German horn

[3] The added word "French" is still found in some tutors and instrumental books, but is now regarded as a colloquialism, having passed out of the usage of composers, scholars, and professional players since about 1930 because of the increasing ubiquity of the German horn.

[5] In the late seventeenth century, French makers became preeminent in the manufacture of hunting horns, and were credited with the creation of the now-familiar, circular "hoop" shape of the instrument.

When, early in the eighteenth century, crooks were invented in order to make such horns playable in different keys, they were first devised by German makers.

Since these new instruments (which had appeared as early as 1704) were also popularized in England starting in the 1730s by the playing of the sons and grandsons of German emigrant Nicholas Jacob Christopher Messing, the national designators "French" and "German" came to be used to distinguish the simple hunting horn from the newer horn with crooks, which was also called by the Italian name corno cromatico.

[9] The last great British exponent of the French instrument was Dennis Brain who, even after the Second World War continued to favour the purer tone of his 1818 Raoux single horn until finally abandoning it for a four-valved B♭/A Alexander model 90 in October 1951.

The sound and playing character of the German horn is distinctly different from those of the French model (the instrument of Franck, Debussy and Ravel), which is smaller in volume and regarded as more refined.

French makers, by contrast, preferred to preserve as much as possible the character of the natural horns exemplified by the instruments built in the eighteenth century by Raoux, which meant a narrower bore between 10.8 and 11.0 mm (0.425–0.433 in) and, in many earlier models, a removable set of piston valves which could be replaced by a simple centre crook to transform the instrument for hand-horn use.

Dennis Brain's benchmark recordings of the Mozart Horn Concerti were made on a single B♭/A instrument by Alexander Brothers, now on display at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

In 1864 he patented his "système équitonique", originally conceived not for the horn but rather as a "compensating system" to correct the intonation of the lowest notes of the euphonium and the bombardon.

One of these was the "omnitonic" horn invented by Hermann Prager in 1918 and built by Knopf of Markneukirchen, but its complicated mechanism made the instrument very heavy.

[18] A more successful model which added a valve to lower both sides of the instrument by a semitone (from B♭ to A and from F to E) was patented by Paul Geyer of Schwerin in 1924.

[19] In the United States, the two most common styles ("wraps") of double horns are named Kruspe and Geyer/Knopf, after the German instrument makers who first developed and standardized them.

In Europe the most popular German horns are arguably those made by Alexander Brothers of Mainz and by Paxman in London.

In the United States, the Conn 8D, a mass-produced instrument based on the Kruspe design, has been extremely popular in many areas (New York, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Philadelphia).

The CF Schmidt double, with its unique piston change valve, is occasionally found in sections playing Geyer/Knopf model equipment.

Today they are found being played in many professional orchestras, although the substantial cost difference between double and triple horns limits their usage elsewhere.

It retains the narrow bell-throat and mouthpipe crooks of the orchestral hand horn of the late eighteenth century, and most often has an "ascending" third valve.

Manufacturing of this instrument sharply decreased in the middle of the twentieth century, and this mellophone (or mellophonium) rarely appears today.

A derivative of the F alto horn, it is usually keyed in F, occasionally in G. It is shaped like a flugelhorn, with piston valves played with the right hand and a forward-pointing bell.

[24] As an instrument, it compromises between the ability to sound like a horn and a playing position like a trumpet or flugelhorn, a tradeoff that sacrifices acoustic properties for ergonomics.

Many college marching bands and drum corps prefer mellophones, which better balance the tone of the other brass instruments.

Its common range is similar to that of the euphonium, but its possible range is the same as that of the horn, extending from low F♯, below the bass clef staff to high C above the treble staff when read in F. These low pedals are substantially easier to play on the Wagner tuba than on the horn.

The horn is most often used as an orchestral and concert-band instrument, with its singular tone being employed by composers to achieve specific effects.

Telemann wrote much for the horn, and it features prominently in the work of Handel and in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto no.

Once the technique of hand-stopping had been developed, allowing fully chromatic playing, composers began to write seriously for the horn.

Others, particularly Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose friend Joseph Leutgeb was a noted horn player, wrote extensively for the instrument, including concerti and other solo works.

Mozart's A Musical Joke satirizes the limitations of contemporary horn playing, including the risk of selecting the wrong crook by mistake.

In the eighteenth century some outstanding concertos were written for solo horn and orchestra by Telemann, Christoph Förster, Michael and Joseph Haydn, Leopold and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Carl Stamitz.

In the early nineteenth century, Carl Maria von Weber, in addition to giving the horn a prominent orchestral place in the overtures to the operas Oberon and Der Freischütz, composed a spectacularly difficult Concertino in E Minor which, amongst other things, includes an early use of multiphonics, produced by humming into the instrument while playing.

Gioachino Rossini exploited the instrument's association with hunting in a piece called Rendez-vous de chasse for four corni da caccia and orchestra (1828).