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Beginning as the simple pastoral and hunting instrument that its name suggests, the seventeenth-century horn was a brass tube with three coils, with a conical ‘bore’, or inner measurement, opening outwards from the funnel-shaped mouthpiece to the concluding ‘bell’. Pitch was controlled through breath pressure. This instrument, included by Handel in his Water Music (1717) and by ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

The nineteenth century saw several attempts at remaking the French horn when a valved horn along the lines of the trumpet competed with an omnitonic horn. The latter looks like a bowl of spaghetti and includes enough tubing for the instrument to be played in any key. The problem was controlling the tubing: models with various kinds of valving were tried. ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

Instantly recognizable, the crumhorn (also known as the krummhorn or cromorne) was made out of wood – usually boxwood – that had been bent rather than carved. The bell turned dramatically upwards like a hook, and the narrow cylindrical body flared only slightly, making the instrument lower in pitch than one with a conical bore of the same ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

With the arrival of the new musical drama in the Baroque era, the voice became one of the most powerful instruments in the musical repertory during this period and nowhere was this better demonstrated than in France. Under Louis XIV, who took full power in 1661 and reigned until 1715, France experienced a renaissance of artistic and literary ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

The context in which the trumpet was played – solo and in trumpet ensembles – did not alter greatly in the Renaissance. Meanwhile, its compass expanded upwards. Then in the Baroque period, the bell throat became progressively narrower and, like the horn, it was provided by makers with purpose-built extra lengths of tubing. These could be fitted ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

The English horn, or cor anglais, is a member of the oboe family. It is neither English nor a horn, and the name is usually written off as a mystery. Pitched a fifth below the oboe, it had been developed in 1760 by Ferlandis of Bergamo, but was rarely heard in the orchestra before the Romantic ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

The flugelhorn (or flügelhorn: Flügel means ‘wing’ in German) is a cornet-like valved brass instrument, a member of the bugle family. It has a conical bore and three valves; in Britain these are invariably piston valves, but German and Austrian ones have rotary valves. The flugelhorn’s ancestor was a type of semicircular hunting horn carried by the hunt-master who ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

Adolphe Sax patented the saxhorn in 1845. Seizing on the idea of valved brass instruments which was already current, Sax conceived the idea of a family of such instruments, with a shared playing technique and a shared quality of sound. After early experiments with a shape modelled on the trumpet, he built the entire family on the tuba ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

The post horn is a small, valveless brass instrument once used by guards on mail coaches to announce arrivals and departures. Originally bow shaped, in the seventeenth century post horns were bent in a single loop to play the fundamental pitch bb'. Clearly these were small instruments, perhaps only 7 cm (3 in) across; nevertheless they appear in ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins

Virtually any tube, even without any modification as a musical instrument, can be sounded as a horn, producing a series of notes from the harmonic series. Conches Many of the world’s horns are found objects: an animal horn with the tip cut off, or a large spiral-type shell, usually a conch, with the point cut off ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins

The flugelhorn developed from the bugle, a signalling horn used in the Middle Ages and made out of bull or ox horn. This developed into a large, semicircular hunting horn made of brass or silver that was used by the military during the Seven Years’ War (1756–63). History Wrapping the horn around itself once, so the bell pointed ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins

The term ‘horn’ is generally used to refer to the orchestral horn, also known as the French horn. Although it is used in jazz slang to indicate any wind instrument played by a soloist, the name here refers to the orchestral horn. History The early history of the horn is bound intimately to that of the trumpet. Both instruments ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins

The early part of the nineteenth century was a rich period for the development of instruments; many designs dating from this period are now established as the standard forms. The brass world was no exception. Adolphe Sax A man with business acumen and a fascination with design, Adolphe Sax was quick to seize on these developments. Having found major success ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins

The crumhorn is a double-reed wind-cap instrument. This means that the two reeds are enclosed in a rigid cap. The player blows through a hole in one end of the cap, which makes the reed vibrate unimpeded, since there is no direct contact with the lips. The crumhorn is a cylindrically bored instrument, normally made of maple with ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins

(Harmonica, vocals, 1926–84) Willie Mae Thornton was born in Montgomery, Alabama. She settled in Houston, Texas in 1948 and began recording for the Peacock label in 1951. She toured with Johnny Otis in 1952–53 and recorded her number-one R&B hit, ‘Hound Dog’, with his band. The record, famously covered by Elvis Presley, enabled her ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel
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