gsmonks

Oops- didn't intend to post, yet.

Further, here are some tell-tale examples of Conn's handiwork:

In the 1910's and 1920's, soprano trombones were very popular. Freddie Keppard and Louis Armstrong both played them, Louis for two decades. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, he didn't also record using one of these horns.

Anyway, Conn sold their soprano trombone as a "slide trumpet". They also sold a model that used a cornet mouthpiece and marketed it as a "slide cornet".

You can probably see where this is going . . .

Very probably (we need a few more examples to be absolutely certain), Conn was guilty of a little marketing legerdemain with the Bb "trumpet", selling it originally as what it was- a long-model cornet- before making a few changes and selling the same instrument as a "trumpet".

Anyway- thought I'd share this with you. The research is ongoing . . .

gsmonks

BTW, Chopsgone, whereabouts do you live?

ChopsGone

I'm a bit north of San Francisco. While I'm not absolutely convinced about the taxonomic approach being taken at EU - it is, after all, attempting to prove a theory - I think it's valuable work and applaud any institution that can afford to do it. I've gotten a lot of good information from the university's site, as well as hornucopia.

But I think 1910 is still too late. Look at the "Perfected New York Wonder" on the Conn Loyalist site - while apparently a mongrel, it was produced "at least 1899 - 1903". The crook isn't enough to keep it from being a trumpet; Couesnon and others produced trumpets with crooks well into the last century.
On hornucopia, look at the Distin catalogue from approximately 1907 for a Bb trumpet. And at J. W. Pepper's "Musical Times and Band Journal XVIII 206" which I'm guessing would have been from about 1904 or so. There's a "trumpet cornet" which looks like a modern Bb trumpet. And the Dupont trumpet in the 1908 Sears catalog is another example.

So 1910 is somewhere in the ballpark, but I'd say it's at least 10 years later than the commercial appearance of the modern Bb trumpet. Distin in particular was stressing the same differences between cornet and trumpet as are generally accepted today.

Interesting thing about taxonomy. A group I am associated with has sponsored studies involving native irises. In one section of irises, the chromosome counts are identical and the species all interbreed and produce fertile offspring. In addition to the distinct species, there are stabilized interspecific swarms in areas no longer hosting any of the parent species. And some which had been recognized as species based on the best taxonomic evidence available at the time are now being reclassified as subspecies or even interspecific hybrids - in fact, most of the species now recognized are considered by some to be ancient stabilized hybrids. In other cases, despite advanced genetic analysis, there's still some disagreement. In other words, there's been a lot of funny business going on for a long time, and a lot of crossing of lines. I think brasswind taxonomy will find much of the same thing.

OK, now: where do we classify the "cavalry trumpet"? Based on phenotype, I'd call it a bugle, but the manufacturers didn't. Was there any reason, other than tradition? Anyway, keep up the good work.

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Vintage Olds and Reynolds, yes sir, yes sir, one gazoo full.

Calicchios, Besson, Kanstul Bessons, Selmers, etc.

F.E. forgive me, even a Bach Strad (but I like the others much better)

Wlfgng

My head is spinning from all this information.

A good read non the less, keep up the good work! It is very interesting indeed!

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Olds Ambassador(only one left, need more)
King Silver Flair - main horn
Selmer Cornet

Amatuers practice till they get it right, Professionals practice till they can't get it wrong.

gsmonks

The 1910 number is just a reference number, just as the 1880's number for the rotary version is a reference number.

On one of his patent sketches, Perinet made reference to a Perinet-valve 3-valve trumpet, which would date from 1825. But . . . no example(s) or other historical references survive.

Plus there are a lot of one-off's in museum and private collections (see the Utley website for some nice examples), but many of those horns were not production models.

The museum/collector aspect to historical brass has long been a problem because historians and writers tend to cite examples from a specialty that has little or nothing to do with instruments known and available to the mainstream. Does a one-off constitute an historical example?

The debate is further complicated by the fact that the old instruments were one-off's made by hand by artisans who painstakingly turned out one horn at a time, with no two exactly alike. Each were often made to the specifications of the player, and many or most players in those days either knew a lot about instruments and/or dabbled in making them or sometimes made their own.

For example, Herman Koenig went often to Antoine Courtois to have horns made, but he was an instrument designer/builder in his own right.

San Fransisco! Lucky sod! I'd give my right [mentioned body part deleted] to puruse some of your music stores.

That is a good part of the challenge where brasswind taxonomy is concerned- the ol' marketing legerdemain vs real information thing. The designers knew what they were dealing with, but the guys on the assemblylines (just as today) and everyone else in the organisation "don't know from nuthin'", as my late granddad used to say. In most cases the actual knowledge died with the designers. That's why we tried with Horn u copia to track down guys who used to work at the manufacturers. We lucked out when OldLou turned up. Wish we had ten or twenty more like him.

