Klarinet Archive - Posting 000138.txt from 2005/06

From: "danyel" <rab@-----.de>
Subj: [kl] cornucopiae (Re: [kl] Personal prejudice)
Date: Mon, 06 Jun 2005 19:18:13 -0400


Please allow me to throw in another unlikely, yet in this case favourable
etymology of "horn" as applied to the clarinet: It no doubt derives from
"Des Knaben WunderHORN", the poetry anthology. Wunderhorn is akin to
"Fuellhorn" (lit. fill-up-horn, i.e. cornucopiae) and, like the
African-American usage of the term horn (applied to all kinds of conical
wind instruments) probably inspired by the ancient notion of the horn as a
fertility symbol. Unlike "pinkie" or "eefer" there is consequently hardly
anything disgusting about "horn" unless you would resent overt sexual
symbolism. It isn't even pagan, as the Shofar (the only "axe" allowed in the
temple) is a horn too.

Best wishes,
danyel
www.echoton.de/clar.html

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
To: <klarinet@-----.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 05, 2005 3:41 AM
Subject: [kl] Personal prejudice

. . .
>
> For all I know, these particular shit-kicking country western singers
might
> be putting on the same act that Mick Jagger puts on (does he sound like
> someone who earned a degree from the London School of Economics?), but in
> the USA, calling someone a shit-kicker implies both illiteracy and
> stupidity. (Shit-kicker and hayseed share the same underlying metaphor:
> farming is dirty work and people who get dirty for a living must not be
> very bright.) I can't stand country-western music, and I don't care
deeply
> about a prejudice against saying "horn" to mean clarinet, but when that
> prejudice seems connected to a prejudice against farmers (my mother's
> family), it gets my fur up a little bit (though please understand that I'm
> not seriously offended, and that I understand that no offense was
intended).

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