The natural horn is a musical instrument that is the predecessor to the modern-day (French) horn (differentiated by its lack of valves). Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth century the natural horn evolved as a separation from the trumpet by widening the bell and lengthening the tubes. It consists of a mouthpiece, long coiled tubing, and a large flared bell. This instrument was used extensively until the emergence of the valved horn in the early 19th century.
12-459: A lur , also lure or lurr , is a long natural blowing horn without finger holes that is played with a brass-type embouchure . Lurs can be straight or curved in various shapes. The purpose of the curves was to make long instruments easier to carry (e.g. for marching, like the modern sousaphone ) and to avoid directing the loud noise at nearby people. The name lur is used for two distinct types of ancient wind instruments . The more recent type
24-400: A note is achieved by modifying the embouchure to raise or lower the pitch fractionally, and compensates for the slightly out-of-pitch " wolf tones " which all brass instruments have. Hand-stopping is a technique whereby the player can modify the pitch of a note by up to a semitone (or sometimes slightly more) by inserting a cupped hand into the bell. Both techniques change the timbre as well as
36-623: A single one in Latvia . The word lur is still in the Swedish language , indicating any funnel-shaped implement used for producing or receiving sound. For instance, the Swedish word for headphones is hörlurar (hearing-lurs), and a telephone might be referred to as a lur in contemporary Swedish (derived from telefonlur , telephone handset). The Norwegian and Swedish words for foghorn are respectively tåkelur and mistlur . The Danish butter brand Lurpak
48-891: Is made of wood and was in use in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages . The older type, named after the more recent type, is made of bronze , dates to the Bronze Age and was often found in pairs, deposited in bogs , mainly in Denmark and Germany . It consists of a mouthpiece and several pieces and/or pipes. Its length can reach between 1.5 and 2 metres. It has been found in Norway , Denmark, South Sweden , and Northern Germany. Illustrations of lurs have also been found on several rock paintings in Scandinavia. The earliest references to an instrument called
60-476: Is named after the lur, and the package design contains pictures of lurs. The word lur has several other meanings in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish that are not related to sound. Natural horn The natural horn has several gaps in its harmonic range. To play chromatically, in addition to crooking the instrument into the right key, two additional techniques are required: bending and hand-stopping . Bending
72-633: The Middle Ages . These instruments, called in English a birch trumpet , were used for calling cattle and signalling. They are similar in construction and playing technique to the war instrument, but are covered in birch , while the war instruments are covered in willow . Lurs made of bronze were used as musical instruments in ancient Greece, as well as in northern Europe where a total of 56 lurs have been discovered: 35 (including fragmentary ones) in Denmark , 11 in Sweden , 4 in Norway , 5 in northern Germany , and
84-438: The F harmonic series and has been performed using the natural horn to produce a "sorrowful tone" as a consequence of its "fragile intonation". György Ligeti 's Hamburg Concerto makes a great use of the natural horn and of natural sounds on the modern horn in the solo part and requires four natural horns in the orchestra. List of compositions for horn This is a selected list of musical compositions that feature
96-484: The artistic currents of the time. By the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, almost all music was written for the modern valved horn. However, the natural horn still found its way into the works of some composers. Brahms did not care for the valved horn and wrote for natural horn. Benjamin Britten 's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings , though written for the modern horn, makes notable use of
108-535: The lur come from Icelandic sagas , where they are described as war instruments, used to marshal troops and frighten the enemy. These lurs, several examples of which have been discovered in longboats , are straight, end-blown wooden tubes, around one metre long. They do not have finger holes, and are played much like a modern brass instrument . A kind of lur very similar to these war instruments has been played by farmers and milkmaids in Nordic countries since at least
120-468: The modern horn in the early to mid-19th century, Western music employed the natural horn and its natural brass brethren. Substantial contributors to the horn repertoire include Handel , Haydn , Mozart , Beethoven , Telemann , Weber , Brahms and many others. The chromatic abilities of recently developed brass instruments, however, opened new possibilities for composers of the Romantic era, and fit with
132-401: The pitch of his instrument rose by a semitone. In a flash of inspiration he realised that by alternately inserting and withdrawing the cotton plug he could cover without a break every diatonic and chromatic scale." Pitch changes are made through a few techniques: The repertoire for horn includes many pieces that were originally written with the natural horn in mind. Until the development of
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#1732873035702144-474: The pitch. It is commonly thought that hand technique emerged during the first half of the eighteenth century at the Dresden court with the horn player Anton Hampel. Domnich (1807) cited Hampel as the inventor of this technique and recounted the "invention" in which Hampel, trying to emulate oboist colleagues who used cotton plugs to "mute" their instruments, tried the same with his horn and was "surprised to find that
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