My Own Thoughts on the Alexander Heldenhorn
- boydsbrass
- Dec 13, 2025
- 3 min read
As you may have seen, I have recently had the privilege to own an Alexander Heldenhorn - one of the 12 originals made in the 1970s. What a gem of an instrument it is - I'm very grateful for having the opportunity to own the instrument for a time (which is, at the time of this writing, for sale), and I recognize that this is a privilege that few horn enthusiasts receive!
John Ericson (my friend and professor during my Master's degree at Arizona State University) borrowed this horn for a week and wrote an excellent article on the horn (which you can read here). But I would like to also write my own article here about this horn, especially how it plays and feels to my hands.
I find this horn to be a very powerful orchestral horn. I had the privilege of having a Steve Lewis horn on loan to me while I was searching for my own professional instrument. The Heldenhorn reminds me of this Lewis horn in its tone and playing qualities, although I think the Heldenhorn is more secure and has a richer sound overall (unfortunately I don't have the Lewis in my shop currently to retry this). I've also had the privilege of playing several Alexander 103s extensively. I think the Heldenhorn combines the smoothness and richness of the 103 with the power of the American Geyer wrap horn.
As for the weight of the horn, this horn is quite a bit heavier than horns I'm used to playing. My daily driver horn is an Engelbert Schmid double (these horns are famous for their lightness) so when I first picked up the Heldenhorn I found it to be quite a heavy instrument. But there is a difference between weight and what I like to call "tankiness" (like an Abeline or Eastlake Conn 8D with the heavy bells built to withstand much more abuse than a truly professional horn). The Heldenhorn is a weighty instrument, but certainly not a 'tanky' instrument. When you pick it up, you feel like you are picking up a fine instrument.
Another note on the sound is that this weightiness is probably what makes the horn capable of such volume. The power this horn can put out is extreme. Thankfully it's soft sounds are also quite easy, as you usually don't need to put out extreme power! But it is there if you need it on this horn.
On the valve action - my mind goes immediately to my experience as a piano technician (yes, I do that too) when thinking about the valves. Concert grand pianos have much longer keys than shorter grand pianos, and thus the weight of the keys feels heavier. What that ultimately turns into, though, is a feeling of more control at the piano.
The Heldenhorn has very large valves which are solid brass, meaning there is a lot of mass that you are turning when you press the valve. Similar to a longer key with more weight in a concert grand, you get the feeling (if you can get used to it) of more control than if you have extremely light valves. My Engelbert Schmid horn has the fastest valves I've ever used, and that was initially something that actually hindered my playing (that said, once I got used to these valves I would never go back, I can play extremely fast passages very cleanly on my Schmid). The massive valves give you a sense of control in smoother passages of music (take the Tchaikovsky Symphony 5 horn solo as an example), but if you are playing faster music, such as concertos, that require very fast valve action, then you will have to take these sections at a slower speed because you are ultimately moving more mass in the valves.
I thought these were interesting things that I found to be the case on this horn. Whoever buys it (or has bought it, depending on when you read this) is certainly going to have a treasure of a horn. It has been a delight to play it for a couple of months here and to get to know it as a horn.
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