It may known, that Sven Bring of Stockholm and I over years have communicated on public and private levels about brass matters in general and tuba matters in specific.
I ended my multi-brass career on tuba and probably played no brasses better than bassbone, euph, and tuba. I am mentally very attracted to the low brasses and have many friends in these communities. The sad fact is, that the web-communities for these instruments invariably, aside from the Norwegian Norsk Tubaforum invariably is run by persons having neither education, knowledge, culture, nor humour. But in general they read music very well. Horn lists are pure heaven in comparison. So now Sven and I meet in horn-contexts. Sven just bought a used Hoyer single Bb with 5 valves. It happens to be almost identical to my sample from 1985. Sven has issued a question on that matter. I am working on an answer and will tell my temporary results. Hoyer appears to have been Meistergeselle at the Knopf workshop. That is the German term for a craftsman educated to be a master, but not yet having his own workshop still working for his educator. The GDR industry structure appears to have changed to a more closely state monitored formation sometime in the 1960-ies, which seems to have giving birth to the B&S VEB (people-owned-conglomerate), where Hoyer became the Horn maker. Hoyer horns appear to have been imported to Denmark from around 1965, but sadly all of my personal source persons on this matter have passed away no later than 1992. I am the house historian of the Copenhagen company of I. K. Gottfried owned by my friend Lars Jonasson. He runs the business, but I know a very few things about their inventory and library, which he does not know. One item is a hugely formatted book about horn history including the Hoyer upstart. I phoned Lars this morning about that book, but he could not find it. Shortly after he phoned me back: one of his repairmen had pilfered that book for closer studies in a more homely environment. I will eventually be provided core information from that book, and I will relay, what I find relevant. I was not always impressed with GDR technology, but nobody will ever hear me out any doubts of the craftsmanship of the GDR masters. However the GDR was one big economy scam. Internally in the Warsaw pact the GDR in any matters but aeronautics and maybe medicine was the technology leader. Their high end musical instruments were dumped in the West at rock bottom prices with the single purpose to earn US$-convertible currencies (Devisenbeschaffungsmaßnahmen). The GDR makers like B&S used, what I call modular designs. that implied, that the second level Weltklang (or whatever buyer-induced stencil engraving) instruments in all crucial acoustical matters were made out of the same parts as the top line B&S-Hoyer-Scherzer-Wolfram brands. The differences were these: the valve transmissions were simpler S-links over ball&socket the assembly was carried out by apprentices and non-master journeymen the number of valves especially in tubas and horns was lesser than ideal. I remember finding a König (a Weltklang disguise) single Bb horn, which was absolutely marvellous but for one matter: It only had 3 valves. A fact rendering it useless for my purposes. On the Memphis based list I have written more thoroughly on the GDR scams as related to brasses and d currency (Hans and I sometimes provoke each other to do our best). But I will cut this posting for now. Klaus Smedegaard Bjerre ____________________________________________________________________________________ The fish are biting. Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing. http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch_v2.php _______________________________________________ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
