THE ROMANTIC TRUMPET - Historic Brass Society

TARR 215
or natural comet) as a natural brass instrument was built in coiled form, and was generally
pitched in B 6 or C, with crooks bringing it down to A, A 6 , and G, sometimes as far as low
D. This was the instrument from which the cornetd pistons was later developed. The method
by one Cam (ca. 1825) for stopped trumpet, keyed bugle, and natural cornet is the first ever
for the latter instrument. 8 Later valved-cornet methods also mention the natural cornet and
include exercises for it, the ones by Kresser (ca. 1850) and Koenig (1857) being particularly
noteworthy. 9 A hitherto unknown surviving instrument by the well-known maker Etienne
Francois Perinet (fl. 1829-55) is in the collection of the Bad Sackingen Trumpet Museum. 1 °
In Germany the posthorn was apparently at first a two- or even one-foot instrument
pitched in B 6 or A; from surviving signals and occasional quotes—for example, by Bach and
Hande1 11 —we see that it generally sounded only two notes an octave apart, presumably the
fundamental and the second partial of the natural harmonic series. Between 1750 and 1820
it was lengthened to four-foot pitch. In Saxony, triply coiled instruments in C and A were
used; in Prussia, they were of higher pitch. 12 Although several composers of the Classical
period— among them Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart, Michael Haydn, and Beethoven—each
wrote a few bars for the posthorn in larger works, the instrument cannot be said to have
gained a place in art music. 13 The keys used by these composers were four-foot C, B 6 , A, G,
and F. From 1800 until the end of the post-coach era, the pitch of F (El') became more and
more standardized in most parts of Germany (Bavaria still clinging to C and B 6 until after
1830). In 1828 the Royal Prussian Postal Administration introduced triply folded trumpets
in El', the then standard military trumpet pitch, an example followed shortly afterwards by
Saxony and Mecklenburg. The traditional coiled form was revived in 1866. 14
In England, the posthorn was of two varieties, both of them straight. The first, the socalled
"coach horn" made of copper, was either forty-six or thirty-six inches long (in C and
high F, respectively) and was sometimes built in three telescoping sections, whereas the "post
horn" or "tandem horn," made of brass, was either twenty-eight or thirty-six inches long and
was sometimes bent double like a trumpet. 15 The straight twenty-eight-inch instrument,
made in two sections and pitched in At', became quite popular; Koenig's Post Boy's Return
(1844), 16 with its resounding octaves, is still occasionally played today in band concerts.
Flugelhorn. The flugelhorn's original shape was that of a semicircle or half-moon, and
its name was apparently derived from the fact that it was used on the flanks (Flugel) of
hunting parties. A very old prototype, a Lucerne Harsthorn, dating from 1455, survives in
the Bernoulli collecdon. 17 A similar curved instrument called Hamond("half-moon") was
used by Hanoverian regiments from 1758, reaching the English light dragoons in 1764
under the name "bugle horn." 18 The first flugelhorn method is John Hyde's New and
Compkat Preceptor fir the Trumpet & Bugle Horn, registered at Stationers' Hall on January
26, 1799, 19 in which its military signals, which run from the second to the sixth partial, are
also recorded. Such instruments usually stood in D, but were often crooked down to C. 2 °
Presumably because of its ungainly appearance, the semicircular flugelhorn was soon