Citation: Wey,Yannick. 2024. How Did 19th-Century Alphorns Sound? A Reconstruction Based on Written Accounts of Its Musical Timbre. Arts 13: 146. https://doi.org/10.3390/ arts13050146 Academic Editor: Andrew M. Nedd Received: 7 July 2024 Revised: 20 September 2024 Accepted: 23 September 2024 Published: 25 September 2024 Copyright: © 2024 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). arts Article How Did 19th-Century Alphorns Sound? A Reconstruction Based on Written Accounts of Its Musical Timbre Yannick Wey 1,2 1 Competence Center for Music Education Research, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, 6002 Luzern, Switzerland; yannick.wey@hslu.ch 2 Bern University of the Arts, 3027 Bern, Switzerland Abstract: This paper reconstructs the sound of 19th-century alphorns based on contemporary written descriptions, which allows for a better understanding of literature and compositions that quoted and imitated the alphorn throughout the 19th century. In the absence of sound recordings, historical documents and literary sources provide valuable insights into the timbre of these traditional Alpine instruments. The research examines descriptions from 19th-century texts, comparing them with modern understandings of musical timbre. By analyzing the language used to describe the alphorn’s sound, the study identifies recurring descriptors and contextualizes them within the broader acoustic environment, including the influence of natural sounds like waterfalls and echoes. Historical sources reveal a complex perception of the alphorn’s timbre, described in terms of its resemblance to muted trumpets and a blend of brass and woodwind qualities. Authors such as Hermann Alexander von Berlepsch and François-Joseph Fétis provided detailed accounts, noting contrasting characteristics like “rough”, “soft”, “sharp”, and “melodious”, which varied with the listener’s distance from the instrument. These descriptions highlight the alphorn’s unique sound profile, distinct from modern perceptions that emphasize a warmer, fuller timbre. The findings underscore the importance of considering ecological and psychoacoustic contexts in the study of historical musical instruments. Keywords: alphorn; literature; music 1. Introduction Can we reconstruct a picture of how a historical musical instrument sounded from the descriptions of contemporary observers? If successful, such a reconstruction may not only inform historical musical practice but also our understanding of literature and compositions that quoted and imitated the alphorn (Figure 1) throughout the 19th century. Historical developments in musical tradition have been at the center of various re- search initiatives (McCollum and Hebert 2014; Ziegler et al. 2017; Ziegler 2010). Exploring musical change necessitates analyzing its causes, characteristics, and extent across different levels. This involves studying alterations in specific pieces or broader musical collections, tracking a single song’s variations, evaluating changes in cultural or structural contexts, and quantifying the pace of these shifts within whole repertoires (Nettl 1958). Within this field, the reconstruction of instruments from historical sources is an area that has been the subject of lively research in recent years (Fang 2023; Rodà et al. 2021; Serafin and De Götzen 2009; Bellia 2019). In addition, the evaluation of the timbre of instruments by means of test playing them and measurements of audio recordings have gained attention (Haverkamp 2022a, 2022b; Kouroupetroglou et al. 2021). Timbre is still today one of the less studied components of music (Dolan and Rehding 2018). There is no direct single measure for timbre; instead, timbre research relies on the psychoacoustic impression that is verbalized (Saitis and Weinzierl 2019). The challenge in studying timbre is further compounded by its dynamic nature; the timbre of an instru- ment or voice can change significantly with variations in playing technique, making it a Arts 2024, 13, 146. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13050146 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/arts