cornetrevolution.orgcornetrevolution.org/.../2017/11/Cornet-and-Trumpet.docx · Web viewOne day, I thought it would be fun to record an interview about the cornet, which is closely

Cornet is the Big Brother of the TrumpetA chat between James Newcomb and Mark Ponzo

Hello! My name is James Newcomb. For a little over a year, I

hosted a podcast called Trumpet Dynamics. I had been a trumpet

player for most of my life, so it made sense to focus on something I

knew well when starting a podcast.

One day, I thought it would be fun to record an interview about the

cornet, which is closely associated with the trumpet. The first

person I thought to call was Mark Ponzo, professor of trumpet at

Northern Illinois University and Certified Cornet Aficionado.

Dr. Ponzo was agreeable to this, so we recorded an interview and

put it on the podcast. Little did I realize at the time that it would

begin a journey of mine to identify primarily as a cornet player and

begin the Cornet Revolution!

While the audio is unavailable for the time being, I’ve been able to

make a transcript of our chat.

I hope you enjoy it!

JN: The thing is, so many people today equate the cornet with the trumpet, as though they’re synonymous.

MP: Right, well back in the day it wasn’t. The cornet was king of

the brass instruments for almost 100 years. That changed in the

20’s, 30’s and 40’s with the onset of jazz and larger groups. But

military bands still use cornets, the Sousa Band here in Illinois

uses cornets, and we use them in the university as well.

The hotbed of cornet development was France. Some of the

French composers such as Berlioz and Bizet used it in their

orchestral works. They would use the cornet for the melody and

then use the trumpet to accentuate cadences, like a natural

trumpet would be used.

So this is a writing style that went on for about 100 years. The

cornets had the melodic material and the trumpets had fanfare

material. That’s how band composers wrote for those instruments,

all the way into the 30’s and 40’s.

I’ve enjoyed playing the cornet since I was in high school. My

teacher in high school played the cornet in college. So I learned a

lot of the cornet literature for contests and festivals. I enjoyed

learning about the pieces and that period of time, the late 1800’s

and early 1900’s. These were virtuoso solo works which were

largely written by the performers themselves to show off their own

skills.

JN: It’s interesting because today, or when I was in high school in the 1990’s, when you saw a cornet part, you just played it on trumpet.

MP: And I did the same thing in high school. I didn’t play cornet,

my teacher played cornet. In the 1960’s, when it said “cornet” you

were required to play it on cornet. So you were required to own

both a trumpet and a cornet. But by the time I was in high school,

that had changed. We just played the cornet parts on trumpet.

Some ensembles are more sensitive to this than others. For

example, if the part says “trombone,” you don’t play it on baritone

and vice versa. In our wind symphony at NIU, all my kids need to

have cornets to play in that ensemble. It really makes a huge

difference because the cornets blend so much better with

saxophones in a concert ensemble.

The Sousa Band was set up so that the cornets

and saxes would blend together. The saxes

used had a very dark timbre, and the cornets

worked really well with that.

Today the saxes tend to be a little brighter

sounding and they don’t blend as well. So now

they’re always competing with each other, whereas the original

intent was to blend and create a homogeneous, very colorful

sound.

JN: Tell us about the origination of the cornet.

MP: The biggest step was the development of valve systems. This

goes back to the early 1800’s. Depending on which source you go

to, it’s between 1814-1822. Patents were applied for for valves.

This technology came from steam engine development and was

eventually attached to small instruments like hunting horns.

Up to that point, from about 4,000 years ago to about the 1820’s,

the trumpet was considered a natural instrument, meaning no

valves.

The oldest existing instruments that we have are the two trumpets

from the tomb of King Tutankhamen. There were two trumpets -

bronze and silver - that were buried with him. They were

discovered when his tomb was uncovered in the 1950’s.

As the tubing became longer over time, more notes were possible.

The trumpet went from about a 2 foot instrument to about a 9 foot

instrument in around 1400. Around that time, people began to

discover how to bend tubing. Of course, an instrument that 8 feet

long would get easily damaged, and so learning how to bend the

tubing was very important in creating more pitches.

In 1400ish, instrument makers would put tar or pitch into the tube

and bend it, and then the tube didn’t collapse. So now we could

take a 9 foot trumpet and wrap it into what we might call a modern

bugle. A bigger version, but the same idea with the bends.

It stayed this way until valves came along. There were hand-

stopped trumpets. There was also the slide trumpet which was

used in England. The natural trumpet was being taught at the Paris

Conservatory until almost 1900, long after valves were invented.

So when valves came along, they were first attached like a post

horn, and that’s more of a conical instrument.

That was sort of the beginning of the cornet. They called them

“cornopeans” and used what was

called the Streitzel valve system, which

was one of the earliest successful

systems. The problem with the Streitzel system is that because of

the design, the valve had to be the same dimensions as the tubing

because the air actually came through the bottom of the valve. It

would shoot out into the slide at a 90 degree angle.

I own 9 cornopeans and they’re beautiful little instruments. They’re

very quiet but they’re very resistant because of all of these 90-

degree angles going through the horn. And the valves are really

small, about the size of your pinky finger.

Then the Perinet system came about 25 years after this, which is

basically what we use now. The air goes through the valve and

raises and lowers, as opposed to the air coming into the bottom of

the valve casing. Then they went from 2 valves to 3 valves in the

late 1830’s. After this, the 2-valve cornopeans became obsolete.

So from around 1835 to the present, the system hasn’t really

changed all that much.

The cornet was the king of the brass instruments. It was the

soprano member of the family. It was the instrument that all the

soloists played. However, we don’t have a single major piece

written by a major composer for the cornet. This is very unusual

because they all wrote for cornet in their orchestral works, but no

one wrote a concerto for us.

