Hampel, Anton Joseph

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Hampel, Anton Joseph

Hampel, Anton Joseph, Bohemian horn player, teacher, and inventor; b. Prague, c. 1710; d. Dresden, March 30, 1771. He became a member of the Dresden royal orch. about 1731. He was the first horn player to learn to negotiate the low register of his instrument with aplomb and perfected the technique of performing the chromatic scale by hand-stopping. He also worked on perfecting the non-transposing mute. With the instrument maker Johann Werner, he brought out the Inven-tionshorn, which made it possible for crooks to be placed into the body of the horn. Among his students was Punto.

—Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire