Corno

Baumann, Hermann

Which Horn for which Music?

Article discussing the choice of horn according to repertoire, comparing instruments, sound ideals and stylistic requirements.

Aebi, Willi

The inner acoustics of the horn

Study of the horn’s inner acoustics, explaining how its structure and air column influence tone production and intonation.

Barboteu, Georges

The Horn is my instrument

Personal reflection on the horn as an instrument, exploring artistic identity, sound ideals and the player’s relationship to the instrument.

Saxton, Earl S.

Horn singing

Earl S. Saxton advocates a “singing” approach to horn playing, emphasizing tone production through vibration, breath control and vocal-inspired technique.

Janetzky, Kurt

Impossible?

Kurt Janetzky challenges the notion of the “impossible” in brass playing, arguing that technical limits evolve and that demanding repertoire—past or present—should never be dismissed as unplayable.

Orval, Francis

The F/Bb horn with whole-tone ascending 3rd valve

A different horn, a different approach: Francis Orval explores how an ascending 3rd valve reshapes technique, intonation and response.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Meeting with Ib Lansky-Otto

“You cannot explain music — you have to play it.” A rare and elusive encounter with horn player Ib Lansky-Otto.

Westhof, Theo

My new developed descant double horn

Why does the ideal horn not exist? Theo Westhof designs a new descant double horn to solve tuning and tone issues—without compromise.

Höltzel, Michael

My contacts with the United States

About horns and how to play them

Double horn, descant, natural horn — which path? This article explores American vs German approaches and what it means to train a complete horn player.

Damm, Peter

On the question of articulation in the horn concertos by W. A. Mozart

How should Mozart really sound? Peter Damm questions traditional editions and reveals how articulation—often missing—must be rebuilt through style, listening, and musical judgment.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Zen and the Art of Horn playing

Beyond technique: Jeffrey Agrell explores how Zen challenges Western thinking—revealing a new path to awareness, focus, and deeper musical experience in horn playing.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Zen and the Art of Horn playing

Beyond technique: Jeffrey Agrell explores the clash between intellect and intuition—arguing that true musical expression begins where analysis ends.

Ree Wekre, Frøydis

The Leningrad School of Horn Playing

From St. Petersburg to the Soviet era, generations of horn players shaped a distinctive approach to sound, interpretation, and orchestral playing.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Zen and the Art of Horn playing

Between breath, reflex, and attention, Jeffrey Agrell links Zen practice with the physical and mental habits that shape brass playing.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Barry Tuckwell

Interview

Between the London Symphony Orchestra, international solo tours and Mozart or Strauss concertos, Barry Tuckwell reflects on sound, risk and musical instinct.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Zen and the Art of Horn playing

From meditation to distance running, horn playing becomes a way of quieting mental noise, linking breath, concentration, and daily life.

Janetzky, Kurt

300 Years of the Horn in Bohemia

An unsigned portrait from the Dresden court links the rise of Bohemian horn playing to the ceremonial world of Baroque hunting culture.

Damm, Peter

300 Years of the Horn

1680-1980, an attempted survey

From Versailles to Bohemia, hunting horns enter orchestral life through makers, players, early works and the Austro-Bohemian tradition.

Damm, Peter

300 Years of the Horn

in the Dresden Court Orchestra

From Dresden’s court musicians to Hampel’s hand-horn technique, virtuoso players and court repertoire shaped a decisive shift in horn playing and orchestral writing.

Agrell, Jeffrey

The first european horn symposium

A week in Trossingen brought leading horn players, Mozart debates, natural-horn controversies and lasting friendships at a landmark European gathering.

Barantsev, Anatoly

Vitaly Bujanowsky

The world's Golden Horn

Called one of the Soviet school’s finest performers by Shostakovich, Vitaliy Buyanovskiy shaped horn playing through performance, teaching and composition.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Interview with Hans Pizka

From Vienna horn traditions and natural-horn training to orchestral style and pedagogy, Hans Pizka reflects on the foundations of horn playing and musical identity.

Jeurissen, Herman

The Midwinter Horn

De Midwinterhoorn

A Christmas horn tradition from eastern Netherlands preserves ancient construction, ritual and performance, linking rural practice with Leopold Mozart's Sinfonia pastorella.

