Cor Anglais - History and Etymology

History and Etymology

The term cor anglais is French for English horn, but the instrument is neither from England nor related to the (French) horn. The instrument originated in Silesia about 1720, when a bulb bell was fitted to a curved oboe da caccia-type body by the Weigel family of Breslau. The two-keyed, open-belled, straight tenor oboe (French taille de hautbois, "tenor oboe"), and more particularly the flare-belled oboe da caccia, resembled the horns played by angels in religious images of the Middle Ages. This gave rise in German-speaking central Europe to the Middle High German name engellisches Horn, meaning angelic horn. Because engellisch also meant English in the vernacular of the time, the "angelic horn" became the "English horn." In the absence of any better alternative, the curved, bulb-belled tenor oboe then retained the name even after the oboe da caccia fell into disuse around 1760.

The earliest known orchestral part specifically for the instrument is in the Vienna version of Niccolò Jommelli's opera Ezio dating from 1749, where it was given the Italian name corno inglese. Gluck and Haydn followed suit in the 1750s, and the first English horn concertos were written in the 1770s. Considering the name "cor anglais," it is ironic that the instrument was not used in France until about 1800 or in England until the 1830s. The local equivalent for "English horn" is also used in other European languages such as Italian, German, and Spanish.

The suggestion has been made that anglais might be a corruption of Middle French anglé (angular, or bent at an angle, angulaire in modern French), but this has been rejected on grounds that there is no evidence of the term cor anglé before it was offered as a possible origin of anglais in the 19th century. The cor anglais still has a bent metal pipe, known as the bocal, which connects the reed to the instrument proper. The name first appeared on a regular basis in Italian, German, and Austrian scores from 1741, usually in the Italian form corno inglese.

Through the last quarter of the 19th century, the French and Italian names cor anglais and corno inglese were the only titles ever used for the instrument by English writers. It is remarkable that the French version of the name persists in English-speaking countries, where colloquially the instrument is always referred to as the "cor".