Horn (instrument) a mixture of the two, is called a horn section in these contexts. Variations include: As the name indicates, people originally used to blow on the actual horns of animals before starting to emulate them in metal or other materials. This original usage survives in the shofar (), a ram's horn, which plays an important role in Jewish religious rituals. The genus of animal-horn instruments to which the shofar belongs is called ("keren") in Hebrew, "qarnu" in Akkadian, and ("keras") in Greek. The "olifant" or "oliphant" (an abbreviation of the French "cor d'olifant"/"oliphant", "elephant horn") was the name applied in
Musical instrument the violin, viola, baryton, and various lutes dominated popular music. Beginning in around 1750, however, the lute disappeared from musical compositions in favor of the rising popularity of the guitar. As the prevalence of string orchestras rose, wind instruments such as the flute, oboe, and bassoon were readmitted to counteract the monotony of hearing only strings. In the mid-seventeenth century, what was known as a hunter's horn underwent transformation into an "art instrument" consisting of a lengthened tube, a narrower bore, a wider bell, and much wider range. The details of this transformation are unclear, but the modern horn or,