HISTORICAL HORNS

All of our horns are built according to traditional methods. The garland is engraved. All tubes as well as the bell of the instrument are soldered from hammered brass sheets and therefore show a soldering seam. The instruments are burnished by hand according to historical methods before they are polished. The use of these methods produces horns acoustically closer to original instruments, especially where tone colour is concerned.

BAROQUE HORNS

At the suggestion of, and in collaboration with Martin Mürner, horn player and restorer of historic brass instruments, we have made replicas of two baroque horns, each in a single pitch. Because baroque horn repertoire requires the use of instruments in different pitches, modern instrument makers have developed systems of crooks combined with a single body to change the pitch. As with our Eichentopf model various crooks can be used with the same corpus; thus allowing for the change of keys. Using crooks not only reduces the costs but also alters the ration of the cylindrical to the conical parts of the horns. As this unfavourably affects the intonation, above all the tuning of the 11th and 13th overtones become quite difficult to correct, we optimise it by slightly enlarging the measurements towards those of classical horns.

On original baroque horns there is a continual conical widening from the mouthpiece to the bell, and the size of the bell depends on the length of the instrument. This profile makes it easier for the player to bend pitches, i.e. to correct out of tune harmonics. We therefore copy two horns of Leichamschneider, both of which offer better support for open (ie. without the hand in the bell) playing. Our horn after Eichentopf can still be played open but is also built with hand-stopping in mind and is also available with tone holes.

BAROQUE HORN

after Johann Heinrich Eichentopf, Leipzig 1738
The Courtois horn crooks are required for all the additional keys. This horn plays in pitch a1 = 415 Hz with the Courtois horn crooks in a1 = 440 Hz of the same key.
Rent per month: 5% of value, price depending on scope of delivery

Additional accessories

Mouthpieces

Mouthpieces for historical horns.

October 2017