To begin with, I will set the background of my research : the evolution of the instrument, from the hunting field to the concert stage. This is important to understand what where the horns involved during the living time of Mozart and Leutgeb. This description of the horn’s evolution is as short as possible ; it stops before the invention of the valve in 1814 for it is no longer relevant after Mozart’s death. I based this synthesis on the books by Tuckwell, Morley-Pegge, Humphries, Baines and Geringer1in order to confront as many versions as possible ; historical instruments in museum catalogues were also helpful. Nevertheless, some details will always be open to discussion or update.
Before the end of the XVIIth century, the horn was specifically used on the hunting field and hardly meant for anything else : one did not need to read music to play it, hence the difficulty for composers to developp the « instrument »’s repertoire. The earliest notated horn music we know may be from 1639, in a fanfare by Cavalli2. But before the turn of the century, when the Count von Sporck from Bohemia heard the French « trompe de chasse », he sent two of his musicians to Paris to learn the instrument, which was then brought back to central Europe. There, the interest for the Jagdhorn flourished.
The instrument was meant to be played on the back of a horse : very wide hoop (double or even single coiled), small bell throat and flare. With their loud, bright and extremely typical sound, they were at first used as a powerful and impressive effect. But soon the horn in an ensemble became a problem : they were impossible to tune and a different instrument was needed for each key.
Leichambschneider introduced crooks very early in the XVIIIth century : the earliest known crooks are dated 17033. They consisted in a terminal master crook in which the mouthpiece fitted, and then additional crooks placed between the horn and the master crook to play in the disered pitch. Tuning was achieved by inserting small bits of pipe between the mouthpiece and the master crook. Meanwhile, horns gradually became smaller (more coils for smaller hoops).
Around 17504, it is said that Anton Josef Hampel (1710 - 1771) introduced the hand-stopping technique : by putting the hand in the bell of the horn, one can modify the pitch of the natural harmonics in order to play notes that one could not reach before (it is not entirely true that Hampel « invented » this technique, since inserting a hand in the bell had already been attempted by trumpet players in the beginning of the century.). From then, one must keep in mind that horn bells will slowly and gradualy become wider and larger to make the hand technique easier.
In the same period, in 1754, Hampel designed a horn with the manufacturer Johann Georg Werner in Dresden, called Invention-Waldhorn. This horn had pitched crooks designed to fit in the center of the body, held in place by a pin. On some models, crooks higher than F had their own independant mouthpipe ; when using them, the player would thus find himself with two lead-pipes in his hand. Tuning bits would be used between the crook and the mouthpiece to tune the instrument.
In the 1760’s, Johann Gottfried Haltenhof (ca1701 - 1783) developped the tuning slide in Hanau am Main. Some sources date his invention in 1776, but there is a Haltenhof horn with a tuning slide dated 17615. Tuning slides will then progressiveley appear on Invention-Horns, but also on terminally crooked horns. Those horns (with tuning slide and terminal master-crook and coupler system) are called Kirchenhorn by Fitzpatrick6, but somehow they were also called Cor d’Anglais at the time for their origin was believed to be English, which is probably wrong7. These horns may be mistaken with XIXth century French hand-horns in appearance, however they are different as explained below.
In 1781, the Raoux manufacturers in Paris and the horn player Carl Türrschmidt created an improved version of the Invention-Horn, the Cor Solo8. This model features body crooks similar to the previous version, but they are built with Haltenhof’s tuning slide and the lead-pipe is fixed and unique. Türrschmidt contributed with his idea to cross the tubes leading to the slide, enhancing the stability. Palsa, Punto and Türrschmidt all played a silver Raoux Cor Solo made in 17819 ; later, Gallay and Dauprat are known to play similar horns.
As explained above, terminal crooks are in use since the beginning of the XVIIIth century. In fact, many fixed-pitch horns during the second half of the century were turned into terminally crooked horns by cutting the lead pipe and changing it into a socket that could receive crooks10 ; this shows how numerous fixed-pitch horns were at the time11, and the raise of interest for crooks. These horns are considered as « transitional » instruments, but were also manufactured as such in the last part of the century.
Around the 1790’s, pitched terminal crooks begin their appearance ; they will soon equip the Kirchenhorn at the place of the master-crook system, and with the addition of the crossed legs of the tuning slide will emerge the French romantic orchestral horn of the XIXth century as we know it.
It is important to keep in mind that by the time Mozart wrote his horn works for Leutgeb, several types of horns (fixed-pitch, simple master-crook, Invention-Horn, Kirchenhorn - with and without pitched crooks -, even the Cor Solo and the French orchestra horn) all coexisted at the same time. The purpose of this study is now to investigate which of those have the greatest chance to have been played by Leutgeb.