A Medley of Horn Players

 

The horn is a brass instrument
that originally began as a long conical tube 
coiled into a kind of hoop shape.
At one end was fixed a small mouthpiece to buzz the lips into

and at the other was a large flared bell to amplify the sound.

It was a simple and uncomplicated instrument
that could play a scattering of useful musical notes.

But the horn's first purpose was less musical and more practical.
It was in a forest that people most often heard its ringing sound,
as horn calls rang through woods and fields
commanding the attention of dogs, horses, and hunters.
Its hoop shape was functional so that a horn
could be easily carried over the shoulder.

But as that simple hunting horn
evolved into the modern horn 
its plumbing got a bit more complicated.  

The horn is the instrument I play
and today I celebrate its history
with a medley of photos
of vintage horn players. 
Their names are unknown
but they are still good friends
whom I'd like you to meet.

Caution!
The following story contains a lot
of geeky technical detail on horn plumbing.
It is probably of little interest to anyone but horn players.
So if it gets too nerdy, skip ahead and just admire the nice pictures.
There are a few dogs.

And a great many mustaches, too.

My first image of an old horn player comes from a colorful illustration on an Austrian postcard. Wearing a leather jacket and Tyrolean hat the man smiles with his eyes, if not his camouflaged mouth,  as he appears to get ready to blow into his horn. Its twisted shape puts the bell on the right and mouthpiece on the left just like a modern horn but this one has no valves and can only play bugle-like harmonic overtones. With careful positioning of the right hand in the bell other chromatic notes are possible but they are muffled and were not needed for this horn player's music. 

The German word for it was Waldhorn or forest horn. It was this type of horn that was used in the 18th and early 19th century by Classical era composers like Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven to add a loud brassy musical color of fanfares and hunting calls to orchestral music. 

The postcard is one of the oldest cards in my collection with a written date of 28/8/1898. At the top the sender wrote "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen". This is a lighthearted reference to a poem written by the German poet and novelist Joseph Victor von Scheffel (1826–1886) which was  later adapted as an opera, The Trumpeter of Säckingen, by Alsation composer Viktor Nessler (1841–1890). This epic poem and dramatic heroic opera is set in 17th-century Heidelberg and Säkkingen, after the Thirty Years' War. It was once very popular and postcard publishers produced hundreds of colorful illustration of the hero Werner blowing a trumpet, not a horn, which is why the sender's caption on the picture of the old Waldhorn player is a subtle ironic joke. (The Trumpeter of Säckingen will return for a future story on the postcard imagery it inspired.)     

The postcard was sent in 1898 to a Fräulein Josefine Celikovsky of Praha\Prague. By coincidence the metal craftsmen who created the first brass hunting horns and Waldhorns were Czechs from Bohemia which was once part of the Austrian empire.

Before we go any further
let's listen to another kind of Waldhorn,
or actually a baker's dozen, called a Parforcehorn.

Here is the Windhag hunting horn club
with “Österreichisches Jägerliedchen”
at a musicians’ meeting in Lower Austria.
Their instrument is a Parforcehorn
which is less compact than a Waldhorn. 
It came in two sizes, pitched in E-flat and B-flat,
but a modern version combines the two
with a single valve hidden on the hoop of brass.
This extra length of plumbing gives it almost a full scale.

This French postcard is captioned: 18. Chasse à Courre en Forét de Fontainebleau - Piquerur sonnant la Curée - Hunting in the Forest of Fontainebleau - Stingers sounding the Kill. Taken outdoors in a wood this photo shows two liveried men playing horns as a pack of large hound dogs wait expectantly for their treat.

In the 16th century the Bohemian horn was introduced in France where it became the instrument that accompanied elaborate hunting events held at royal estates. These "sporting" hunts involved many servants, beaters, trackers, gamekeepers, and packs of hounds who rallied the quarry, usually stags or boar, towards the hunting party of noblemen. Special teams of men were hired to manage both the dogs and the horns. Their raucous horn calls could be heard throughout the estate as each tune announced various special moments in the hunt, like when the stag was spotted or brought to ground, or in this case I think it was time to give the dogs a taste of their prey. 

