The Gemshorn can be defined as a folk recorder, made from an animal horn, which enjoyed some currency from the latter part of the fourteenth century to the middle of the sixteenth. It belongs to that definitively European class of instruments, the end-blown fipple pipes; but it is unique amongst them in having a bore which is a stopped inverted cone. Apart from endearing itself to organists for some four and a half centuries as a useful flute-stop in which its name survives, the Gemshorn made few appearances, whether folk or formal, after its final decline round about 1550.