John Mangum on Artaserse

For Haymarket’s recent production of Leonardo Vinci’s opera Artaserse, the Haymarket Opera Orchestra included the natural horn to perform the opera’s many arias accompanied by the brass section. Haymarket’s horn player, John Schreckengost tells us more about the natural horn, featured in the orchestration of Vinci’s Artaserse:

The natural horn came to prominence as an artistic instrument in the early eighteenth century. Its use in opera in the 1600s appears to be limited to playing fanfares in hunting scenes and not as a member of the orchestra. Examples include Michelangelo Rossi’s Erminio sul Giordano (Rome, 1633), Francesco Cavalli’s Le nozze di Teti e di Paleo (Venice, 1639), and Jean-Baptiste Lully’s La Princesse d’Elide (Versailles, 1664).

The seminal event leading to the development of the orchestral natural horn took place in 1681, when Count Franz Anton von Sporck brought the French cor de chasse back to his court in Bohemia after hearing them played during hunts while visiting Versailles. The popularity of the instrument spread from Bohemia to Vienna, where the instrument makers (and brothers) Johannes and Michael Leichnambschneider developed the first orchestral horns around 1700. Their horns had larger bores and wider bells than the cor de chasse.

Baroque composers exploited the horn’s distinctive sound for both ceremonial grandeur and pastoral color. Handel, for example, used horns to great effect in his oratorios and operas, often in festive or martial contexts. In his Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks, the horns contribute bold, triumphant sonorities that would have been instantly associated with royal pomp and outdoor celebrations. In operas like Giulio Cesare, horns often accompany scenes of military prowess or regal authority.  

Leonardo Vinci, a leading figure of Neapolitan opera, also wrote for horns, typically in pairs, using them to underscore dramatic or heroic moments. The horns of this period could not play chromatic lines but excelled in fanfares and arpeggios that fit the harmonic series. Composers worked around the instrument’s limitations by writing in keys that matched available crooks—detachable lengths of tubing used to change the horn’s fundamental pitch—and by crafting parts that showcased its natural strengths.

Using the hand in the bell to play notes outside of the harmonic series is credited to the Dresden hornist Anton Joseph Hampel sometime during the 1750s. The Baroque horns used in Haymarket’s recent production were played with the bells up, following the tradition seen in much of the art of the era. One of the instruments used is an historical copy  of a Leichnambschneider horn by American Richard Seraphinoff. The other is a modern version of a baroque horn built by German horn maker Gerhard Wolfram.

Learn more about Haymarket’s 2025 performance of Vinci’s Artaserse.

About the author

John Mangum is the General Director, President & CEO of Lyric Opera of Chicago, the fifth in the company’s history. Having joined Lyric in the fall of 2024, he brings more than two decades of leadership experience in the arts, most recently as Executive Director/CEO of the Houston Symphony, where he served from 2018 to 2024.

During his tenure at Houston, the organization raised significant funds to renovate its hall, strengthened its balance sheet by $60 million, appointed a new music director, and performed in-person and virtually for more than 1.1 million people during the pandemic season.

Mangum grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and began his career at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He subsequently held senior artistic planning roles at several of the country’s leading orchestras — the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Major initiatives at these orchestras included concert stagings of Fidelio, Peter Grimes, Bluebeard’s Castle, Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, John Cage’s Song Books, West Side Story, Company, and Amadeus. He also served as President and Artistic Director of the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, overseeing all aspects of the Society’s operations, including the successful completion of its first-ever endowment campaign.

Mangum is an alumnus of the Impact Program for Arts Leaders at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. He holds a Ph.D. in history with a concentration in musicology, in addition to master’s and bachelor’s degrees in history, from the University of California, Los Angeles. His scholarly work looks at the intersection of Italian opera and political power in 18th century German-speaking Central Europe.

About The Haymarket Review: This new digital publication including thoughts about  the work produced by Haymarket is designed to deepen our connection to audiences, nurture and feed audience curiosity about historical performance, offer critical opinions and thoughtful reflections on our performances, and provide a forum for Haymarket and its audience to connect through sharing insights, opinions, learning, and expertise.