Short History of the Alpine Horn

20 July 2025

Like cheese, chocolate and fondue, the Alphorn belongs to Switzerland (and Austria and southern Germany). The horn must have a minimum length and a corresponding maximum diameter to blow a musically useful (interesting) range in this scale.

Only one or two notes of different pitches can be blown on short horns (e.g. a hollow animal horn). There is no clear separation between the pitches with long horns, such as the alpine horn. An “alphorn” means a long, straight wooden horn bent at the bottom.

Adelheid Risi, Alphorn, 2024. Collection: Textilmuseum St. Gallen

Some writings refer to “alphorns” already in use before 1500. However, these accounts and stories were often only written down two or three hundred years after the fact.

Names such as bucina, tuba, litui, lituum alpinum, cornua alpinum and other indications were used for these ‘alphorns’. It is not certain whether these names referred to the Alphorn.

The account book of 1527 of the former monastery St. Urban (canton of Lucerne) is the oldest known written source, “Einem Walliser mit Alphorn”.

Conrad Gessner (1516-1565) describes the Alphorn in his “De raris et admirandis herbis” from 1556. He writes that the instruments consist of two curved and hollowed-out pieces of wood firmly connected with willow poles. They are 330-340 cm long.

The altarpiece of the chapel in Rohrmoo, near Tiefenbach (Allgäu, Bavaria), from 1568, depicts an “alpine horn player” with a length that corresponds to that mentioned by Gessner.

Basel, 1 August 2023

Swiss alphorn players were conscripted as musicians in foreign military service in the seventeenth century. In the winter, alpine shepherds entered the cities to earn money as street musicians on alpine or shepherd horns.

Alphorns are made in different ways. In the past, the alphorn was carved from a pine tree with a curved end. Nowadays, they are made in special workshops. The latest manufacturing processes use computer-controlled machines.

(Bron: Hans-Jürg Sommer, Die Geschichte des Alphorns, www.alphornmusik.ch).