Holding a three-metre long Alpine Horn for more than 16 beats needs a lot of breath and great upper body strength, as well as technique.

You have to know your way around an Alpine Horn. Grip is all important. Just because you play the recorder, it doesn’t mean you can pick it up easily.  You can easily rupture and herniate yourself – before you even start blowing.

Soon after my cheeks started ballooning, I caused premature transhumance in Saanenland. Cows fled to higher pastures.

Fritz Frautschi is the head teacher at the Swiss Alphorn School in the Bernese Alps  and gives  crash courses  on the  Hornberg, or Horn Mountain, near Gstaad. His breathplay  lessons  and tongue articulation masterclasses are  held outdoors.

Frautschi is a former Swiss Army cornettist and member  of the Swiss National Youth Brass Band.

Trumpet and trombone players have an advantage. The embouchure is the trick, but you must be prepared for severe lip cramp.  The fundamentals involve learning how to gather from the diaphragm, to breathe properly  and perfect the perfect raspberry. This involves duck noises evolving into geese noises – and childish giggling.

But with determination and a lot of faith in your lower body, you will get  produce some sort of sound.

Musicians play the alphorn on the main street of an Alpine village. Photo: Eugeniek/shutterstock.com

I didn’t redistribute Alpine air in waltz time but I did redistribute the local livestock.

Conscientious students are supposed to take back their entry-level mouthpiece to their hotel room to practise rhythm drills, slurring and melodic buzzing. They’re also meant to develop their range and precision until they lose consciousness through breathlessness, or until they undergo a harrowing prolapse. Well… or until someone bangs angrily on the wall and asks them to be quiet or, even better, until the hotel manager knocks to personally ask you to stop spitting all over his walls.

You quickly learn from Herr Fraitschi that “tasteful musicianship” takes years. And mountaineering socks make excellent mutes.  Becoming fluent in Swiss herdsman is not easy, so a lot of history is thrown in.

Before fax machines and mobiles yodelling and alpine-horn blowing were the sole means by which Swiss people communicated with each other and exchanged gossip across the valleys  Certain melodies had certain meanings. Horns were used to convey news of the movement of animals in fields as well as deliver SOS and Mayday messages. The Federal Yodelling Association was founded in 1910.  Jean Daetwyler composed the first alpine horn concerto in 1972. Five years later, Pep Lienard  played the alpine in “The Eurovision Song Contest.”

The National Yodelling and Alpine Horn Championships is held every two years in Sarnen. Nendaz in the Valais canton stages a big festival in July ( 22-24) and Kleinwaisertal in September (11-18).

Flag throwing and the grand ensemble at the finals of the Swiss Alpine Horn festival. Photo: Mountainpix/Shutterstock.com

You quickly learn that tasteful musicianship takes years and mountaineering socks make excellent mutes

The horns used competitively in the major summer-time ‘blow outs’ in Switzerland are between four and five metres long. The longest ever made measured 47 metres and took 10 men to lift it. It was made by Seppi Stocker, whose family has been whittling horns since 1776.

His factory is in Kriens near Luzerne. He makes 400 horns a year exporting them around the world.  A horn is made from Swiss red fir and wrapped at the end with Malaysian bamboo. Willow and birch were once used too. The wood is kiln-dried, planed and lacquered. It is then given a personalised motif, often involving flowers, that is hand painted on the bell end. There is a Swiss cross on every horn.  Each is electronically tuned. The longer the horn the lower the key.

The Alpine Horn is not just a picture postcard gimmick. Brahms and Dvorak composed passages for it. Played well, its fans say, its melodies represent a natural relationship with the mountains. Played badly, as I am told, it sounds like someone is trying to dislodge a bird nest from a gutter using the downpipe.

At Switzerland’s Alpine Horn festivals, which are usually combined with Jodlerfests, each blower is given three minutes to perform a memorised piece in front of a panel of experts who take into consideration everything from posture to range and puff.

Every blower wears his own special celebration day breeches, as well as hand embroidered tunics and hats covered in medals from other competitions. Nearly every Swiss village has a yodelling and horn club, and it is every Swiss child’s dream to grow up and be either a celebrated lip-vibrator or a famous yodeller. Yodel composers like Robert Fellmann, Ernst Sommer and Marti Marie-Theres are as famous in Switzerland as the Beatles. Recordings of yodel songs like De Maie isch cho and Bliib no es bitzli do outsell  Adele.

The earliest yodelling score appeared in the early 18th century and all yodellers, up to 500 contestants, compete in the solo, duet, quartet and choir sections at every festival. They are again given three minutes to impress the judges. Prizes are sashes, trophies and, most coveted of all, hatpins.

Swiss yodelling is a highly specialised and distinct art form. It is more choral than German yodelling, which is more boisterous and thigh-slapping. Swiss yodelling is more lyrical, more churchy, prayerful and romantic.

A trained ear, like Herr Franki’s, can tell where a blower has grown up and learned the instrument. Each region has a distinct style. The blowers of Uri prefer the rich G horn; those from Lucerne the high register.

Swiss women compete on equal terms but, according to the experts, men are generally more successful since there are more of them and they have more wind.

Horns are usually personalised with a flower motif.