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The post horn is a valveless cylindrical brass instrument with a cupped mouthpiece. The instrument was used to signal the arrival or departure of a post rider or mail coach. It was used by postilions of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The post horn is sometimes confused with the coach horn, and even though the two types of horn served the same principal purpose, they differ in their physical appearance. The post horn has a cylindrical bore and was generally used on a coach pulled by two horses (technically referred to as "Tonga"); hence, it is sometimes also called the Tonga horn. The coach horn, on the other hand, has a conical bore and was used on a coach pulled by four horses (referred to as a "four-in-hand"). [1] The post horn is no more than 32 inches (810 mm) in length, whereas the coach horn can be up to 36 inches (910 mm) long. The latter has more of a funnel-shaped bell, while the former's bell is trumpet-shaped. Post horns need not be straight but can be coiled—they have a smaller bore—and they are made entirely of brass. A post horn will have a slide for tuning if intended for orchestral settings. [2]
The instrument is an example of a buisine, a precursor to the "natural" trumpet. The cornet was developed from the cone-shaped coach horn through the addition of valves, while the cylinder-shaped trumpets remained predominantly valveless for several decades. [3]
In the late 17th century, Johann Beer composed a Concerto à 4 in B♭, which paired a post horn with a corne de chasse as the two solo instruments, accompanied by violins and basso continuo.
Mozart composed his Serenade No. 9, the "Post horn Serenade", in 1779. The second trio of the 6th movement, the Menuetto, features a solo of the posthorn.
Mahler and others incorporated the post horn into their orchestras for certain pieces. On such occasions, the orchestra's trumpet player usually performs with the instrument. One example of post horn use in modern classical music is the famous off-stage solo in Mahler's Third Symphony. Due to the scarcity of this instrument, however, music written for it is usually played on a trumpet, cornet or flugelhorn.
In 1844, the German cornet player Hermann Koenig [4] wrote Post Horn Galop as a solo for post horn with an orchestral accompaniment. [5] In the 20th century it became a popular piece for brass bands. [6] It has been the walk-on music for the Leicester City Football Club since 1935. [7]
An imitation of the post horn's fanfare was a commonly used in music describing, or referring to, the post coach or travel in general. Notable musical examples include Bach's Capriccio on the departure of a beloved brother , which includes an "Aria di postiglione" and a "Fuga all'imitazione della cornetta di postiglione", both containing an octave jump similar to that of the postal horn.
Handel's Belshazzar includes in the second act a "Sinofonia" that uses a similar motif (subtitled Allegro postilions ) depicting Belshazzar's messengers leaving on a mission. A very similar movement is included in the third "Production" of Telemann's Tafelmusik . Beethoven's Les adieux piano sonata is centered on a horn-like motif, again signifying the departure of a loved-one. Schubert's Winterreise includes the song "Die Post", of which the piano part prominently features a horn signal motif.
During World War I, in Austria-Hungary and Germany, wooden post horns were used as a means of collecting war donations via a method called the Nail Men. People would donate money, and in exchange be allowed to hammer a nail into the horn until the horn was completely covered.
The post horn is used in the logo of national post services of many countries. The post horn is included in Unicode as U+1F4EF📯. [8]
Until 2002, the Finnish Postal and Telegraph Administration (Posti- ja lennätinhallitus) and its successors also featured a postal horn in their logos. The logo from 1987 onwards had a single symbol combining the postal horn and telegraph symbols. [11]
In Italy the post horn was featured on a sign called Obbligo di arresto all'incrocio con autobus di linea su strade di montagna ("Stop when encountering coaches on mountain roads"). Installed along winding, narrow mountain roads, the sign indicated that motorists should yield to incoming coaches, and let them pass safely. This sign was removed from the Italian Road Code in 1992.
A brass instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips. Brass instruments are also called labrosones or labrophones, from Latin and Greek elements meaning 'lip' and 'sound'.
The cornet is a brass instrument similar to the trumpet but distinguished from it by its conical bore, more compact shape, and mellower tone quality. The most common cornet is a transposing instrument in B♭. There is also a soprano cornet in E♭ and cornets in A and C. All are unrelated to the Renaissance and early Baroque cornett.
The flugelhorn, also spelled fluegelhorn, flugel horn, or flügelhorn, is a brass instrument that resembles the trumpet and cornet but has a wider, more conical bore. Like trumpets and cornets, most flugelhorns are pitched in B♭, though some are in C. It is a type of valved bugle, developed in Germany in the early 19th century from a traditional English valveless bugle. The first version of a valved bugle was sold by Heinrich Stölzel in Berlin in 1828. The valved bugle provided Adolphe Sax with the inspiration for his B♭ soprano (contralto) saxhorns, on which the modern-day flugelhorn is modeled.
