Throughout the ages the horn has been inextricably linked with hunting, an extra-musical association that coloured its use in music during the Baroque and Classical periods. Early on, the horn was employed in fanfares for hunting scenes in stage works such as Michelangelo Rossi's Erminia sul Giordano (Rome, 1633), Francesco Cavalli's Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo (Venice, 1639) and Jean-Baptiste Lully's La Princesse d'Elide (Versailles, 1664). Though it is not known if the horns used in these works were of the tightly wound helical or the more modern single-coil variety, they had essentially the same range and harmonic-series pitchgamut as the trumpet. This is illustrated in the Sonata da caccia con un Cornuy c. l670, written by an anonymous Bohemian composer for strings and horn in C alto – at the same pitch as the trumpet in C.

A crucial step in the evolution of the horn was its further differentiation from the trumpet (a differentiation that continued throughout the eighteenth century) as its tube length became longer, with a larger hoop and wider bell, resulting in a lower compass and a deeper, more sonorous tone. It was only after this maturation that composers requested the horn regularly in art music. The larger cor de chasse, associated with the mounted Parforce hunt, is generally thought to have appeared in France by 1680 during the reign of Louis XIV, first as a single-coiled horn in C alto, then a double-coiled horn at lower pitches.