Valves and the Chromatic Brass
Valves gave brass a full chromatic scale without crooks, turning horns and trumpets into melodic voices.
Related
A natural horn can sound only the notes of its harmonic series; the rest must be coaxed out by putting a hand into the bell. Valves replaced that struggle with a finger, and brass could at last move chromatically like a woodwind.
Time and place
Prussia, between 1814 and 1818. Heinrich Stolzel and Friedrich Blumel produced valve designs and took out a joint patent in 1818. Improved models followed in Vienna and Paris and entered orchestras between the 1820s and 1840s. Before valves, Anton Weidinger in Vienna had built a keyed trumpet in the 1790s, and Haydn's concerto of 1796 was written for it.
What happened
A valve is a bypass that changes the length of the tube; pressing it sends the air around a short extra length and lowers the fundamental by a semitone or a tone. Three valves together gave brass a complete chromatic scale across the range, without the crooks and hand-stopping of the natural instrument. Horns and trumpets turned from instruments of the harmonic series into instruments that could play melodies and change key. Makers standardised bore and valve construction, the rotary valve appeared in the 1830s, and earlier patterns faded.
What changed
Orchestral brass was redistributed. Horns could sustain lines and fill harmony, trumpets could carry themes, and composers no longer had to leave time for a change of crook. Military and brass bands expanded with valves, and instruments such as the cornet and euphonium joined their ranks. The price was timbre. A stopped natural horn has a tight, nasal edge that the valved horn smooths away, which is why Brahms and his generation still preferred the older instrument. Orchestras today play valved horns, but players still imitate that older colour.
Listen for the turn
Begin with Haydn's Trumpet Concerto, where the keyed trumpet can reach semitones but carries the trace of its keys in the tone. Then Brahms's Horn Trio, written for the natural horn, stopped and open notes alternating so that the colour turns bright and dark by phrase. Finally Strauss's First Horn Concerto, where the valved horn moves freely through semitones and the line stays smooth, the old shifting of colour gone. Heard in sequence, the three trace brass from signal instrument to melodic voice.
Related
This turn belongs to Romantic; see French Horn, Trumpet and Natural Trumpet.
Listen in the library
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Sources
- Grove Music Online, entry Valve — patents and dates checked, not quoted
- The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry Horn — hand-stopping and valve adoption checked, not quoted
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.