Post horn

(Fr. cornet de poste; Ger. Posthorn; It. cornetta di postiglione).

A small brass instrument used in the past by postillions and guards on mail coaches to announce the arrivals and departures and to call attention en route. Small arcuate horns were so used in France, England and Germany up to the early 17th century when instruments began to be constructed in one very small coil barely 7 cm across with a fundamental about b'. In Johann Beer’s Concerto à 4 (manuscript, D-SWl) it plays brisk figures on this note and its octave, similar to the references of Bach (Capriccio sopra la lontananza, 1704) and Telemann (‘Postillons’, Musique de table, 1733; borrowed by Handel in Belshazzar). Later in the 18th century German post horns were made with three turns and calls rose to the 6th or 8th harmonic, still including the octave leap, now at a slower tempo. The character of these calls is perhaps best known through those works of Mozart which require a horn player to take up the post horn: the Serenade k320, and the Deutsche Tanz k605 no.3, which calls for a post horn in B and a second, lower instrument in F. In Werkstäte der heutigen Künste (Leipzig, 1764), J. Samuel Halle mentioned three-coil post horns built in different keys: C and A (equivalent to modern cornet pitches) in Saxony, but higher in Prussia.

By 1820 such post horns were procurable with crooks and tuning-slide for band music solos, and their use had spread to France (fig.1). The pitch most used in Germany was F, but C was employed by Beethoven in Deutsche Tanz woo8 no.12, and E was quoted by Schubert in Winterreise. Posthorns in E are also cited in Hiller. The post horn is allotted a short solo (in F) in Spohr’s Notturno op.34 for military band. Although some models were shaped like a trumpet (see Post trumpet), circular form remained the favourite; its continued appearance today as a post office emblem in so many European countries testifies to the breadth of its former use. From about 1825 post horns were also made with keys (fig.2) to increase their ability to play tunes, and by the mid-19th century in both France and Germany with valves, as required in Mahler’s Third Symphony (fig.3). In Germany they might instead have a finger-hole (‘transposing hole’) placed three-quarters of the way along the tube from the mouthpiece and uncovered to raise the harmonic series from F to B. A diatonic 6th or more is available by opening and closing the hole; the horn held in one hand can be sounded only in the old manner.

In England a straight-built post horn came into use during the early 19th century and was adopted as the regulation horn for Royal Mail coaches (even if the guard liked to enliven the journey with tunes on the keyed bugle). This straight horn is of brass, 70 to 80 cm long, in A or A, an octave above the German post horn in A, and sounded only up to the 4th or 5th harmonic. It is still made, and is used in performances of Koenig’s famous Post Horn Galop (1844); it has a sliding joint midway along the tube for tuning. Koenig, Jullien’s star cornettist, had come from Paris and preferred the longer continental instrument pitched an octave lower for its larger compass; such instruments played from the 3rd to the 12th harmonic. He also recommended cornet beginners to practise on this ‘proper’ post horn.

Another characteristic English instrument is the coach horn, used exclusively with four-in-hand teams. It is also straight but is made of copper and differs from the post horn in having a conical bore and a narrow funnel-shaped bell which recalls the medieval buisine (fig.4). It is also longer; the standard length was 90 cm, but it tended to become longer still, and John Augustus Köhler’s ‘heavy mail horn’ measured 115 cm. The coach horn sounds the same series of notes as an army bugle, the actual pitch depending upon its length (a 107 cm horn is in D). The coach horn was still in use up to 1914 on the London to Oxford mail, which was conveyed by road on Sundays. Today only imitation coach horns are made as hotel decorations or souvenirs. A number of tutors remain which give the calls sounded on the post horn and the coach horn, such as (John A.) Turner’s Complete Tutor for the Coach Horn, Post or Tandem Horn, Bugle and Cavalry Trumpet (London, 1898), which is perhaps the best known though it is erratic and unsatisfactory over the matter of the post horn calls. Many post horn signals and melodies are transcribed in Hiller and Becheri.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

An Old Guard [pseud.]: The Coach Horn: What to Blow and How to Blow it (London, c1897, 3/c1907)

E. Teuchert and E.W. Haupt: Musik-Instrumentenkunde in Wort und Bild (Leipzig, 1910–11)

A.B. Shone: ‘Coaching Calls’, MT, xcii (1951), 256–9

H. Walter: ‘Das Posthornsignal bei Haydn und anderen Komponisten des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Haydn-Studien, iv (1976), 21–34

A. Hiller: Das Grosse Buch vom Posthorn (Wilhelmshaven, 1985)

R. Becheri: Il corno di posta: da mezzo di segnalazione a strumento simfonico, Istituto di studi storici postale, Prato, 11 March–2 April 1989 (Prato, 1989) [exhibition catalogue; incl. cassette]

J. Webb: ‘Post Horns with Finger Holes’, GSJ, xliv (1991), 157–8

ANTHONY C. BAINES/DAVID K. RYCROFT