Alpenhorn or Alphorn, a wind instrument, consisting of a natural wooden horn of conical bore, having a cup-shaped
mouthpiece, used by mountaineers in Switzerland and
elsewhere.
The tube is made of thin strips of birchwood
soaked in water until they have become quite pliable; they
are then wound into a tube of conical form from 4 to 8 ft.
long, and neatly covered with bark. A cup-shaped mouthpiece
carved out of a block of hard wood is added and the instrument
is complete.
The alpenhorn has no lateral openings and
therefore gives the pure natural harmonic series of the open
pipe. The harmonics are the more readily obtained by reason
of the small diameter of the bore in relation to the length.
An alpenhorn made at Rigi-Kulm, Schwytz, and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, measures 8 ft. in length and has a straight
tube.
The well-known Ranz des Paches is the traditional
melody of the alpenhorn, which has been immortalized by
Beethoven in the finale of the Pastoral Symphony, where
the music is generally rendered by a cor anglais.
Rossini has introduced the melody into his opera William
Tell. Wagner, in the third act of Tristan and Isolde,
was not entirely satisfied with the tone quality of the cor
anglais for representing the natural pipe of the peasant.
Having in his mind the timbre of the alpenhorn, he had a wooden
horn made for him with one valve only and a small pear-shaped
bell, which is used at Bayreuth.
The Swiss alpenhorn varies in shape according to the locality,
being curved near the bell in the Bernese Oberland.
Michael Praetorius[?] mentions the alpenhorn under the name of holzerni
trummet in Syntagma Musicum (Wittenberg, 1615-1619).
Initial text from 1911 encyclopedia