The hunting horn in France was known as the Trompe (or Cor) de Chasse. Though France ceased being a monarchy in 1871 following the Franco-Prussian War, the old aristocratic hunting traditions continued into the early 20th century when this postcard series of over 70 images was produced. This card has a postmark date of 18 Jul 1927 but I believe the photos date from around 1910. In any case, the tromp de chasse is still heard in the Forest of Fontainebleau in the 21st century as the hunt is now a tourist  event. Stay tuned, I have plans for a future story on the tromp de chasse. 

It is this instrument that gives the horn its accepted American name, French horn, not to be confused with the woodwind instrument, the English horn or the cor anglais as it is known in Britain. Confused? Ask an oboist to explain. 

The French trompe de chasse has a slightly brassier timbre
than the Austrian/German Parforcehorn.
It's a bit longer, pitched a half-step down in D,
and is coiled to allow it to be carried
over the shoulder while riding a horse
or managing a pack of dogs.  
Here is Curée venerie Cheverny -Trompes de chasse.
Wait for the feeding frenzy around 3:40.
{Probably not suited for anyone with a sensitive stomach.}

Music performed by a Trompe de Chasse ensemble was once even popular in French music halls. This act  promoted itself on a postcard with a photo of four members of the Tournée Artistque – Quatuor Hallali de Paris, G. Rochard, directeur. Somehow they combined four trompe de chasse with guitars and mandolins. The card is undated but the style dates to around 1905-1915. 

Sharp eyed readers will notice that in the videos both the trompe de chasse and the Parforce horn are held without placing a hand in the bell. They are called "natural horns" because there are no valves and, in fact, the bell can be held to either the right or left according to the player's choice without changing the sound quality. Some earlier horns were often so large that it was too awkward for a player to do that anyway. 

The most common question asked of horn players is, "Why do you put your right hand in the bell?" The smaller shape of the Waldhorn lets the player use the hand, or really fist, as a kind of mute or stopper to flatten the pitch in order to achieve a full chromatic scale. This was easier to do with the dominant right hand and made a horn more comfortable to hold. For these reasons the modern horn is deliberately made a tiny bit sharp so that the hand must be kept in the bell in order to play in tune and occasionally "stop" the bell for a echo-muting effect. 

This carte de visite photograph is a portrait of a young boy, maybe age 13 to 16, holding a horn with three rotary valves. His name is unknown but the photographer was Herr L. Schmidt of Langestrasse No. 35 in Waren a spa town the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. The rounded corners and thin card stock are a cdv style from the early 1870s so this is one of my oldest examples of a horn player. His long suitcoat gives him a maturity more than his years, I think. Was he a student musician or a young professional? If you could work in the coal mines at age 14, you could certainly hammer out music in an opera theater pit.

In the early 19th century advances in machine tooling inspired an important new invention for brass instruments—the valve. In Germany, instrument makers developed a quarter turn rotary mechanism, while in France, a sleaved piston design was favored. Both valve types were applied to horns and trumpets which enabled a valve actuated by a player to instantly redirect the air stream carrying the sound waves down an extra length of tubing. After many years of speculative designs instrument makers decided that just three valves of different lengths offered enough combinations to produce a full chromatic range for a brass instrument without any difference in sound quality. This invention created a new age in music for brass instruments. Even some trombonists joined the bandwagon, abandoning their slides for valves. 

In this larger cabinet card photo from the 1890s a man with a splendid mustache and fancy embroidered uniform holds a horn with three piston valves. This was the style favored by hornists in France, Belgium, and Britain too. Yet this man was photographed in Michigan. In the lower right corner is an embossed mark for the photographer,  Will H. Foot of Frlint, Michigan. The horn player's cap has his band's name stitched on it: Campbell F.C.B. which probably stands for the leader of the Flint City Band.

