This brass post horn was made by the Julius Heinrich ZIMMERMANN (1851-1922) company. Zimmermann was an extremely successful entrepreneur in the manufacture of musical instruments and also publishing. He had branches of his company in St. Petersburg, Moscow, London, Riga and Leipzig. This particular instrument is stamped ‘LEIPZIG’,...
This large and quite outlandish instrument is known as a Verdi contrabass trombone. It is rarely seen by audiences nowadays, but maybe we can change that 😉. [Just making the photos was so much fun!] The Verdi contrabass trombone is a member of the trombone family and is the largest form...
A post horn is a valveless cylindrical brass instrument with a cupped mouthpiece. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, stage coaches were used to carry letters and parcels. People were also transported and had to endure extremely bumpy rides and often accidents. Along each route or road, there were stations or ‘stages’ where the stagecoaches stopped.
The postillion was the person who guided the horse-drawn coach while actually mounted on the horse or pair of horses. A coachman would control the horse from the actual vehicle itself.
They blew the post horns to announce their arrival at or departure from postal stations. This meant that everything could be ready for when they arrived, including for example, a change of horses. They went into disuse with the modernisation of postal systems. Yet the post horn remains a symbol of mail systems in many countries, including Germany with the Deutsche Post for example.
