The trumpet.
The cornet.
Formerly it was necessary to use horns of different pitch, and composers still respect this tradition, and designate the key of the horns which they wish to have employed; but so skilful have the players become that, as a rule, they use horns whose fundamental tone is F for all keys, and achieve the old purpose by simply transposing the music as they read it. If these most graceful instruments were straightened out they would be seventeen feet long. The convolutions of the horn and the many turns of the trumpet are all the fruit of necessity; they could not be manipulated to produce the tones that are asked of them if they were not bent and curved. The trumpet, when its tube is lengthened by the addition of crooks for its lowest key, is eight feet long; the tuba, sixteen. In most orchestras (in all of those in the United States, in fact, except the Boston and Chicago Orchestras and the Symphony Society of New York) the word trumpet is merely a euphemism for cornet, the familiar leading instrument of the brass band, which, while it falls short of the trumpet in the quality of its tone, in the upper registers especially, is a more easily manipulated instrument than the trumpet, and is preferable in the lower tones.
The trombone.
Mendelssohn is quoted as saying that the trombones ([Plate X.]) "are too sacred to use often." They have, indeed, a majesty and nobility all their own, and the lowest use to which they can be put is to furnish a flaring and noisy harmony in an orchestral tutti. They are marvellously expressive instruments, and without a peer in the whole instrumental company when a solemn and spiritually uplifting effect is to be attained. They can also be made to sound menacing and lugubrious, devout and mocking, pompously heroic, majestic, and lofty. They are often the heralds of the orchestra, and make sonorous proclamations.
Trombone effects.
The tuba.
The classic composers always seemed to approach the trombones with marked respect, but nowadays it requires a very big blue pencil in the hands of a very uncompromising conservatory professor to prevent a student engaged on his Opus 1 from keeping his trombones going half the time at least. It is an old story how Mozart keeps the instruments silent through three-fourths of his immortal "Don Giovanni," so that they may enter with overwhelming impressiveness along with the ghostly visitor of the concluding scene. As a rule, there are three trombones in the modern orchestra—two tenors and a bass. Formerly there were four kinds, bearing the names of the voices to which they were supposed to be nearest in tone-quality and compass—soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. Full four-part harmony is now performed by the three trombones and the tuba ([Plate XI.]). The latter instrument, which, despite its gigantic size, is exceedingly tractable can "roar you as gently as any sucking dove." Far-away and strangely mysterious tones are got out of the brass instruments, chiefly the cornet and horn, by almost wholly closing the bell.
Instruments of percussion.
The xylophone.