Tenor horn
The tenor horn (British English; alto horn in American English, Althorn in Germany; occasionally referred to as E♭ horn) is a brass instrument in the saxhorn family and is usually pitched in E♭. It has a bore that is mostly conical, like the flugelhorn and euphonium,[2] and normally uses a deep, cornet-like mouthpiece.
"Althorn" redirects here. For the village in Essex, see Althorne.It is most commonly used in British brass bands, and Mexican banda music whereas the French horn tends to take the corresponding parts in concert bands and orchestras. However, the tenor horn has occasionally been used as an alternative to the French horn in concert bands.
History[edit]
The instrument known today as the tenor/alto horn was developed in the 1840s by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax who, among other instrument design activities, designed two similar families of valved brass instruments, the saxhorn and the saxotromba. The surviving E♭ alto instruments by Sax all have inner diameters[4] described in the saxotromba patent. In this patent the soprano voice (descant) is tuned in E♭ and thence descending through B♭ (contralto) to E♭ (alto). The next family member below the alto saxotromba was described as a baritone in B♭. Ascending from baritone, logically the next E♭ family member above it is a tenor. The inconsistency spread across multiple descriptions and patents over decades apparently is the source of confusion as regards the names tenor vs. alto horn.
The modern instrument has a larger diameter and now resembles Sax's specification of the saxhorn more than it does that of the saxotromba.
A great deal of interesting historical technical information on the saxhorn is found in the "Saxhorn" entry of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol. 4 (1909).
In the 1970s, King Musical Instruments produced a variation on the tenor/alto horn, called the "altonium". This instrument was keyed in F, and it utilized the same mouthpiece as the French horn.[5] From their 1971 catalog, King Instruments produced two models of the altonium: numbers 1147 and 1148. The 1147 was a straight model, and the 1148 was a bell forward model.[6]
In the US, the alto horn is colloquially known as the "peck horn", supposedly because these instruments were employed in band music to "peck away at" the off-beats. [3][7] This name is mentioned in The Music Man, and a french horn-patterned peck horn can be seen in the scene where Professor Hill is explaining the Think System as applied to Beethoven's Minuet in G and a small boy asks him how to play it.
The tenor horn is very rarely included in the symphony orchestra, where its place is taken by the French horn. Instead, it is a fixture of British brass bands, where it often plays a role similar to that of the orchestral horn in the symphony orchestra. The tenor horn has also been used in concert bands as a replacement for the French horn. In the past, many publishers included parts in both Eb (for the tenor horn) and F (for the French horn). These parts were the same, just transposed into the pitch of the given instrument. Some publishers still follow this practice.
Although Gustav Mahler orchestrated his Seventh Symphony to include one "tenorhorn in B♭", that instrument is more akin to the baritone horn, which is a fourth lower.
Partial list of solo repertoire: