Courtois Natural Horn with Removable Piston Set made 1855-1862 – Rare Find!

Wow!

Rare to find a mid-century Courtois natural horn with removable piston set (sauterelle) in such great condition. Courtois, along with Raoux and Halari, were amongst the best builders in France and the world at this time. The corpus, piston set, mouthpiece, and F crook are original to the horn made between 1855-1862. The A, G, E, D, and C basso crooks were made by Courtois in 1868 (they arrived in a wooden chest dated 1868). The Eb crook is from a French natural horn around 1880. The Bb basso coupler and removable legs for natural horn were made by O’Malley Brass as the originals were missing.

With the current crooks and coupler this horn plays in A, G, F, E, Eb, D, C & Bb basso. The only missing crook is Bb alto (C alto wasn’t made anymore) but these crooks could be made by Richard Seraphinoff, Miles O’Malley, or other natural horn builders.

This horn plays great at A=430, perfect for historical players. If one wanted to play at A=440 shorter removable legs and a different main slide could be made for the horn.

The pistons are in amazing shape and the horn plays great as both a natural horn and piston horn. Top Courtois quality!

The G crook needs to be resoldered, and the Bb basso coupler needs a tenon made to fit this horn. Other than that this horn is ready to be played!

Lowell Greer used this same model Courtois on his Brahms Horn Trio recording which is now in a collection at the Eastman School of Music.

Part of the Hampson Horns Collection.