Bourgue, Daniel

The French Hunting horn, its history, its technique and its music

Centuries-old hunting signals still shape performance today, where technique, ritual and oral tradition preserved a musical language unlike any other brass practice.

Poncet, Jacques

The hunting horn

Long-held beliefs about the French hunting horn are challenged as forgotten playing practices and Baroque traditions reshape its early history and repertoire.

Bürger, Edgar

Mouthpiece pressure in Horn Playing

Graduation project in technical method

Long before sensors entered the practice room, one horn student measured embouchure pressure by hand, challenging assumptions that still shape brass pedagogy.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Jazz and the Horn

The horn was once considered incompatible with jazz until changing ideas of sound and musicians like John Graas quietly overturned that certainty.

Bernsdorff-Engelbrecht, Ch.

Horn and Harp

Virtuoso showpieces once filled concert halls, yet today the rare pairing of horn and harp preserves a forgotten musical world shaped by performers themselves.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Jazz and the Horn

Julius Watkins

A pioneering career, landmark recordings and collaborations with jazz legends gave the French horn a place it had never occupied before.

Dejonker, Philippe-Henri · Orval, Francis · Miller, R. · Sneppe, R.

Oscillatory Mechanism of the Glotis in Horn Playing

A horn note may begin before it is heard, as subtle vocal-fold oscillations appear to prepare the airflow that the lips will ultimately shape.

Damm, Peter

Ornaments in 18th-century Horn Concertos?

Performance once depended as much on informed invention as on written notes, and early horn concertos still carry that forgotten freedom in plain sight.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Jazz and the Horn

Getting started

For the classically trained horn player, jazz replaces the security of the printed page with listening, swing and improvisation—and a different kind of discipline.

Damm, Peter

Ornaments in 18th-century Horn Concertos?

Essential ornaments

Natural horn technique left little room for excess: Peter Damm sets 18th-century ornamentation against the practical limits of range, style and notation.

Höltzel, Michael

Round the Horn

Hamburg 1982

A 1982 Hamburg exhibition brought 150 horns out of collections and into players’ hands, collapsing centuries of hunting, signalling and concert traditions into one room.

Damm, Peter

Ornaments in 18th-century Horn Concertos?

Deliberate divisions

Improvisation, articulation and ornament were once inseparable: Peter Damm recovers an 18th-century horn practice later narrowed by increasingly precise notation.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Jazz and the Horn

Thomas Bacon

Classical discipline meets jazz-rock freedom as Thomas Bacon confronts improvisation, stylistic crossover and the physical demands placed on the horn.

Damm, Peter

Ornaments in 18th-century Horn Concertos?

Changes and modifications of tempo

Tempo, dynamics and cadenzas expose how much an 18th-century horn concerto once depended on choices that modern notation and instruments can easily obscure.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Meir Rimon

Portrait and conversation

Orchestral discipline, solo freedom and an endless appetite for learning shaped Meir Rimon’s horn playing across Israeli, European and American traditions.

Wolf, Werner

A modern corno da caccia

Bach’s highest horn parts expose a divide between historical sound and modern technique, prompting Friedbert Syhre and Ludwig Güttler to rethink the instrument itself.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Interview with Thomas Müller

The natural horn is not a retreat into the past: Thomas Müller argues that its demands on sound, technique and awareness can broaden a modern player’s craft.

Trichet, Pierre

On hunting horns and other similar instruments

Aus Pierre Trichets Traité des Instruments de Musique (um 1640)

