F clef an octave too low, as is now customary, had not yet been adopted, for in that case the bass horn would in several bars be playing above the tenor.
In 1647 Cardinal Mazarin, wishing to create in France a taste for Italian opera, had procured from Italy an orchestra, singers and mise-en-scène. That he was not entirely successful in making Paris appreciate Italian music is beside the mark; he developed instead a demand for French opera, to which Lulli proved equal. The great similarity in the style of the horn scène by Cavalli and Lulli may perhaps provide a clue to the mysterious and sudden apparition of the natural horn in France, where nothing was known of the hybrid instrument thirty years before, when Mersenne[1] wrote his careful treatise on musical instruments.
The orchestral horn had been introduced from Italy. It is not difficult to understand how the horn came to be called the French horn in England; the term only appears after Gerber and other writers had repeated the story of Count Spörken introducing the musical horn into Bohemia.[2] By this time the firm of Raoux, established in Paris a hundred years, had won for itself full recognition of its high standard of workmanship in the making of horns.
This use of the horn by Lulli in the one ballet seems to be an isolated instance; no other has yet been quoted. The introduction of the natural horn into the orchestra of the French opera did not occur until much later in 1735 in André Campra’s Achille et Deidamie, and then only in a fanfare. In the meantime the horn had already won a place in most of the rising opera houses and ducal orchestras[3] of Germany, and had been introduced by Handel into the orchestra in London in his Water-music composed in honour of George I.
Although the Italians were undoubtedly the first to introduce the horn into the orchestra, it figured at first only as the characteristic instrument of the chase, suggesting and accompanying hunting scenes or calls to arms. For a more independent use of the horn in the orchestra we must turn to Germany. Reinhard Keiser, the founder of German opera, at the end of the 17th century in Hamburg, introduced two horns in C into the opening chorus of his opera Octavia in 1705, where the horns are added to the string quartette and the oboes; they play again in act i. sc. 3, and in act ii. sc. 6 and 9. The compass used by the composer for the horns in C alto is the following:—
Wilhelm Kleefeld draws attention to the characterization, which differed in the three acts. In Henrico (1711), in Diana (1712) and in L’Inganno Fedele (1714) F horns were used. This called forth from Mattheson[4] his much-quoted eulogium, the earliest description of the orchestral horn: “Die lieblich pompeusen Waldhörner sind bei itziger Zeit sehr en vogue kommen, weil sie theils nicht so rude von Natur sind als die Trompeten, teils auch weil sie mit mehr Facilité können tractiret werden. Die brauchbarsten haben F und mit den Trompeten aus dem C gleichen Ambitum. Sie klingen auch dicker und füllen besser aus als die übertäubende und schreyende Clarinen, weil sie urn eine ganze quinte tiefer stehen.”
Lotti in his Giove in Argo, given in Dresden, 1717, scored for two horns in C, writing for them soli in the aria for tenor[5] (act iii. sc. 1). Examples of C. H. Graun’s[6] scoring for horns in F and G respectively in Polydorus (1728–1729) and in Iphigenia (1731) show the complete emancipation of the instrument from its original limitations; it serves not only as melody instrument but also to enrich the harmony and emphasize the rhythm. A comparison of the early scores of Cavalli and Lulli with those of Handel’s Wasserfahrtmusik[7] (1717) and of Radamisto, performed in London in 1720, shows the rapid progress made by the horn, even at a time when its technique was still necessarily imperfect.
While Bach was conductor of the prince of Anhalt-Cöthen’s orchestra (1717–1723), it is probable that horns in several keys were used. In Dresden two Bohemian horn-players, Johann Adalbert Fischer and Franz Adam Samm, were added to the court orchestra in 1711.[8] In Vienna the addition is stated to have taken place in 1712 at the opera.[9] It is probable that as in Paris so in Vienna there were solitary instances in which the horn was heard in opera without attracting the attention of musicians long before 1712, for instance in Cesti’s Il Pomo d’Oro, printed in Vienna in 1667 and 1668 and performed for the wedding ceremonies of Kaiser Leopold and Margareta, infanta of Spain. A horn in E (former F pitch) in the museum of the Brussels conservatoire bears the inscription “Machts Michael Leicham Schneider in Wien, 1713.”[10] Fürstenau[11] gives a further list of operas in Vienna during the first two decades of the 18th century.
It will be well before the next stage in the evolution is approached to consider the compass of the natural horn. The pedal octave from the fundamental to the 2nd harmonic was altogether wanting; the next octave contained only the 2nd and 3rd harmonics or the octave and its fifth; in the third octave, the 8ve, its major 3rd, 5th and minor 7th; in the fourth octave, a diatonic scale with a few accidentals was possible. It will be seen that the compass was very limited on any individual horn, but by grouping horns in different keys, or by changing the crooks, command was gained by the composer over a larger number of open notes.
