Catholic - Historic Brass Society

UTLEY & KLAUS
109
While Blühmel’s early rotary-valve construction is rather large in size, as can be seen in
the Markneukirchen horn, Joseph Riedl’s patent from 1835 in Vienna shows a much more
delicate rotor made possible by the reduction of the number of passages from three to two.
The motion of the rotor is limited by the shape of the push rods, as can be seen from a
drawing by Heyde. 29 Fritz Herold in Aschaffenburg built a similar stopping mechanism on
his fluegelhorn with reversed valve order as late as ca. 1850 (Figure 29). He used a flat spring
for the touchpiece return mechanism instead of a clock-spring.
Figure 29
Fluegelhorn in C by Fritz Herold, Aschaffenburg, ca. 1850 (DM, 30808).
Detail of stops and flat springs.
Similar flat springs were built in Mainz by Carl August Müller for double-piston and
rotary valves; they are called “New Mainz” valves (Figure 30). 30 The similarity of Herold’s
and Müller’s valves is not surprising, since Aschaffenburg is not far from Mainz.
As can be seen in Chart 4c, double-piston-valve instruments were dominant until the
1840s in Bavaria, while rotary valves took over the field in the 1850s. All Bavarian rotaryvalve
instruments on the list are equipped with a clock-spring return mechanism.