There are two forms of hand-muting on horns. The most common is "stopped" (English) or
"gestopft" (German), for which the player tightly stops up the bell. The Italian
(rarely seen, at least in the USA) is "chiuso". The most common French term is
"bouch?", but sometimes one instead sees the term "cuivr?". Both are ambiguous unless
accompanied by a plus symbol (unlike the terms in other languages, generally speaking).
A less common form of hand-muting is the "echo" effect, for which the player loosely
covers the bell. I've only seen the effect notated in English ("echo") and French
("son d'?cho"). Also, very occasionally, "half-stopped". If I were to see "hand over
bell" I might interpret it as echo, absent other information. But many players would
probably ignore it.
To make matters even more interesting, some composers (notably Bartok and Copland)
seem not to have known the difference between stopped and muted. I'm not saying they
didn't hear the difference. I'm saying they didn't know how to notate the difference.
With these composers, both effects are notated "con sord." Sometimes they use
plus-signs to make the difference explicit. Other times you just have to make a best
guess from context. I offer these as definite examples of What Not To Do.
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