This next portrait is a horn player with another impressive mustache who struck an unusual pose for the camera by raising his left leg up onto a box and resting his horn on his thigh. He is dressed in a formal tailcoat with a black bowtie, so he looks like a professional musician to me. His horn has three rotary valves but the layout of its plumbing is unusual as it reverses the more common arrangement of valves and extra crooks by moving them to the backside of the horn with the main tuning slide on the front. I find the layout weirdly unsettling, like a British right-hand drive car. 

This boudoir size cabinet photo was taken by George Harrison of Orange, New Jersey. 

Analyzing brass plumbing is a habit most horn players acquire. We carefully trace the twists and turns  of tubing searching for the click-click of water condensed inside the horn. We compare the valve action, test the braces, inspect the diameters of slides on different instruments. Even with only 3 valves, the number of different horn designs can be quite varied. For many decades there was a strong rivalry, often a clash of nationalities, between the piston and rotary systems. In this photo we see three different horn layouts presented by three U. S. Army bandsmen. This photo postcard is unmarked but their uniforms with full trousers and leggings and wide brim hats are from the First World War era. The soldiers stand with another soldier on the left who is,  I think, their band's chief musician. 

The hornist on the left has a French or maybe British style piston valve instrument which comes with a separate coil of tubing, a crook, that connects the mouthpiece to the main body of the horn. This crook could be exchanged for a larger or smaller one to change the key of the instrument. Generally by this decade the standard pitch for a horn was in F, but E, E-flat, and D were not uncommon. The bell flare of this horn is also a bit smaller and narrower than the other two.

The center horn player's instrument has three rotary valves just like the hornist on the right, but the pattern of his horn matches a design of a little known German-American brass instrument maker named Reinhard A. Kaempf & Son. This small shop operated in New York City from 1873 to 1911. A few years ago I bought an antique horn identical to this one just because it's an unusual brand with distinctive features unlike other horns. 

The older man on the right, surely the principal horn, has a German style rotary valve horn with the valves on the top and tuning slide below. He has sergeant stripes and may be regular army. 

All the horns in the previous photos are called single horns since they are all in one key, usually F. Uncoiled they are approximately 15 feet long including additional valve crooks. But in modern times instrument makers developed new compact ways to add more plumbing and invented the so-called double horn in F and B-flat. This horn is around 22 feet long with the valve crooks and is the prevailing horn design which is now played around the world. (Except in Austria where orchestras like the Vienna Philharmonic still put their confidence in the traditional single horn.) 

Compared to cornets, trumpets, trombones and tubas, portraits of horn players or horn ensembles are uncommon to rare. It's never been a popular brass instrument perhaps because in band music the horn is an alto voice that gets few solos to shine. However in orchestral music the horn's versatile range and wide dynamics make it the dominant voice in the brass section. Generally a symphony orchestra requires four horns, though sometimes eight or more are needed for very large pieces, while three trumpets and three trombones are sufficient for most orchestral music. 

In this postcard photo we see a proper horn section from an orchestra with a token trumpet player in the center.

The two horns on the left are single horns but have an extra valve operated by the left thumb to add a useful half-step extension. The far left is a horn in F/E-flat and the center left is in B-flat/A. 

The two horns on the right are double horns. The center right one is in F/B-flat with and an extra fifth valve for muting. It has the smaller B-flat crooks on top which is the reverse of how most modern horns are arranged with the F side on top. The far right is a compensating horn in F/B-flat which would be typical style played by a principal horn. Today many principal players use a triple horn in F/B-flat/ high  F which gives security for playing high notes. But they come with at least seven valves which adds another set of fingerings to learn and make the instrument significantly heavier.

The trumpet player's instrument is just a standard B-flat with three rotary valves which was the style used by German and Austrian players a century ago and which continues in our time now.

