reed instruments, but in this case it is the vibration of the player’s lips within the funnel of the mouthpiece, not a reed, which sets the long column of coiled air vibrating. The rate of vibration is controlled by the tension of the lip muscles: high tension for high notes, slack muscles for low notes. Experiments to produce sound in this way can be made by anyone with a length of pipe, be it hose, drain or watering-can spout. The range of notes or harmonics that can be produced from these tubes will depend not only on the lip of the performer but on the size and configuration of any mouthpiece which acts as a form of funnel, directing and controlling the quantity of air.

Technique

The expression ’stiff upper lip‘ might have originated among brass players because they all must have one. The mouthpiece is held against the upper lip, and the muscles of and around the lips control the pitch. Should the lip become tired it will ‘go’ and notes will split or crack. Refinements of pitch and timbre are also produced by adjustments of the hand in the bell. But a trembling upper lip and gapped teeth will not produce good horn playing.

Correct fingering does not by itself produce the right note. The horn player has to ‘hear’ his note before he plays it and adjust lip tension accordingly. A slack lip for a high note would produce a low sound of some sort.

A mute is an essential part of a horn player’s equipment, for although a form of muting can be produced by the hand, the mute that can be inserted will produce a different sound. Some mutes are designed with air outlets so that the pitch is not affected; others are airtight and do affect the pitch. The opposite of the muted sound is the son cuivre, a blaring or brassy sound produced by overblowing when the hand or mute is inserted.

Trills, tremolos, flutter tonguing and glissandi are all part of the horn repertoire.

Horn players can be observed tipping their instruments and pouring out water. This is condensation and it is released by a water key — a sort of draining device.

The Repertoire

The stages ,of technical development of the horn can often be distinguished by the way it is written for. Where the earliest music, such as Handel’s Water Music, declares its derivation from the cor de chasse codes, that of the late 19th century and after display chromatic instruments with a small but interesting variety of different timbres.

All the same, the horn’s musical symbolism as an instrument of the hunt, playing rhythmical passages based on the harmonic series, has never been totally abandoned. In ‘The Royal Hunt and Storm’ from The Trojans Berlioz uses it to evoke two planes of perspective — near and distant — as well as in a supporting role.

Mozart (1756-1791) already treated the horn as a melodic instrument, as his horn concerti and Divertimenti alone reveal. And in most of his scores he wrote for two horns, showing great sensitivity to the difference between stopped and open notes. Beethoven (177o-1827) was considered ’singularly cruel and exacting’ in his writing for the horn and even in the late 19th century his Sextet for String Quartet and Two Horns obbligato was considered almost unplayable. Weber (1786-1826) wrote one of the most celebrated horn passages in the opening bars of his Oberon overture, but to express the ‘elf-like’ atmosphere this should properly be played on the hand horn, as indeed should also the horn solo that opens the Nocturne in Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Rossini (1792-1868), a horn player himself, represents a stage in the new-style writing for the valve horn; Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians of 1889 remarked rather sniffily that his works were `abundantly strewn’ with runs, turns and scales and treacherous passages that were possible only on this new-fangled machine. There was in fact fairly widespread dismay when the hand horn began to be replaced by the valve horn. In his early years Wagner scored for both together — there is an example in the second act of The Flying Dutchman — but Tristan and Isolde is scored for hand horns only because Wagner recognized that with the valve horn there was a loss of `some of (the horn’s) beauty of tone and power in producing a smooth legato’.

Although the valve horn was available in Brahms’ day (1833-1897), he scored for the hand horn, and his Second Piano Concerto begins with a dialogue between horn and piano. Throughout his symphonies he gives the horns passages of considerable prominence. Towards the turn of the century Richard Strauss (1864-1949), Mahler (186o-1911), Debussy (1862-1918) and others wrote passages extending the range of the horn. Glissandi became fairly common (Mahler called for them in no fewer than three of his symphonies) and flutter tonguing was introduced. The different timbres were also increasingly exploited. In only seven bars of Debussy’s Prélude a d’un Faune there are four changes of timbre.

Among the most famous of all melodic passages for the horn are those to be heard in the slow movement of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, and in Ravel’s Pavane pour une Infante Defunte.

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dodoBrass, Piano23 Aug, 2008