Keyed bugle, E-flat
Maker
Elbridge G. Wright
Date1853-1854 ca.
Place MadeBoston, Massachusetts, United States, North America
Serial No.none
SignedEngraved on bell: Presented / TO D. Chase, BY / THE / Inhabitants of Clinton, / AND THE / Clinton Brass Band. / Jany,, 1854. (date of dedication) / MADE BY E.G. WRIGHT. BOSTON.MarkingsEngraved on underside of e key (in dilettantish manner; meaning not yet known): F B K B 5 4
DescriptionSilver, one-piece, single loop, separate telescopic tuning slide with fine-tuning device, eleven keys, lowest key open (no screw), all others closed.
This keyed bugle is one of over a dozen surviving solid silver presentation keyed bugles made by E.G. Wright. The original owner David Chase, to whom the instrument was presented in 1854, came from Grafton, Massachusetts and started a Daguerreotype business in Clinton, Massachusetts, in the late 1840s. He directed a singing school, and in 1852 started a brass band. In 1856 he joined the Fiske Band in Worcester, led by Matthew Arbuckle. At the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, he enlisted in the band of Patrick Gilmore’s 25th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment.
DimensionsHeight: 339 mm
Tube length (with and without tuning slide): 989 mm, 915 mm
Bore diameter: 10.8 mm, 9.8 mm
Bell diameter: 114 mm
Keyhole positions (from bell end): 84 mm, 158 mm, 196 mm, 234 mm, 289 mm, 350 mm, 380 mm, 450 mm, 482 mm, 512 mm, 547 mm
Keyhole diameter: 24 mm, 18 mm, 20 mm, 14 mm, 13 mm, 13 mm, 13 mm, 12 mm, 12 mm, 11 mm, 11 mm
ProvenancePurchased in 1992 from Steve Dillon, Woodbridge, New Jersey.
Published ReferencesDudgeon, Ralph T. The Keyed Bugle second edition (Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2004), 246.
Eliason, Robert E. “Bugles Beyond Compare: The Presentation E-flat Keyed Bugle in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society 31 (2005): 67–132; esp. 111–13.
Klaus, Sabine Katharina. Trumpets and Other High Brass: A History Inspired by the Joe R. and Joella F. Utley Collection. Volume 2: Ways to Expand the Harmonic Series (Vermillion, SD: National Music Museum, 2013), pp. 228, 230, 234–37, 241, 260.
Credit LineJoe R. and Joella F. Utley Collection, 1999
Object number07059
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