Archived under: General | Compensating horns, Manufacturers, People in horn & music history
Video: An Intense Compensating Triple
A Facebook friend sent me a link to this video of Tchaik 5. The Principal is using a very unique looking horn which I will describe in a moment.
The horn itself is a compensating triple that looks almost completely foreign to our eyes. It has “single story” valves (like are used on a single horn) and then a pair of long, horizontal valves that serve as 
change valves. What it reminded me of right away seeing this video was an early type of compensating double horn. Back in the day some double horns were made as compensating doubles with that same type of long change valve. The image at left is linked off Horn-U-Copia and is of what I believe is the most common type of this horn, made by Lidl. They also have photos of similar instruments by DePrins, Lehmann, and Huttl.
As to the mystery horn in the video, of all those makers only Lidl is still in business and it was the one I first looked for but they are not the maker. My Facebook source [Phoenix Symphony Principal Horn Gabriel Kovach] however was persistent and tracked the maker down! The triple horn in the video is by Cornford. In their site they describe it as follows:
Christopher Cornford has developed in co-operation with Peter Steidle, former horn player in the Radio Synphony Orchestra, Frankfurt, a new double compensated triple horn, which is marketed under the name: Mod. 3 S. Characteristic of this horn is that it only weights 2250 grams, therefore being lighter than usual double horns.
Check out the horn in the video and the link to their site which has several more photos. That is one intense piece of engineering.
One potential downside to this type of horn is that for many tube lengths it is truly “tuned at the factory” as there appear to be no valve slides between the big change valves. The change valves add the next piece of tubing after the valve, providing successively the tubing needed for valve slides in high F, B-flat, and low F.
The player in the video seems to be using the horn basically as sort of a super single B-flat; I only see in the video one note not on the B-flat horn. This is my current approach to my Paxman compensating triple actually after ramping up my B-flat horn fingerings a bit more lately; mostly B-flat horn. It would be fascinating to try one of these horns, I am sure there are a lot of triple horn players who would welcome an instrument that is that light in the hands and uses single story valves with a light easy action.
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