The cornetto: an instrument as ancient as pan pipes

When Joshua and his troops blew down the walls of Jericho, they did it with an animal horn, maybe a ram’s horn or an ibex’s; but by the 16th century in Italy that popular instrument had evolved into the cornetto, and was mostly made of fruitwood with a small cup-shaped mouthpiece and a standardized pitch. Octagonal-shaped with a diamond pattern in the resonating area, it was wrapped tightly with black leather or parchment to keep even a hint of air from leaking in through the long wood seams; and it still had great symbolic meaning as a ceremonial instrument.

The cornetto was used in the military, but it became the instrument in Renaissance art of the Last Judgement, played by skeletons in a dance of death, or on the way to the underworld. That diamond pattern, and the instrument’s gentle curve and black color reminded the viewer of a snake.

It still curves gently (there is a straight version, but the curved is the usual).

If you laid it flat you might say it is in the shape of a smile.

And a smile of sheer pleasure is what it will bring to your face when you hear it played by a master, as you can this weekend when Bruce Dickey plays it with Seattle Baroque Orchestra and violinist Monica Huggett in a program of Italian renaissance music.

Towards the end of its heyday, 16th-18th century Italy, a 1635 account describes the cornetto sound as “like a ray of sunshine in the shadows of the cathedral.” As Dickey puts it, less poetically but more practically, it sounds something like the brass family because of its mouthpiece shape, but sweeter and softer; like a boy soprano combined with a soft trumpet, plus the volume range and flexibility of the voice.

The cornetto was immensely versatile, says Dickey, “but profoundly connected with vocal music. The same things that are difficult to sing are difficult to play on cornetto. It has no problems with agility, with the horizontal, highly ornamented vocal line” that flourished in late 16th to early 17th century Italy.

But though the cornetto lasted in use and was written for for several more centuries heading north from Italy (even in the 1800s in Norway: Dickey comments that there must have been at least one seriously good player there judging by the music written for it in 1840), it went into sudden decline in Italy in mid-17th century and never recovered.

What happened?

Three things combined to oust it from its position of eminence.

Firstly, musical performance changed. Until then, it had always been vocal and largely sacred with instruments copying and supporting the vocal line, a practice at which the cornetto excelled. But by the time of Monteverdi, more and more music just for instruments was appearing.

Secondly, the violin had been invented around a century earlier, and in the 1600s was coming to the fore. Violinists and composers began to experiment to see, with the new instrumental style, what that instrument could do, and soon discovered that it could leap around all over the tonal range, something very difficult for the cornetto.

Thirdly, the coup de grace perhaps, plague hit Italy hard around the 1630s, and the cornetto players were decimated. It was said that all the cornettists in Venice died of it, and perhaps, says Dickey, there were more violinists than cornettist by then, so some of them survived. After that, there was a drop in music specified “for cornetto.”

watch how do you know online

“It became old-fashioned,” says Dickey, “a publisher wouldn‘t put cornetto on the title page, because the music wouldn’t sell as well as if specified for violin.”

However, there is a wealth of Italian Renaissance music for both cornetto and violin, and Seattle Baroque’s performances this weekend will be somewhat a mirror of what went on in the1600s there, an “Any thing you can do I can do better” duel between the instruments. We don’t hear as much of the instrumental music from the Renaissance in period performance today. Dickey thinks fewer people know the repertoire and are not inclined to take the risk. But with Monica Huggett and Dickey, two of the prime exponents of their instruments worldwide, frequent colleagues over the years and extremely knowledgeable about that repertoire, performing the brilliant adventurous music of the era, there’s little risk a listener wouldn’t find these concerts fascinating.

Seattle Baroque Orchestra: Stile Fantastico: Virtuoso Violin & Cornetto, Nordstrom Recital Hall, Saturday, March 28 at 8:00 p.m., Sunday, March 29, at 3:00 p.m. Directed by Monica Huggett. Tickets $10-$35 at 206-322-3118 or seattlebaroque.org