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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
In recent years the study of musical instruments and their history has become an accepted feature of modern research, and the performance of earlier music upon the instruments appropriate to its period is now a familiar part of our musical life. Especially during the last decade, the revival of instrumental works from the Renaissance and Baroque periods has stimulated great interest in historically accurate performances; and more recently this concern for using authentic instruments or good modern copies suitable to the music in question has spread to the Classical period as well. Thus in an age when so much attention has been paid to the instruments of the Baroque and Classical orchestra, it is surprising to find that the horn is still very much of an enigma. Even in otherwise authentic performances with eighteenth-century instruments, original or copied, it is still common to hear the modern valve horn in all its chromatic self-assurance.
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