I admit that hunting horns, horns, buccines, trumpets and bugles have no holes in their outline, no more than do trumpets and sackbuts. This does not prevent them from being polyphonic, however, and changing the sounds. Yet some consider that all these names are synonymous and mean almost the same thing among Frenchmen, as did cornu, lituus and buccina among the Romans, as some have thought. It is true that Festus believed the lituus to be a kind of small buccina and that Lipsius¹ (de mil. Ro., book 4) said that people did not at first distinguish between buccina and cornett, but that later they did so distinguish, as larger and more curved brass cornett were made. The buccina, according to the same author, was at first nothing other than an ox horn: et a bene nomen sumpsit, ut instrumentum quod bubus canit. Isidore draws the etymology from buccina a voce quasi vocinam dicas. Varro, however, believes it is so called because, when sounded, it sings “booboo”. Panciroll, explaining the shape of the buccina, also mentions the reason for its name in these words: usurpabant buccinas circa orificium, per quod vox immittebatur, angustas: in ima vero parte, ex qua sonus egreditur latas: erantque oblongae ad similitudinem buccini, quod purpurae genus est, unde et causa nomini.One of our French writers says that the huntsmen’s horn is not that which is used today but one of ivory or of horn; for the huntsmen of antiquity used only horns while the modern instruments are all of bronze. I readily grant that horns were formerly made but of horn and ivory, yet there is no doubt but that today they are made of other materials. Julio della Scala² (l. l. poët. c. 20 p. 78) gives evidence of it and says the Germans make them from boxwood but they are different from those used in the hunt: Nunc cornua germani e busco efficta multis foraminibus inflant magno spiritu non sine gratia et decore, praesertim in nocturnis festivitatibus. Vocem namque humanam imprimis imitantur, eamque vehementer contentam. Varro says that cornu a curvore dictum fuit. But Fungerus derives this word from the Greek kéras, or from the Hebrew, which is written almost the same.The first origin of the hunting horn lies in the fact that shepherds used to call their flocks by means of its sound; in this connection Columella wrote that the beasts must be accustomed to return to their pen at the sound of the buccina. Huntsmen then used it to call their dogs and their falcons, from whence it is called huchet [from the French hucher, “to call” — Ed.] as well as cornet. La Boderie gives us a charming description of the use of this in his poem:The more his horn the huntsman sounds,The more do run and call his hounds;It imitates the trumpet shrill,Sounds now the quarry, now the kill.Sometimes one finds huntsmen so skilful that they can play on their horns as many different sounds as on a trumpet; Le Fouilloux has discussed this so fully in his book on hunting that there is no need to speak further of it.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Jazz and the Horn

Tom Varner

Choosing jazz over the orchestral path, Tom Varner confronts the horn’s stiffness, projection and unlikely place as a front-line improvising voice.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Steve Lewis, Hornmaker

Old World Craftsmanship plus New World Technology

In 1980s Chicago, Steve Lewis joined Old World bench craft to modern precision, building horns one by one around the player, the metal and a distinctive sound.

Tarr, Edward H.

Handel Horn Duo located in South America

A lost 18th-century horn tutor resurfacing through South America completes a Handel duet and preserves strikingly practical advice on horn playing.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Jazz and the Horn

Peter Gordon

Classically trained but drawn elsewhere, Peter Gordon made the horn at home in jazz, studios and popular music without abandoning its orchestral foundations.

Hiller, Albert

The posthorn of the 19th-century Royal Post Office in the service of folk music

Once a tool of postal signalling, the posthorn became part of Bavaria’s popular musical life, caught between official regulation, practical invention and folk tradition.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Hermann Baumann

A virtuoso's career

A career built on sound, memory and the natural horn shows how Hermann Baumann helped redefine what a horn soloist could be on the international stage.

Suter, Stephan

Instrument Makers in USA

Lawson Horns

Walter Lawson built horns by testing alloys, valves and leadpipes with unusual precision, while keeping craftsmanship, musicians and acoustics closely connected.

Agrell, Jeffrey

Jazz and the Horn

John Clark

John Clark made the horn a jazz voice on its own terms, balancing improvisation, studio realities and an instrument still fighting to escape classical expectations.

Suter, Stephan

Instrument Makers in USA

S. W. Lewis Orchestral Horns

For Steven Lewis, building a horn begins with playing it: craftsmanship, acoustic compromise and observation shape instruments made for musicians rather than theory.

Mathez, Jean-Pierre

Special Finland

Holger Fransman

Finnish Horn Player and Teacher

Holger Fransman remembers the Vienna that shaped his horn playing, the rise of musical education in Finland, and encounters with Sibelius.

Tarr, Edward H.

Bach and the Others

Eighteenth-Century Trumpeter-Hornists

From Bach’s Leipzig cantatas to the Stadtpfeifer tradition, trumpet and horn emerge as interchangeable tools within a remarkably versatile musical profession.

Tarr, Edward H.

Bach and the Others:

Eighteenth-Century Trumpeter-Hornists

Beyond Leipzig, the practice extended from Weissenfels to Dresden and Vienna, as horn and trumpet gradually diverged into distinct musical identities.