History
The alto horn is a member of the sax brass family, developed by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. To be very precise, it is a descendant of the saxotromba, because there hasn’t been found a single alto saxhorn so far. The historical alto instruments by Sax that did survive all have inner diameters that are those Sax described in his saxotromba patent. In this patent the soprano voice (descant) is tuned in E flat, which then creates a line: E flat (soprano), B flat (contralto), E flat (Alto). The instrument following the alto saxotromba was described as a baritone in B flat. Therefore, the alto instrument has been named both alto and tenor, because people wanted to be consistent. That’s the reason for the confusion in the name and different names are used depending on the country. Given that the modern instruments all have larger diameters, it now clearly is more a saxhorn than a saxotromba. The tessitura of the instrument is definitely that of the alto voice, so in official documents, it should referred to as an Alto Saxhorn.
In the US, the alto horn is colloquially known as the "peck horn", supposedly because these instruments were employed in band music to "peck away at" the upbeats. This name is mentioned in The Music Man.
Read more about this topic: Alto Horn
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Free from public debt, at peace with all the world, and with no complicated interests to consult in our intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable for the settlement of those principles in our domestic policy which shall be best calculated to give stability to our Republic and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)