I have a theory about this. The cornet was kind of like what the

rock guitar is today. And more people play electric guitar than any

other instrument on the planet today. But I’ve never heard of a

composer writing a concerto for it, even though hundreds of

millions of people play it.

I think the cornet fell into the same problem, where it was such a

common instrument that composers just didn’t consider it to be

very serious. So although they wrote for it in an orchestral setting,

they didn’t write for it as a solo instrument. We have no pieces by

Beethoven, Brahms, or anyone, unlike the piano or violin.

By the 1920’s and 30’s, there were other developments in terms of

the size and shape of the instrument, but we’ve stuck with the 3-

valve system pretty much since the 1820’s to this day. And this

was the solo instrument, so guys like Arban, who is probably the

most famous and important cornetist in our history. He taught the

cornet class at the Paris Conservatory in the 1850’s. Then there’s

the tradition that kept going on where there’s the natural trumpet

taught by one professor, and in the same building the cornet being

taught by a different professor. They were separate entities in that

day and it was that way for years and years.

JN: Can you talk about Anton Weidinger, who first put keys on the natural trumpet. Why is it that Haydn wrote this piece, a concerto for Weidinger’s invention, but then the cornet becomes the default solo instrument. Why is it

that the trumpet didn’t take on that role initially?

MP: Weidinger is an important figure in the history of the trumpet

and cornet. He was involved in inventing that instrument. It was

basically taking a clarinet pad, and the instrument typically had 5

or 7 keys. He made his career out of two pieces: the concerto you

mentioned by Haydn, and another concerto three years later by

Hummel.

The problem with the instrument was that because of the nature of

how it created a sound, i.e. buzzing into a mouthpiece. When you

have an instrument with pads that open and close. Let’s say you

play into a recorder for example. When you uncover a key on the

recorder, that’s where the sound comes out of. So as you open

and close the holes, you’re lengthening and shortening the tube

that’s resonating. So the recorder evolved into the clarinet,

bassoon, etc. They’re more or less omni-directional instruments.

When you’re using a metal mouthpiece and buzzing into it, the

nature of that sound doesn’t work well with that tube

lengthening/shortening system. From accounts of people who

heard him play Haydn’s and Hummel’s concerto, the sound was

very uneven. So when he played a note with all the pads down, it

had a very natural, open trumpet sound. But when with the pads

open, the sound was very muffled. That’s why that instrument

didn’t survive, because of the very uneven scale.

The mechanism itself was not very agile. The keys are long, unlike

a clarinet which are short and agile. So while Weidinger had a run

of success with those two concerto’s, the instrument itself was too

inconsistent to last longer than him.

JN: Someone obviously saw the potential for this instrument to be successful. Was it that failure of Weidinger’s invention

that led to the cornet ultimately having lasting success?

MP: The Halary Company is who we credit with applying this new

technology that we call piston valves. This is around 1825. France

was the hotbed of development of the valve system. There were

dozens of companies making all sorts of valves in all sorts of

shapes and sizes. Part of the issue they struggled with in those

days is there was no sharing of information, unlike today where

many people are doing very similar things and they can share

information with each other if they choose to. Back then, everyone

was doing their own thing without knowing what anyone else was

doing. They’re basically inventing the same things at the same

time.

The shortcoming of the natural trumpet is that it only played open

notes. There were all these big gaps in the scale. Unless you were

playing very high, you couldn’t play a melody. So this is the

problem they were trying to overcome. Weidinger was successful

in addressing this issue, but ultimately was not successful because

of the issues I’ve already mentioned.

But the piston valves made more sense. They were faster and

more even in the tone. So it wasn’t necessarily a failure on

Weidinger’s part. It was just inventors continuing to experiment

with new technology until they found something that could create

the chromatic scale and be in tune and with an even tone.

JN: When did the trumpet adopt the piston valves like the cornet did?

MP: Not long after. But the trumpet was considered more of an

ensemble instrument, even among the ones that did have valves.

We see a lot of examples from the 1870’s and 80’s where

orchestral composers used the trumpet in their compositions.

Those trumpets were in F, a fourth below the modern Bb trumpet.

There was a clear distinction between the trumpet as an ensemble

instrument and the cornet as a solo instrument. Herbert L. Clarke

talked about this in his famous letter to Eldon Benge, who was a

trumpet player in the Chicago Symphony. Well, he played cornet

but was considering switching to trumpet. So Clarke wrote a letter

back to him saying that the trumpet is only appropriate in large

ensembles like an orchestra or band. It was

never to be thought of as a solo instrument.

But that changed and there was a big

struggle between the cornet players and the trumpet players. Even

people like Bunny Berrigan and even Louis Armstrong played the

cornet, just because that’s what everybody played at the time. But

as ensembles became louder, it made more sense for players to

play the trumpet. It was also easier to play in the upper register on

the trumpet. So as the swing era came on, the trumpet was a more

logical choice.

By the early 50’s, there were major works written for the trumpet

by people like Tomasi, Jolivet and Hindemith. A lot of the really

significant pieces written for the trumpet were written in the 1950’s.

And this was the beginning of the legitimization of the trumpet as a

solo instrument in the classical sense.

James Newcomb is a recovering trumpet

player turned Cornetist and founder of the

Cornet Revolution. He also hosts a popular

podcast titled, MusicPreneur: Making Money

Making Music.

Mark Ponzo is professor of trumpet at

Northern Illinois University. He also owns a

large collection of historic cornets, which he

lovingly refers to as “the herd.”