In 1751 J.A. Mareš, a horn player of Bohemian birth attached to the court of Empress Elizabeth of Russia, conceived the idea of forming a band composed entirely of hunting horns. The instruments, later described as Russian horns, were largely straight with a wide conical bore and were played with a cupped trumpet-type mouthpiece. 37 different-sized horns would have been required for the three-octave compass that Mareš employed early on, as each player sounded only one note; the number was later increased to 60, giving five octaves. Most of the players in the bands were serfs with little or no musical training, thus Mareš devised a simplified rhythmic notation to enable them to play their single note on cue (see Tablature, fig.9 for an example from 1796). The difficulty of playing with precision must have been enormous; nevertheless, the first public concert near Moscow in 1753 was a huge success. Horn bands were popular among the Russian nobility, who often sold them to one another, players as well as horns.
The horn band was said to have been heard for miles and it was frequently dubbed a ‘living organ’. Though originally made of brass, by about 1774 more subdued wooden horns intended for indoor performance were constructed, the inside lacquered, the outside covered with leather. Performers in some bands played more than one horn and also obtained extra tones by using an added key to raise the pitch by a semitone or by overblowing to produce higher harmonics. In 1777 a tuning mechanism was added by Mareš. Travelling bands were received in western Europe and the British Isles as novelties, being both lauded as ‘ravishing’ and criticized for ‘reducing man to the level of a machine’.
Horn bands played arrangements of standard concert repertory such as overtures, symphonies, fugues, Russian airs and dances, as well as original pieces. Y.I. Fomin even included an offstage horn band in his melodrama Orfey i Evridika (1792). Though totally eclipsed by valved brass ensembles later in the 19th century, the horn band provided an early sonic model for the complete brass texture that was employed by many later composers.
Large Russian horn bands died out after the 1830s, but smaller bands of about 13 horns came into use in Bohemia and Saxony, especially by the miners of the Erzgebirge. In these bands each player could sound the fundamental note, its octave and (by placing one hand over the bell) the octave’s leading note; A.F. Anacker was among those who composed for such an ensemble. These bands disappeared at the end of the 19th century only to be revived as a folk instrument curiosity in the 1960s.
Bands of trumpets that play in a similar hocketing style are common throughout much of Africa, from Uganda and West Africa southwards (see Rwanda and Burundi and Uganda).
J. von Stählin: ‘Nachrichten von der Musik in Russland’, Musikalische Nachrichten und Anmerkungen auf das Jahr 1770 (Leipzig, 1770/R), 185–9
H.P.C. Bossler and J.F. Christmann, eds.: Musikalische Realzeitung für das Jahr 1788 (Speyer, 1788/R), i, 83–6, 95–6, 102–4
J.C. Hinrichs: Entstehung, Fortgang und jetzige Beschaffenheit der russischen Jagdmusik (St Petersburg, 1796/R)
‘Russian Horn Music’, The Harmonicon, ix (1831), 11–12
J.G. Dalyell: Musical Memoirs of Scotland with Historical Annotations (Edinburgh, 1849), 170–72
G. Seaman: ‘The Russian Horn Band’, MMR, lxxxix (1959), 93–9
R. Ricks: ‘Russian Horn Bands’, MQ, lv (1969), 364–71
M. Blechschmidt: Russische Hörner im Bergbau des Sächsischen Erzgebirges (Vienna, 1973)
D. Gerhardt: Die sogenannten russischen Hörner: Musik zwischen Kunst und Knute (Göttingen, 1983)
H.C. COLLES/ANTHONY C. BAINES/THOMAS HIEBERT