Curved cornetto
Date1600 ca.
Place MadeItaly, Europe
Serial No.none
SignednoneMarkingsnone
DescriptionLowest note with all tone holes closed: a
Plum wood, two halves, leather covered; curved to the right; octagonal, carved diamonds; three original flat bindings at the end of the diamond area, between the fingerhole triads, and at the bell end; leather impressed with longitudinal lines, cross lines at the bindings, and impressed tree and dot ornaments. Six fingerholes and a thumbhole.
Top part of the instrument and binding in the middle of the diamond area replaced.
Original cowhide case, now open at both ends but signs of a former lid at the lower end.
The present instrument represents the main size of a typical Italian curved cornetto of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Typical for Italian instruments is the tree-like, impressed decoration.
DimensionsHeight: 540 mm
Tube length: 542 mm
Bore diameter (initial, minimum): 9.4 mm, 7.5 mm
Bell diameter (internal): 28.5 mm
Thumbhole position (from receiver): 208 mm
Fingerhole position (from receiver): 229 mm, 269 mm, 308 mm, 355 mm, 397 mm, 440 mm
Hole diameter range: 7.6-9.9 mm
ProvenancePreviously owned by Ernst Buser, Binningen, Switzerland, and Gerhard Stradner, Vienna, Austria. Purchased in 2002 from Gerhard Stradner, Vienna, Austria.
Published ReferencesKlaus, 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. 69, 74-75, 77, 79, 88, 90, 253.
Klaus, S. K. "Zinkengrößen: Überlegungen zur historischen Terminologie," in: Mozart im Zentrum. Festschrift für Manfred Hermann Schmid zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. by Ann-Katrin Zimmermann and Klaus Aringer (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 2010), pp. 423, 438.
Klaus, S. K. "Competing with Violins and Almost Like a Human Voice … Two More Cornetti Added to Museum Treasures," America’s National Music Museum Newsletter 29, no. 4 (November 2002), pp. 4-5.
Haynes, Bruce. A History of Performing Pitch: The Story of "A" (Lanham, Maryland, and Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2002), p. 427.
Wilfried Seipel (ed.). Für Aug' und Ohr: Musik in Kunst- und Wunderkammern. Exhibition catalog, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Schloss Ambras, 7 July-31 October 1999 (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1999), pp. 126-127, ca. no. 30 a + b.
Tarr, Edward H. "Ein Katalog erhaltener Zinken," Basler Jahrbuch für Historische Musikpraxis 5 (1981), p. 63-65.
Credit LineJoe R. and Joella F. Utley Collection, 2002
Object number10135
On View
On view
