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Curved cornetto
Curved cornetto
Curved cornetto

Curved cornetto

Date1600 ca.
Place MadeItaly, Europe
Serial No.none
Signednone
Markingsnone
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
Curved cornetto
John R. McCann
1998
Tenor cornetto
John R. McCann
2000
Alto cornetto
John R. McCann
1998
Cornettino
John R. McCann
1998
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