Dictionary of Music - Birding America

184 Honegger, ArthurHonegger (ô ne ger′), Arthur (Ar tYr′), 1892–1955. A Swiss composer who lived mostly inFrance and became a member of an influentialgroup called Les Six (see SIX, LES). One of Honegger’sfirst great successes was Pacific 231 (1924), atonal portrayal of a locomotive, which audienceshailed as a perfect picture of the modern machineage. Honegger, however, abandoned this type ofrealistic music soon afterward. A master of choralcomposition, he returned to the style of an earlierwork, the oratorio Le roi David (“King David,”1921), producing such works as the dramatic oratorioJeanne d’Arc au bûcher (“Joan of Arc at theStake”). He also wrote five symphonies, numerousballets, incidental music for plays, and several dozenmotion-picture scores. Honegger’s music is notedfor its regular, highly accented rhythms and effectiveuse of counterpoint.hootenanny (hoo — t′ə nan′′ē) pl. hootenannies.A folk singers’ jam session, that is, a performanceby folk singers with, usually, some audience participation.The word appears to have been coined forsuch a performance held in 1941 in Seattle, Washington,but the practice of holding hootenanniesoriginated in New York City in the 1940s with thebeginning of a revival of folk song, especially songsof social protest. Hootenannies were organized toraise money for a folk music magazine (People’sSongs) under the auspices of Oscar Brand, PeteSeeger, and others, and folk singers were hired bylabor unions and political parties to entertain at theirmeetings, in colleges, and at private parties.from instruments used in ancient times, which weremade from animal horns or tusks. Those made tosound by pressure of the player’s lips are the ancestorsof the French horn, trumpet, and other modernbrass instruments. From animal horns and tusks,man progressed to imitating such devices in wood,ivory, or metal. The early instruments of thiskind—the Roman lituus, Danish lur, Jewish shofar—wereused mainly for signaling. Throughoutthe Middle Ages in Europe, horns were used in twoprincipal ways, for hunts (hunting horn) and, withthe rise of royal courts and powerful armies, forfanfares and military signals (bugle calls). Horns ofelephant tusk (ivory), imported from Africa andAsia, were used from about the eleventh centuryon; this type came to be called oliphant. By thelater Middle Ages, horns were usually made intightly coiled forms in order to make them easier tohandle in spite of their great length. This coiledtype may well have been the first horn capable ofplaying a melody, and it is from this instrumentthat the modern French horn developed. Until thedevelopment of valves, all horns were naturalhorns, that is, they could sound only one fundamentaltone and its natural overtones (see HAR-MONIC SERIES). In the eighteenth century, crooks ofdifferent lengths might be inserted to change thattone (see CROOK, def. 2), a practice that died outwhen valves were invented (see VALVE). Theaccompanying illustration shows a natural horn ofthe first half of the eighteenth century.hora (hô′rä) A Romanian folk dance in 2/4 or 6/8meter. It has become extremely popular in Israel.horizontal textureSee under TEXTURE.fig. 131 p/u from p. 189horn A name used loosely for almost any brasswind instrument—cornet, trumpet, trombone,etc.—and specifically for the orchestral horn (seeFRENCH HORN). In addition, the word appears in thenames of two woodwind instruments, the ENGLISHHORN (a tenor oboe) and the BASSET HORN (anobsolete alto clarinet). All these instruments—infact, all wind instruments—are probably descendedhornpipe 1 An old wind instrument consistingof one or two pipes sounded with a single reed