Klaus:
I suggest you address your questions about Hans Hoyer directly to
Christian Knopf, the current (fifth-generation) master horn maker at
Herbert Fritz Knopf in Markneukirchen. His direct email is:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] When I interviewed Christian in 2002 for an
article that was published in the Horn Call, he made no mention about
Hoyer being a Meistergeselle in the workshop. This presumably would have
been years before Christian, however, possibly during the time that his
grandfather, Herbert Fritz, was still making the horns (he passed away
in 1969). On the other hand, Hoyer could have been a master apprentice
at the OTHER Knopf workshop, August Knopf. The last proprietor of that
workshop, Edgar Knopf (Christian's cousin), closed it and retired almost
10 years ago in Markneukirchen. Christian might be of assistance in
contacting him (he has no email as far as I know). In any event, there
is still a lot of local knowledge, lore, tradition, and folk tales in
Markneukirchen available so you should be able to get some confirmation
of this.
You are quite right about the GDR trade and fiscal policies.
Interestingly, most of the H.F. Knopf horns that came to the West during
that period usually were sold to neutral countries, such as Austria and,
for some reason, Spain. I suspect they were probably sold in the
Scandinavian countries, too. Is that right? In any event, from those
locales they seem to have "emigrated" to the NATO countries and even the
USA. (I bought my first Knopf from a Vienna Symphony player while they
were on tour in the States during the 1970s).
Currently, Christian Knopf is interested in finding a US distributor for
his horns, which are custom instruments, but there seem to be no takers.
Ironically, one of his biggest markets is Japan.
I hope this information is helpful.
Richard in Seattle
Klaus Bjerre wrote:
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
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