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The Sound of Post Horns
- Strains from a Past Era


By Erik Jensen

Through more than 250 years the strains of post horns augured the arrival of mail from far and near in this country. The sound of post horns was regular part and parcel of the environment then. It has probably not been all euphony, but in most cases the prospects of signs of life from the surrounding world counterbalanced any possible lack of musicality.


The origin of the post horn must be sought in prehistoric hunting horns which were natural horns from cattle. The circular shape was developed in the fifteenth century. The use of post horns as a symbol of the operations of the postal service dates back to 1516 when Franz von Taxis established the first public accessible postal service in the German empire.

The Postman that Disappeared

In Denmark the oldest information about the use of post horns is from January 1658 when a postman disappeared between Odense and Nyborg "completely with everything, both horse, saddle, and accessories as well as his Royal Majesty’s badge and post horn". (He reappeared six or seven years later without being able to account for the equipment).

The oldest pictures of post horns in Denmark are from 1663 when a horn-blowing post rider appears both as vignette on the front page of the Copenhagen newspaper "Europæische Wochentlige Zeitung" [European Weekly Newspaper] and as a motif of a wind vane on the roof of the smithy in the village of Våbensted near Sakskøbing. Copies of as well the newspaper as the wind vane are on display at Post & Tele Museum.

The horn shown in the newspaper is of the natural type and the one on the wind vane is twisted which indicates that the two types have been in use at the same time.

In 1804, the use of the post horn was defined meticulously in "Ordinance regarding the Transport Services in Denmark". The mail-coach drivers were obliged to blow the horn on departure as well as on arrival and on the way where roads were sunken or narrow. All other travellers regardless of class were under penalty bound to give ground to the mail-coaches if and when the post horns were resounding.

Post horns shaped as trumpets with longish twists were introduced about 1808. It was common to the earliest horns of this type and the circular horns that due to their limited length (one or two twists) they were tuned as modern bugles in B flat, C, or D and had a limited compass.

Possibility to Play Different Melodies

Longer horns with more twists and in "the right post horn tune" (E flat, E, or F) appear some years later; it is not known exactly when. Here the compass is equal to contemporary French horns, but the post horn is an octave higher.

It now became possible to play different melodies and easier to produce the deep tones, and this is where we find the six actual post horn signals which had been introduced in Denmark in 1843 after German model.

During the following years it was impressed again and again on the mail-coach drivers to play the signals properly. However, the efforts did not always bear fruit as many mail-coach drivers were simply incapable of playing and more than half or the post horns were wrongly tuned for the purpose!

A Flat Post Horn

As a consequence of daily use the post horns were also exposed to damage. Especially the round pavillon (bell) was easily dented. In 1860, an instrument manufacturer from Copenhagen named P. Schmidt therefore sent a post horn with a flat bell which he had designed to the Postmaster-General together with a proposal to make it compulsory for the Danish postal service.

In order to add weight to his proposal the manufacturer enclosed a certificate substantiating that his post horn was easily capable of producing the sounds required to blow the post horn signals. The certificate was signed by no less a person than orchestra leader H.C. Lumbye himself. In spite of this, however, Schmidt failed to obtain a monopoly on his horns because the post horns were not procured by the postal management, but by those who were going to use them.

In Denmark the post horns were silenced forever on 31st march 1912 when the mail-coach on the Vejle-Brande route – the absolutely last one of its kind – ceased to drive. But they have been preserved for posterity as a symbol of the postal service.

Nowadays post horn flourishes are only heard on festive occasions or at a visit to Post & Tele Museum where you can press a button and hear a taped recording of the signals from 1843. And while you are listening attentively to the voice of the past, you can behold the exhibited post horn and close-read H.C. Lumbye’s certificate of the applicability of the flat post horn.


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