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The cor anglais, or English horn, is a double reed woodwind musical instrument. more...

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It is a transposing instrument pitched in F, a fifth lower than the oboe (a C instrument), and is consequently approximately one-third longer. The fingering and playing technique used for the cor anglais are essentially the same as those of the oboe. Its sounding range stretches from the E (or, rarely, E flat) below middle C to the C two octaves above middle C.

Its pear-shaped bell gives it a more nasal, covered timbre than that of the oboe, being closer in tone quality to the oboe d'amore. Whereas the oboe is the soprano instrument of the oboe family, the cor anglais is generally regarded as the alto member of the family, and the oboe d'amore, pitched between the two in the key of A, is the mezzo-soprano member. It is perceived to have a more mellow and more plaintive tone than the oboe. Its appearance differs from the oboe in that the reed is attached to a slightly bent metal tube called the bocal, or crook, and the bell has a bulbous shape.

Reeds used to play the cor anglais are similar to those used for an oboe, comprising a piece of cane folded in two. Although the instrument itself is longer, a cor anglais reed is shorter than that of an oboe, and also slightly wider. Where the cane on an oboe reed is connected to a small metal tube (the staple) partially covered in cork, there is no such cork on a cor anglais reed, which fits metal against metal onto the bocal, in a manner not dissimilar to the bassoon.

Perhaps the best known makers of modern instruments are the French firms of F. Lorée, Marigaux and Rigoutat, the British firm of T W Howarth, and the American firm Fox. Instruments from smaller volume makers, such as A. Laubin, are also sought after. Instruments are usually made from African Blackwood or Grenadilla, although some makers offer instruments in a choice of alternative woods as well, such as cocobolo wood (Howarth) or violet wood (Lorée), which are said to alter the voice of the cor anglais slightly, reputedly making it even more mellow and warmer. Fox has recently made some instruments in plastic resin.

Etymology

The term "cor anglais" literally means "English horn", but the cor anglais is neither English nor a horn. The instrument's name is sometimes supposed to derive from the circumstance that at some point a standard cor anglais resembled an oboe da caccia, a baroque alto instrument of the oboe family, which tended to be either bent or curved in shape, and was thus called a cor anglé, meaning "bent horn" (it still has a bent metal pipe (the bocal) from the piece of cork the reed sits in to the top of the body of the instrument), this epithet later to be corrupted to cor anglais. This is probably a myth, as "anglé" does not mean "angled" in any language. The cor anglais and the oboe da caccia, also, are otherwise quite unlike, however, and there is no clear connection between them. It has alternatively been suggested that the name of "anglehorn" developed as a reference to the English horn, a part which is not present in most of the smaller members of the oboe family. However, the name seems to have appeared first in German and Austrian scores of the 1760s/70s, always in Italian form as "corno inglese." Prior to this, in the late Baroque period Johann Sebastian Bach referred to a similar double reed instrument pitched in F as taille. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians suggests that the oboe da caccia resembled the curved horns played by putti and angels in some Central-European renaissance paintings, which gave rise to the German name "engellisches Horn", meaning "angelic horn", engellisch also being a common alternative spelling at the time for the adjective englisch, "English".

Read more at Wikipedia.org