A five-valve horn
by Mark J. Anderson
Cornucopia, September 1993
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A five-valve hornby Mark J. AndersonCornucopia, September 1993 |
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Five valves! When I saw this horn in a store window in 1985, the five valves, as well as the decorative engraving on the bell, intrigued me. After a little bargaining, I paid $400 for it. The slides and valves were frozen; $300 more got the horn lacquered and in playing condition.
Ed Kruspe built the horn in Erfurt, Germany in the early part of the century. It is serial number 10, a single B-flat horn pitched in "high" tuning (about 460 Hz). The five valves are string-operated rotary valves. The first is used primarily as a stopping valve, but may also be used to play horn in A. The middle three are the conventional valves. The fifth adds somewhat more than the combina- tion of the first and third valves; it has a small inner slide that can also be used for tuning.
The tuning slide had to be pulled too close to the end of the sleeves to be played at A440, so I had an alternate crook fabricated for normal use, but I've saved the old slide for use with other period instruments in that high tuning. We have an 1885 Hook and Hastings tracker organ in the Lutheran Church here. It was built for the Baptist Church in Hopkinton, NH and relocated to Woodstock NY in 1971. When playing trumpet parts there, I use a Pepper cornet in high tuning made in the 1880's.
The five-valve design originated with Lorenzo Sansone (1881-1975) in the hope that it, rather than the double horn, would become the standard. My Kruspe- Sansone has the advantage of light weight (less than four pounds!) but isn't limited in the lower register like a normal B-flat horn as it can be played chromatically all the way down to the F pedal. The fifth valve solves many intonation problems, but it means learning almost an entire new set of fingerings. A water key before the main tuning slide really works. All in all, this is a very satisfactory as well as interesting horn.
Mark is a writer and teacher from Woodstock, NY. He is a frequent contributor to national and international music journals. He teaches communications, plays horn and trumpet, leads brass ensembles, and drives about four hours to attend our meetings. His book "A Sourcebook of Nineteenth-Century American Sacred Music for Brass Instruments" was published by Greenwood Press in 1997 and reviewed in the Brass Band Bridge in December 1997.