[Hunting Horn]
Chasse à Courre - Eighteenth-Century Autograph Musical Manuscript
Intriguing eighteenth-century musical manuscript titled "Chasse à courre" ("Riding to hounds") and containing music for hunting horn, to be played at particular occasions during a hunt, likely the royal hunt. 52 pp. of music, remaining pages blank. Oblong 8vo, contemporary marbled paper boards. Four lines of music per page, in an unknown but skilled hand. The pieces included are titled: “La Quête. Ton pour les chiens. - Première lancée quand les chiens vont bien. - Première vüe. La Requête. L'Oulvary. - Quand les chiens s'emportant. - Le Débuché. - Le Relancé. - Le Rapproché. - Quand le cerf est à l'eau. Quand le Cerf sort de l'eau. - Retraite Prisse. Et l'haly. - L'Appelle. La Retraite manquée. - Retraitte en fanfare. La Mort. Ladine. - La Choisy le Roy. - Fanfare. - Fanfare et premiers et seconds dessus," one adding at the foot: “à Madame”.Amongst the first written records of horn music are hunting-horn signals, which date back to the fourteenth century. The earliest of these is The Art of Hunting (1327) by William Twiti, who uses syllables such as "moot", "trout", and "trourourout" to describe a number of calls involved in various stages of the hunt. With the increased tube length of the cor à plusieurs tours in the late sixteenth century and the trompe de chasse in the middle of the seventeenth, a larger number of pitches became available for horn calls, and these calls are imitated in program music from the second quarter of the seventeenth century onward. Soon afterward the hooped trompe de chasse began appearing in ballet and opera orchestras in the Empire and German states. By the eighteenth century, the horn was firmly established as an orchestral, solo, and church instrument, but was also still used for hunting purposes. (15367)
Manuscript Music Classical Music