Alphorn

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The alphorn is a wind instrument, consisting of a natural wooden horn of conical bore, having a cup-shaped mouthpiece, used by mountain dwellers in Switzerland and elsewhere. Similar wooden horn were used in most mountainous regions of Europe, from Sweden to the Romanian Carpathians.

The alphorn is carved from solid softwood, generally spruce but sometimes pine. In former times the alphorn maker would find a tree bent at the base in the shape of an alphorn, but modern makers piece the wood together at the base. A cup-shaped mouthpiece carved out of a block of hard wood is added and the instrument is complete.

The alphorn 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 alphorn made at Rigi-Kulm, Schwyz, and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, measures 8 ft. in length and has a straight tube.

The well-known Ranz des Vaches is the traditional melody of the alphorn from French Switzerland. The song describes the time of bringing the cows to the high country at cheese making time. Rossini introduced the melody into his opera William Tell. Brahms was clear that the inspiration for the great melody that opens the last movement of his First Symphony (played in the orchestra by the horn) was an alphorn melody he heard in the Rigi area of Switzerland.

The Swiss alphorn varies in shape according to the locality, being curved near the bell in the Bernese Oberland. Michael Praetorius mentions an alphorn-like instrument under the name of Hölzern Trummet (wooden trumpet) in Syntagma Musicum (Wittenberg, 1615-1619; Pl. VIII).

This is the horn featured in Ricola cough drop commercials.