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:
“America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
—Attributed to Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)
“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)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)