The French horn is a brass instrument made of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. The double horn in F/B♭ is the horn most often used by players in professional orchestras and bands, although the descant and triple horn have become increasingly popular. A musician who plays a horn is known as a horn player or hornist.
A musical ensemble, also known as a music group or musical group, is a group of people who perform instrumental and/or vocal music, with the ensemble typically known by a distinct name. Some music ensembles consist solely of instrumentalists, such as the jazz quartet or the orchestra. Other music ensembles consist solely of singers, such as choirs and doo wop groups. In both popular music and classical music, there are ensembles in which both instrumentalists and singers perform, such as the rock band or the Baroque chamber group for basso continuo and one or more singers. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles. Some ensembles blend the sounds of a variety of instrument families, such as the orchestra, which uses a string section, brass instruments, woodwinds and percussion instruments, or the concert band, which uses brass, woodwinds and percussion.
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard B♭ or C trumpet.
The cornett, cornetto, or zink is an early wind instrument that dates from the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods, popular from 1500 to 1650.
The bugle is a simple signaling brass instrument with a wide conical bore. It normally has no valves or other pitch-altering devices, and is thus limited to its natural harmonic notes, and pitch is controlled entirely by varying the air and embouchure.
The tenor 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, and normally uses a deep, cornet-like mouthpiece.
The mellophone is a brass instrument typically pitched in the key of F, though models in E♭, D, C, and G have also historically existed. It has a conical bore, like that of the euphonium and flugelhorn. The mellophone is used as the middle-voiced brass instrument in marching bands and drum and bugle corps in place of French horns, and can also be used to play French horn parts in concert bands and orchestras.
The Vincent Bach Corporation is a US manufacturer of brass instruments that began early in the early Twentieth Century and still exists as a subsidiary of Conn-Selmer, a division of Steinway Musical Instruments. The company was founded in 1918 by Austrian-born trumpeter Vinzenz Schrottenbach.
A natural trumpet is a valveless brass instrument that is able to play the notes of the harmonic series.
In dance, the galop, named after the fastest running gait of a horse, a shortened version of the original term galoppade, is a lively country dance, introduced in the late 1820s to Parisian society by the Duchesse de Berry and popular in Vienna, Berlin and London. In the same closed position familiar in the waltz, the step combined a glissade with a chassé on alternate feet, ordinarily in a fast 2
4 time.
A brass band is a musical ensemble generally consisting entirely of brass instruments, most often with a percussion section. Ensembles that include brass and woodwind instruments can in certain traditions also be termed brass bands, but may be more correctly termed military bands, concert bands, or "brass and reed" bands.
The brass section of the orchestra, concert band, and jazz ensemble consist of brass instruments, and is one of the main sections in all three ensembles. The British-style brass band contains only brass and percussion instruments.
PostAuto Switzerland, PostBus Ltd. (known as PostAuto Schweiz in Swiss Standard German, CarPostal Suisse in Swiss French, AutoPostale Svizzera in Swiss Italian, and AutoDaPosta Svizra in Romansh is a subsidiary company of the Swiss Post, which provides regional and rural bus services throughout Switzerland, and also in France, Germany, and Liechtenstein.
The Serenade for Orchestra No. 9 in D major K. 320, Posthorn, was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Salzburg, in 1779. The manuscript is dated 3 August 1779 and was intended for the University of Salzburg's "Finalmusik" ceremony that year.
An offstage instrument or choir part in classical music is a sound effect used in orchestral and opera which is created by having one or more instrumentalists from a symphony orchestra or opera orchestra play a note, melody, or rhythm from behind the stage, or having a choir of singers sing a melody from behind the stage.
A horn is any of a family of musical instruments made of a tube, usually made of metal and often curved in various ways, with one narrow end into which the musician blows, and a wide end from which sound emerges. In horns, unlike some other brass instruments such as the trumpet, the bore gradually increases in width through most of its length—that is to say, it is conical rather than cylindrical. In jazz and popular-music contexts, the word may be used loosely to refer to any wind instrument, and a section of brass or woodwind instruments, or a mixture of the two, is called a horn section in these contexts.
Italian Bersaglieri Bands are military bands that belong to the Bersaglieri Corps of the Italian Army. These brass bands are notable for their marching style, playing their instruments while on a jogging pace ahead of their attached units on parade. In the 1800s, every unit in the Bersaglieri had a band known as a "fanfara" or fanfare. Today, this is not the case, with only four Bersaglieri regiments retaining a "fanfara". A fanfare of the Bersaglieri plays exclusively brass.