France, England, and Belgium

The horns of France, England, Belgium are grouped together here due to their close similarities. They are of relatively small bore, small bell, and similar taper based on the profile of the original French natural horns of Raoux, et. al. Credit for the invention of the first practical valved horn has generally been given to Heinrich Stölzel (or Stoelzel) of Breslau, Upper Silesia in 1814. (This invention was challenged by Friedrich Blühmel who claimed to have invented a valve as early as 1811/12. Stözel and Blühmel were issued a joint patent in 1818.)

For most of the nineteenth century there was strong opposition in France to the use of valves at all. The Stözel valve enjoyed some popularity there on horns and cornets prior to about 1850, however the valveless cor d'orchestre continued to be preferred. The continuing strong predilection for the natural horn sound with its stopped and half stopped coloration led to the development first of the "omnitonic" horns and later of the sauterelle removeable valve section. The omnitonic concept was to semi-automate the process changing the length of the air column using various ingenius combinations of slides or rotary "taps" to eliminate the box of terminal crooks that accompanied the cor d'orchestre. One such horn by P.-L. Gautrot is included in this collection.

After about 1850 horns made in France, England, and Belgium almost universally employed the piston valve designed by François Périnet in 1839. The other uniquely French innovation was the ascending third valve system developed around 1847 by Jules Halary. In this system the whole-tone third valve slide is part of he open horn airway and is subtracted when the valve is pressed. For this reason the horn is played with a G terminal crook which stands the horn in F with the added length of the third valve. Most of the F-horn fingerings are unchanged with the exception of the total loss of some notes in the lower register. The advantage is the some of unstable notes of the F horn are eliminated due to the shift in the harmonic series afforded by the ascending valve. This system was common (although not universal) into the double horn era of the twentieth century. Some horns were equipped with a sauterelle in which the standard valve section can be slipped out of the horn corpus and replaced by a section of straight tubing thus converting the horn back to its "natural" mode. This is the form that was advocated by François Brémond at the turn of the twentieth century and probably the horn for which Dukas intended his Villanelle as the morceau du concours for the Paris Conservatory in 1906. In the twentieth century, double horns became prominent, still using the Périnet piston for the three finger valves (often with the ascending third valve) but usually incorporating a rotary thumb valve for the F/Bb conversion.

Dick Martz, His Collection of Horns from

France, England, and Belgium