ChopsGone

Yep. If the industrial revolution had come along a couple of hundred years earlier, sorting out old trumpets might be a lot easier today. I also collect vintage hand woodworking tools, and the same problem exists there, but there's been a vast amount of good research done in that area. Some of the most interesting things are definitely not what you would call production models, but you can't ignore the leading edge stuff of its time even if not many were made.

Don't feel too jealous about the local music stores. While we have some interesting ones, and have lost some which I found even more fascinating, the problem with this area is that you have to do a lot of driving between stores, and the traffic can be horrible at times. Some of the better operations are even in places I try not to have to visit.

There are a number of good music shops in the general Bay Area, but when it comes to something basic like dropping in for a bottle of valve oil, or buying a new mouthpiece, I either have to settle for something less than I wanted or just leave the county to buy it. The part of the regional music scene I find more interesting is the people who build instruments here - some very fine violins are produced here, along with guitars of course, but there are also some folks quietly working away producing replicas of baroque bassoons and such. It's an undeniably neat place to live, with surprises seemingly around every corner.

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Vintage Olds and Reynolds, yes sir, yes sir, one gazoo full.

Calicchios, Besson, Kanstul Bessons, Selmers, etc.

F.E. forgive me, even a Bach Strad (but I like the others much better)

gsmonks

Funny, but a friend in NYC tells me similar things. There are some really good stores and makers, but otherwise it's a dearth of legendary proportions. I've heard from a number of people that there are precious few community bands to play in, which surprised the bejeepers out of me. Few or no community bands in NYC? In Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, our nearest "big" city (pop. 274,000) we have a professional symphony orchestra, an amateur symphony orchestra, a youth orchestra, a Salvation Army brass band, the Saskatoon Brass band, a brand-new brass band whose name I haven't heard yet, a German oom-pah band, four levels of bands at Holy Cross High School, and the list just goes on and on.

Go figure!

The Industrial Revolution, if it had come earlier, would actually have generated more obscurity. So much happened, in such a short period of time, and then got forgotten, that more time would only serve to make those forgotten things even more forgotten.

For example, the Industrial Revolution's proximity to the 18th century really did a number on our knowledge of the 18th century and before.

gsmonks

Oop- keep hitting the wrong key and posting prematurely . . .

For example, a lot of stuff from the mid-19th century and earlier was deemed unimportant, historically, and given abominably cursory treatment. In fact, from 1880 on back, our written history is chock-full of myths and outright baloney that was passed along from generation to generation with little or no scrutiny. I've spent much of the past 35 years digging through mountains of "info" that often has absolutely no basis in fact, much of which persists in such reputable sources as the New Grove dictionaries.

Here's a little sampling: Weidinger invented the keyed trumpet in 1801, Haydn wrote his trumpet concerto (for chromatic trumpet) in 1800, Henry Distin invented the Ballad horn in 1856, the mellophone was invented in the 1950's. The truth, however, is that the keyed trumpet dates from the 1750's and holed trumpets (essentially the same thing) go back a lot further; Haydn's trumpet concerto dates from the late 1700's, and music for chromatic trumpet predaters his Concerto by some 50 years; the Ballad horn was not an invention, but rather was a C bass post horn; the mellophone is likewise a variation on the post horn, and therefore has its roots in the 18th century.

And the hits just keep on coming.

If only I could get to the bottom of how and where these myths originated, I'd write a book on them, because there's probably an interesting story behind how and why they came to be.

gsmonks

Dunno where or how to post this here, so I thought I'd stick it in here: a bit of info about the modern Bb "fluglehorn", the keyed bugle, and the history of cornet technique:

The modern Bb fluglehorn is actually the Bb infanterie model Saxhorn. The original came wth Berliner pistons (aka pumpen valves), and was companion to the now-rare soprano Eb version.

The valved fluglehorn (the real fluglehorn), meanwhile, went from being a natural horn, forward-wrapped bugle, keyed bugle, to valved bugle. Unlike the Saxhorn, these horns always have rotary valves.

Now, if you peruse a lot of these old horns, you'll often see that the valved flugle was often marketed as a "cornet". Also, players of that generation referred to the older keyed bugle as a "cornet".

The keyed bugle, meanwhile, is where what became known as "cornet technique" and performance practice orginated. It all began circa 1810 when players, young and old, went nuts over the keyed bugle and its possibilities.

gsmonks

Here are the Infantry model saxhorn and the fluglehorn:

http://www.erikveldkamp.nl/Resources...rn_highres.jpg

http://www.flayderman.com/q401.jpg

Sax derived his Saxhorn from the flugelhorn (valved bugle). The differences are: the flugelhorn is basically a long cone with valves; the Saxhorn has a mixture of conical and cylindrical tubing (which Sax began playing with ca 1844 in a bid to improve intonation) and, being a Franco-Belgian instrument-builder, used a French-style fluted bell for good measure.

This type of bell is sometimes referred to as a "cornet type" or "cornet style" bell.