In Europe, horns gained popularity in the trendy sport of hunting. As this aristocratic sport spread, horn-makers experimented with different shapes and sizes to increase the range of notes possible. In 1636, French musical scholar Marin Mersenne wrote of four different kinds of horns in his Harmonie Universelle: Le grand cor (the big horn), the cor à plusiers tours, (the horn of several turns), le cor qui n'a qu'un seul tour (the horn which has only one turn), and le huchet (the horn with which one calls from afar). Horns such as the cor de chasse and trompe de chasse (pictured left) fall into this latter category. Shortly thereafter, the horn began to appear in the concert halls and theaters. Too raucous for inclusion with the fine oboes and violins in the orchestra pit though, at first the hunting horns were used only onstage in scenes depicting, naturally, the hunt.
Famous French Horn Players | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/list_5799771_famous-french-horn-players.html#ixzz2RsdIC8vS http://www.hornsociety.org/ihs-people/past-greats/28-people/past-greats/122-brain In 1933 Philip Farkas, before he finished high school, became the first horn player for the Kansas City Philharmonic. Farkas founded the International Horn Society and wrote what is considered the "Bible" of horn technique, "The Art of French Horn Playing: A Treatise on the Problems and Techniques of French Horn Playing."
Dennis Brain was born in London in 1921. His father, Aubrey Brain, was third horn in the London Symphony and Royal Philharmonic orchestras at the time. His mother, Marion Beeley, was a contralto who sang at Covent Garden and for whom Sir Edward Elgar wrote the aria “Hail, Immemorial Ind!” in his opera The Crown of India. Dennis played a Raoux single F horn at first, gradually moving to an Alexander single