An important period in the development of the horn has now been reached. Anton Joseph Hampel is generally credited[12] with the innovation of adapting the crooks to the middle of the body of the horn instead of near the mouthpiece, which greatly improved the quality of the notes obtained by means of the crooks. The crooks fitted into the two branches of U-shaped tubes, thus forming slides which acted as compensators. Hampel’s Inventionshorn, as it is called in Germany (Fr. cor harmonique), is said to date from 1753.[13] the first instrument having been made for him by Johann Werner, a brass instrument-maker of Dresden. The same invention is also attributed to Haltenhof of Hanau.[14] Others again mention Michael Wögel[15] of Carlsruhe and Rastadt, probably confusing his adaptation of the Invention or Maschine, as the slide contrivance was called in Germany, to the trumpet in 1780. The Inventionshorn, although embodying an important principle which has also found its application in all brass wind instruments with valves as a means of correcting defective intonation, did not add to the compass of the horn. At some date before 1762 it would seem that Hampel[16] also discovered the principle on which hand-stopping is founded.
By hand-stopping (Fr. sons bouchés, Ger. gestöpfte Töne) is understood the practice of inserting the hand with palm outstretched and
- ↑ Mersenne’s drawings of cors de chasse are very crude; they have no bell and are all of the large calibre suggestive of the primitive animal horn. He mentions nevertheless that they were not only used for signals and fanfares but also for little concerted pieces in four parts for horns alone, or with oboes, at the conclusion of the hunt.
- ↑ See William Tans’ur Senior, The Elements of Musick (London, 1772); Br. V. Dictionary under “Horn.” Also Scale of Horn in the hand of Samuel Wesley; in Add. MS. 35011, fol. 166, Brit. Mus.
- ↑ A horn-player, Johann Theodor Zeddelmayer, was engaged in 1706 at the Saxon court at Weissenfels; see Neue-Mitteilungen aus dem Gebiete histor. antiqu. Forschungen, Bd. xv. (2) (Halle, 1882), p. 503; also Wilhelm Kleefeld, “Das Orchester der Hamburger Oper, 1678–1738,” Intern. Mus. Ges., Smbd. i. 2, p. 280, where the appearance of the horn in the orchestras of Germany is traced.
- ↑ Das neu-eröffnete Orchester, i. 267.
- ↑ See Moritz Fürstenau, Zur Geschichte der Musik und des Theaters zu Dresden (Dresden, 1861–1862), vol. ii. p. 60.
- ↑ See “Carl Heinrich Graun als Opernkomponist,” by Albert Mayer-Reinach, Intern. Mus. Ges., Smbd. i. 3 (Leipzig, 1900), pp. 516-517 and 523-524, where musical examples are given.
- ↑ Cf. Chrysander, Haendel, ii. 146.
- ↑ See Moritz Fürstenau, op. cit. ii. 58.
- ↑ See Ludwig von Köchel, Die kaiserliche Hofkappelle in Wien (Vienna, 1869), p. 80.
- ↑ See Victor Mahillon, Catalogue descriptif, vol. ii. No. 1160, p. 389.
- ↑ Op. cit. ii. 60.
- ↑ The Department of State Archives for Saxony in Dresden possesses no documents which can throw any light upon this point, but, through the courtesy of the director, the following facts have been communicated. Two documents concerning Anton Joseph Hampel are extant: (1) An application by his son, Johann Michael Hampel, to the elector Friedrich August III. of Saxony, dated Dresden, April 3, 1771, in which he prays that the post of his father as horn-player in the court orchestra in which he had already served as deputy for his invalid father may be awarded to him. (2) A petition from the widow, Aloisia Ludevica Hampelin, to the elector, bearing the same date (April 3, 1771), wherein she announces the death of her husband on the 30th of March 1771, who had been in the service of the house of Saxony thirty-four years as horn-player, and prays for the grant of a monthly pension for herself and her three delicate daughters, as she finds herself in the most unfortunate circumstances. There is no allusion in either letter to any musical merit of the deceased.
- ↑ There is an instrument of this early type, supposed to date from the middle of the 18th century, in Paul de Wit’s fine collection of musical instruments formerly in Leipzig and now transferred to Cologne; see Katalog, No. 645, p. 148.
- ↑ See Dictionnaire de l’acad. des beaux arts, vol. iv. (Paris), article “Cor.”
- ↑ See Dr Gustav Schilling, Universal Lexikon der Tonkunst (Stuttgart, 1840), Bd. vi., “Trompete”; also Capt. C. R. Day, pp. 139 and 151, where the term Invention is quite misunderstood and misapplied. See Gottfried Weber in Caecilia (Mainz, 1835), Bd. xvii.
- ↑ Gerber in the first edition of his Lexikon does not mention Hampel or award him a separate biographical article; we may therefore conclude that he was not personally acquainted with him, although Hampel was still a member of the electoral orchestra in Dresden during Gerber’s short career in Leipzig. In the edition of 1812 Gerber renders him full justice.
