Klarinet Archive - Posting 000493.txt from 2002/04

From: "Mark Charette" <charette@-----.org>
Subj: RE: [kl] English/French horns
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 14:27:53 -0400

>From The New Grove Online:

(iv) English horn
(Fr. cor anglais; Ger. englisches Horn, Englisch-Horn, Englischhorn; It.
corno inglese; in the 18th century the instrument was also known as: Fr.
hautbois anglois, corne d’anglois, cor de chasse anglais; Ger. englische
Wald[h]oboe, englisches Waldhorn). The tenor oboe in F, a 5th below the
oboe, in use from the early 18th century to the present. Its keywork
corresponds to that of the oboe of its day and the reed is mounted on a
short crook. It was created when a bulb bell was added to an oboe da caccia
body shortly after 1720, possibly by J.T. Weigel of Breslau. Late
18th-century english horns were more gently curved than Baroque models, and
by about 1790 some were being made in angular form, resembling contemporary
basset-horns. Both curved and angular forms were made into the 19th century
(fig.24e and fig.25).

The open-belled straight tenor oboe and particularly the flare-belled oboe
da caccia reminded people of the angels’ horns depicted in medieval and
later religious imagery, especially in German-speaking central Europe. In
Middle (High) German, the word engellisch meant ‘angelic’ (as engelgleich in
modern Hochdeutsch). With the Middle German word for ‘England’ being
Engellant, the word engellisch also meant ‘English’. These dual meanings
naturally became conflated, and ‘angel's horn’ thus became ‘English horn’.
This unlikely epithet remained with the curved, bulb-belled tenor oboe even
after the oboe da caccia had faded (c1760) and in the absence of any better
denominations.

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