The Horn and Cornett.
The horn takes its name from the cow’s horn, out of which the instrument was made. The resemblance includes the tapering bore of this instrument, and also the fact that it is curved. [90] In the metal
instruments, made in imitation of the natural horn, we find a curvature of about a semi-circle, as in the seventeenth century hunting horn (Galpin, p. 188). While in the horn of the early seventeenth century shown on the same plate, the tube is curved into many circular coils.
The cornett, [91] which was blown like a horn or trumpet, seems to have been successful in mediæval times, because a workable scale was so much more easily attainable with it than in the ordinary trumpet. In Norway a goat’s horn pierced with four or five holes stopped by the fingers is still in use as a rustic instrument. This is in fact a cornett which, as early as the twelfth century, was made of wood or ivory, and had a characteristic six-sided form. It seems to have been popular, and Henry VIII. died possessed of many cornetts. We hear, too, of two Cornetters attached to Canterbury Cathedral; and the translators of the Bible gave it a place in Nebuchadnezzar’s band. But the cornett was doomed to destruction in the struggle for life. In 1662 Evelyn speaks of the disappearance of the cornett “which gave life to the organ.” Lord Keeper North wrote, “Nothing comes so near, or rather imitates so much, an excellent voice as a cornett pipe; but the labour of the lips is too great and is seldom well-sounded.” The cornett was given a place in the chorales of Bach and the operas of Gluck after it had become extinct in England.
The bass cornett was known as the serpent from its
curved form, and this character was in fact necessary in order that the performer’s hands might be nearer together. Mr Galpin writes:—“If not overblown it yields a peculiarly soft woody tone which no longer has its counterpart in the orchestra.” He quotes from Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree, where the village shoemaker remarks, “There’s worse things than serpents.” Dr Stone (Dictionary of Music, 1883) wrote:—“There were till a few years ago two serpents in the band of the Sacred Harmonic Society, played by Mr Standen and Mr Pimlett.” The serpent [92] was driven out of the orchestra by the Ophicleide, which again has been extinguished by the valved Tubas of Adolphe Sax.