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The French horn (since the 1930s known simply as the horn in professional music circles) is a brass instrument made of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. The double horn in F/B ♭ (technically a variety of German horn) is the horn most often used by players in professional orchestras and bands, although the descant and triple horn have become increasingly popular.
The pear-shaped bell (called Liebesfuß) of the cor anglais gives it a more covered timbre than the oboe, closer in tonal quality to the oboe d'amore.Whereas the oboe is the soprano instrument of the oboe family, the cor anglais is generally regarded as the alto member of the family, and the oboe d'amore—pitched between the two in the key of A—as the mezzo-soprano member. [5]
Horn notation is a complex subject beyond the scope of this article, but what is written as middle C for the horn is the fourth harmonic of the unlengthened instrument, not the second. Horn music makes greater use of the higher range of the harmonic series than do most other modern brass instruments.
In a French horn, the length of tubing (and the bore size) make the partials much closer together than other brass instruments in their normal range and, therefore, harder to play accurately. The F mellophone has tubing half the length of a French horn, which gives it an overtone series more similar to a trumpet and most other brass instruments.
However, playing a 3rd space C (F-horn, open) and repeating the stopped horn, the pitch will lower a half-step to a B-natural (or 1/2 step above B ♭, the next lower partial). The hand horn technique developed in the classical period, with music pieces requiring the use of covering the bell to various degrees to lower the pitch accordingly.
It uses a horn mouthpiece and is available as a single tuba in B ♭ or F, or, more recently, as a double tuba similar to the double horn. Its common range is similar to that of the euphonium, but its possible range is the same as that of the horn, extending from low F ♯, below the bass clef staff to high C above the treble staff when read in ...
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French horns (4 Hörner in F) are shown transposed, but without a key signature, while trumpets (2 Trompeten in C) and timpani (3 Pauken in A C D) are written at concert pitch without key signatures. In full scores , music for transposing instruments is generally written in transposed form, just as in the players' parts.