My Tribute Page for Brass Wind Instruments
I am a Norwegian guy, and I made this text back in 2008. I got some of the information from this web page. For this page, I translated it into English. Also, I play this instrument:
Every brass wind instrument has a common ancestry in the signal horn. These were horns used for communicating over long distances. We utilized animal's horns for this purpose, but another version of the signal horn consisted of a mouth piece and a bell connected by a long pipe. Eventually, we found that we could make the long pipe smaller by bending it in different directions. The signal horn was, originally, a natural instrument, but later we put different "loose parts" on the horn, and alongside valves, slides and rotary solutions, we could play more than only the natural tones. An enlargement of the horn gave us the Tuba and the Euphonium, and a shrinking gave us the Cornet. The Trumpet and the Trombone (meaning big Trumpet) are more direct descendants of the signal horn, and they will be out of the scope of what I will be writing about on this web page. My main goal is to clearify the names used for the different horns today, given the names that were used throughout the history. Below, I will be describing the horn family.
The Horn Family
It was patented and developed in France by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax. He also developed the saxophone family. He named the horns Saxhorns, and the Saxhorn family were named by the convention of the classical choral music: They were (amongst others) Soprano Saxhorns, Alto Saxhorns, Tenor Saxhorns, Baritone Saxhorns and Bass Saxhorns.This is when all the fun starts -- linguistically!
- The Tenor Saxhorn and the Baritone Saxhorn of his time (mid 19. century) were tuned in Bb. Old illustrations done of these instruments show that the Tenor Saxhorn had a thinner, more sylindrical tube and a sharper angle towards the bell -- than what the Baritone Saxhorn had. The Baritone Saxhorn had a more conical shape; it expanded throughout the length of the tube, until it reached the bell. These differences had an impact on the sound of the instruments. The Tenor Saxhorn got a brighter, smaller sound than the Baritone Saxhorn, which got a fuller, warmer, softer sound.
- Brass instrument makers of the 20. century startet making what they called "Baritone horns". They were more conical than the earlier "Tenor Saxhorns" (by mr Sax). The new horns had a great number of variations in designs.
- The Tenor Saxhorn and the Baritone Saxhorn have been further developed and are currently called Baritone horn and Euphonium...
To get smart about the names, I made this table (base instruments names are in Norwegian).
|
Languages
Names
|
Althorn
|
Tenorhorn
|
Baryton
|
Tuba
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tuning | Eb | Bb | Bb | Diverse |
| Norwegian | Althorn | Tenorhorn | Baryton/Eufonium/Tenortuba | Tuba |
| German | Althorn | Tenorhorn | Baryton | Tuba |
| English | Tenor horn | Baritone horn | Euphonium | Tuba |
| American English | Alto horn | Baritone horn | Euphonium | Tuba |
| French | Alto | Baryton | Euphonium | Tuba |
| Italian | Genis | Baritono | Eufonio | Tuba |
| Spanish | De tenor | Baritono | Eufonio | Tuba |
| Dutch | Althoorn | Bariton (Tenorsaxhorn) | Eufonium | Tuba |
Reading the table:
- Euphonium (English, American English and French) is called "baryton" in Norwegian, and its tuning is "Bb". (Norwegians can also use "eufonium" for this instrument).
- Baritone horn (English and American English) is called " tenorhorn" in Norwegian, and its tuning is also "Bb".
- Tenor horn (note the space (English)) is called "althorn" in Norwegian, and "alto horn" in American English. Its tuning is "Eb".