Waldhorn and Song in the Open Air, 1750-1830

States that the Romanticists considered the horn to be the voice of nature, whose sound was capable of enriching the beauty of the landscape by means of art. Contends that the importance accorded the horn between 1750 and 1830 is admirably demonstrated by a sketch made by Goethe in which the "natural tones of the Waldhorn" are precisely notated as the basis of a "theory of acoustics" that he intended to write. Reports that the genre of the art song - which after 1800 became increasingly differentiated to adapt to the social life of the aristocracy, the middle classes, and in the country - received its essential impulses at a time in which absolutist rule, with all its ceremony, had to relinquish its dominance. Indicates that enlightenment and sentimentalism, increasing emancipation and participation in all areas of culture resulted after 1750 in changes and breaks that also affected the horn.