The postcard has no marks for identifying  the five musicians or dating them but the photographer left an imprint on the back of Hofphotograph Gottmann of Heidelberg, Germany. His full name was Ernst Gottmann (1874–1932) and he operated a studio in Heidelberg from 1889 to 1928 with a specialty in portraits and architectural photography. The print style of this postcard looks 1920s to me, certainly  pre-WWII. Heidelberg, a celebrated university town, has a long history of symphony orchestras and opera that dates from 1839.  

My final vintage photo is a quartet of horn players whose names and location are unknown. They are posed outdoors, perhaps at a theater's cafe. Their horns are placed in an X with crossed mouthpieces and bells on the ground. It's a wonderful photo of four close colleagues, friends who likely worked together many years playing beautiful music. Though it's hard to see all of the horns, at least three are double horns. I'm fairly sure they are German musicians from around 1910-1920. 

Judging by their expressions and posture, I believe the grey haired man seated right is the first horn. His wingman would be the second horn who would sit next to him in the orchestra (which is my position, too). Initially I thought it might be the bearded fellow seated left, but I've changed my mind and now think the tall man standing is the second horn; the short fellow standing left is the third; and the bearded man is the fourth horn, the foundation in any horn section. Their comradery is typical of how musicians feel after playing a big concert or ending a season. Usually there would be a pint of beer or a glass of wine in the picture. Perhaps it commemorates the departure or retirement of one of the horn players. We may never know but it doesn't diminish the artistry of the photo. 

Many years ago my father took a picture of a young horn player marching in a parade for the annual Oyster Bowl football game held in Norfolk, Virginia. That kid is me. 

I was in my sophomore year in high school. The uniform was brand new for the band with a white tunic thing covering a dark green polyester suit. The tall shako came in only two sizes: too small and too big. The outfit replaced an old 1950s wool uniform that smelled of decades of teenage sweat and drycleaner deodorizer. 

My instrument was a single horn that my mother purchased for me when I was in 4th grade and we lived in Frankfurt, Germany where my father, an officer in the U.S. Army, was stationed. My first choice was an alto saxophone, but the saxophone's keys were complicated while the horn looked easier to play. We only stayed there a year and a half before my dad was transferred to Munich. The few music lessons I had taken in Frankfurt were not very productive and being a stubborn kid I balked at getting a new teacher in Munich. Little did I, (or my parents) know then that I was living in the center of my instrument's cultural history. That might have been the end to my interest in music but when we moved to Virginia my mother found a succession of two excellent teachers who lit the musical spark. Playing the horn became fun. It still is. 

That horn now hangs on the wall of my studio and I still play it occasionally for students. Years ago I removed the valves to turn it into a Waldhorn like the one held by the old hornist from 1898. Not only does it let me demonstrate hand horn technique but I can also show how rotary valves work too. Even some of my professional colleagues have never taken apart a valve.

The horn I play professionally is a British made double horn that is now an antique, too, having been my musical tool for 34 years. Earlier this year a colleague took a rare action shot of me during a rehearsal of the Asheville Symphony Orchestra where I am second horn. Now I join my collection of vintage horn players. Thanks for letting me share some of my old friends with you today. 

According to the official Google Blogspot counter, this is the 700th post for my blog. I don't have a count for the number of photos I've written about, but I feel certain it is many, many more than 700. As I discovered soon after I started my blog, TempoSenzaTempo—TimeWithoutTime, in December 2009, it is finding the story hidden behind an old photograph that really motivates me to write about a forgotten age of music and culture. I'm still collecting photos and feel certain I have enough right now to easily make 1001 posts. (And yes, Peter, I still have a plan for a book, too)

I am especially indebted to Alan Burnett whose Sepia Saturday digest has been a source of inspiration for me and countless fellow bloggers who love the sepia magic of old photos. I know it is the delight we take in telling our own stories and the enjoyment of reading other people's tales of long ago families and friends that keeps us blogging. Thanks for sharing.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where everyone is out for a ride on their bike.