Cornet (cornet-a-piston) is a brass wind instrument. It looks very impressive and gleams its copper sides against the background of other instruments in the orchestra. Nowadays, his fame, unfortunately, remains in the past.
Cornet is a direct descendant of the post horn. Interestingly, the horn was made of wood, but it was always attributed to brass wind instruments. The horn has a very rich history, the Jewish priests blew into it, so that the walls of Jericho fell, in the Middle Ages, under the sounds of the horns, the knights performed their exploits.
It is necessary to distinguish the modern tool cornet-a-piston, which is made of copper, and its predecessor, the wooden cornet (zinc). Zinc is the German name for Cornet. Few people now know, but from the fifteenth to the middle of the seventeenth centuries, the cornet was very common among musical instruments in Europe. But without a cornet it is impossible to perform a large body of musical works of the seventeenth - eighteenth centuries. City holidays in the Renaissance were unthinkable without cornets. And at the end of the sixteenth century, the cornet (zinc) in Italy became a masterfully solo musical instrument.
The names of two famous zinc game virtuosos of the time Giovanni Bossano and Claudio Monteverdi have reached us. The spread of the violin and the growing popularity of the violin game in the seventeenth century causes the cornet to gradually lose its position as a solo instrument. The longest was his dominant position in northern Europe, where his last solo compositions for him were dated to the second half of the eighteenth century. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the cornet (zinc) had completely lost its relevance. Now it is used in the performance of old folk music.
Cornet-a-piston appeared in Paris in 1830. His father, the inventor of Sigismund Stelzel considered. This new instrument was equipped with two valves. In 1869, began a massive learning to play the cornet, earned courses at the Conservatory of Paris. The first professor was a very famous cornetist, a virtuoso of his own work, Jean Baptiste Arban. By the end of the nineteenth century, the cornet-a-piston was at the peak of its popularity, and on this wave it appeared in the Russian Empire.
Nikolai Pavlovich was the first Russian tsar who played several types of wind instruments. He owned a flute, a horn, a cornet and a cornet-a-piston, but Nicholas I himself jokingly called all his instruments simply “trumpet”. Contemporaries have repeatedly mentioned his outstanding musical abilities. He even composed a little, mostly military marches. Nikolay Pavlovich demonstrated his musical achievements at chamber concerts, as was customary at that time. Concerts were held in the Winter Palace, and, as a rule, there were no extra people.
The king did not have the time and physical ability to regularly devote time to studying music, so he obliged A.F. Lvov, author of the hymn "God Save the Tsar," coming on the eve of the performance for rehearsal. Especially for Tsar Nikolay P.F. Lvov made a game on cornet-a-piston. In fiction, there is also a frequent mention of a cornet-a-piston: A. Tolstoy "Gloomy Morning", A. Chekhov "Sakhalin Island", M. Gorky "Spectators".
It was all about his superiority over other brass in the performance of music that required greater fluency. Cornet has a great technical mobility and bright, expressive sound. Such an instrument is first of all given the "draw" in front of the listeners the melody of the work, the composers trusted the cornet solo parts.
Trumpet was an honorary guest at the court of monarchs and wars. Cornet, on the other hand, leads its past from the horns of the hunters and postmen with which they gave signals. There is an opinion of connoisseurs and professionals that the cornet is not a masterly sounding trumpet, but a small gentle French horn.
There is another tool that you want to talk about - it is an echo - a cornet. He gained popularity in England during the reign of Queen Victoria, as well as in America. Its unusual in the presence of not one, but two bells. Kornetist, switching in the course of the game to another socket, created the illusion of a muffled sound. The second valve helped him in this. This option is useful for creating an echo effect. The instrument gained wide popularity, works were created for the echo cornet, where the beauty of its sound was revealed. This ancient music is performed by cornetists abroad on such a rare instrument even now (for example, "Alpine Echo"). These echoes were made - cornets in limited quantities, the main supplier was the firm "Booseys & Hawkes". Now there are similar instruments made in India, but they were not made well, so when choosing an echo-cornet, experienced performers prefer old copies.
The cornet resembles a pipe, but its pipe is shorter and wider and fitted with caps, not valves. Cornet body - a cone-shaped tube with a wide recess. On the base of the pipe and located the mouthpiece, reproducing sound. At the cornet-a-piston piston mechanism consists of buttons-keys. The keys are at the same height with the mouthpiece, at the top of the design. This musical instrument is very much like a trumpet, but there are differences.
The undoubted advantage of the cornet-a-piston is its size - a little more than half a meter. Such a small length is very convenient to use.
In the generally accepted classification, the cornet-a-piston belongs to the class of airphones, this means that the sounds in it are extracted by vibrating air masses. The musician blows air, and he, accumulating in the middle of the body, begins oscillating movements. This is where the unique sound of the cornet is born. At the same time, the range of tonality of this small wind instrument is wide and rich. He can take up to three octaves, which allows him to play not only standard programs that are classics, but also enrich the melodies with the help of improvisation. Cornet is a mid-tonal instrument. The sound of the pipe used to be heavy and inflexible, at the cornet, the trunk of the pipe had a large number of turns and sounded softer.
The velvety timbre of the cornet-a-piston is heard only in the first octave, in the lower register it becomes painful and insidious. Turning to the second octave, the sound changes to a sharper, more impudent and resonant. These emotionally colored sounds of the cornet were perfectly used in his works by Hector Berlioz, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Georges Bizet.
Jazz performers also fell in love with Cornet-a-piston, and not a single jazz band could do without it. The famous jazz lovers of Cornet were Louis Daniel Armstrong and Joseph "King" Oliver.
In the last century, pipe designs were improved and trumpeters improved their professional skills, which successfully eliminated the problem of lack of speed and low-color sound. After that, the cornet-a-pistons completely disappeared from the orchestras. Nowadays, orchestral parts written for cornets are performed on trumpets, although sometimes the original sound can be heard.
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