If age and health did’nt place restrictions on me, I’d still be out there!

Happy collecting!

Robert Medley
antiquehorns.com

Douglas Yeo on Serpent.

As a strictly brass musician, I was unaware of the open and “at rest” differences between the two. Live and learn!

The serpent is an interesting instrument to me. The first time I saw one being played was by Dr, Bob Eliason. It seemed to me to have sort of a honking sound. In the movie “Pride and Prejudice” one of the dance scenes showed a Serpent being played and there was that same honking sound. Here I thought Bob was responsible for that honking, I did’nt know it was characteristic of the Serpent. Apologies to Dr. Eliason!

It is interesting that the idea of a family of instruments, such as promoted by Sax, apparently wasn’t applied to the keyed brass family. They typically shared the bandstand with other types of instruments

In addition the Kent Bugle in Bb, there was the smaller keyed bugle in Eb, the quinticlav in Eb as the alto voice; and the ophicleide. The ophicleide showed more versatility in that it managed both the tenor voice and the bass voice, since it has a wider usable range than the smaller horns. The ophicleide came in Bb and C, and I imagine the smaller horns may have come in other pitches as well.

The ophicleide may look a bit like a baritone sax, which is not surprising because they both use basically the same tube/bell. This basic tube must have held some fascination for the early designers because they tried a variety of things with it. There is the tube with brass mouthpiece - ophicleide, there is the tube with single reed - the saxophone, there is the tube with a double reed - sarrusaphone, and there is the tube and valves - the trombacello!

The tube combined with the keys do make the ophicleide look like a saxophone, but they keys operate differently. Unlike the sax where the majority of the keys are open at rest, all but one of the keys at rest are closed on the ophicleide. (i.e. the un-perforated tube sounds 1/2 step lower than the named pitch of the instrument.) Additionally, the fingering pattern little sense, with some combinations used for several notes, and then arranged in no logical pattern.

Another attempt at making a low voice before valves was the Russian bassoon. This horn which resembles a mal-nutrition-ed ophicleide with holes rather than keys, is often referred to as an upright serpent. But then it is neither Russian nor a bassoon, so you be the judge.

I hope that Jeff and you will share the restoration projects on your two very important finds with our audience. Could you possibly get us a picture of both the before and after of that restoration (with Robbs approval of course) My collector friend Udo Koehne in Bonn sent me pictures of a before and after of a 2 valve ivory button upright cornet he had done in Germany. That restorer is an artist in a class with Robb.

I think that the valved alto trombone was more popular that it may seem at first, at least by total band percentage..

In the American town band, in the days before the valved “French” horn became the dominant alto voice, there were upright altos, solo altos, and alto valved trombones that provided this important inner voice of the brass band, particularly for marching bands.

I think that later in the 19th century, it was the alto utilizing Henry Lehnert’s conical mouthpipe that demonstrated great superiority in response, “slotting”, flexibility and intonation. Eventually, the upright bell altohorn using this design feature overtook even Lehnert’s own Centennial valve trombones due to their much greater availability.

Finally, valved horns (which were twice the length, but even smaller bore) overtook all of the altos, and gave rise to the Distin Altophone and then the mellophone as marching instruments.

I suspect the main use of the tenor valve trombone was in the band that required a bright tenor voice, but only had extra cornet players or euphonium players to fill in when a trained slide trombonist was not available and the conditions proved to be too rough. The double-belled euphonium was eventually created to perform just such a roll as well.

Slides required greater preparation and maintenance. Eventually, as bands became larger and required more time commitment, the more flexible slide trombone became much preferred as metallurgy and oils became available.
Just some thoughts.

Yes, I will have it restored by Robb Stewart in the coming year.

Steve

If you had asked the question 100 years ago, you probably would have gotten Patrick S. Gilmore.

50 years before that you might have gotten the Dodworth family.

Downing, Ingalls, Eaton. Johnson, JP King.Hall. Julien.Willis, Bond, White, Winner, and Kleber were all prolific and accomplished writers.

But then is should also be remembered that all of the above also would interpret and arrange music composed by others, and some of the best work they did was to adapt the work of Strauss, Verdi, Donizetti, Gounod, Rossini, Mozart, Bellini. Mendelsohn, and Beethoven.