I play the serpent and have fooled around a little with cornetto. With both of those instruments, the fingering only has a casual relationship to the pitch. The standard fingerings (usually) do make it easier to get the correct note, and some fingerings can make certain notes very difficult to hit, but most of the work is done by your lips. It's a bit like singing; you have to have the correct note in your head or you are unlikely to be within even a step or so. It makes them a lot more difficult to play than modern brass, but handy when you miss a fingering since you can usually get the correct note out anyway. I've even heard of a cornetto player who demonstrates this "feature" by playing an ascending passage while using the nominal fingerings for the corresponding descending passage.
Guy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Murphy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Howard Posner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2005 12:56 AM Subject: Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation) > Howard, > > You have a point here, but if the point is that there is not a difference > in > the difficulty of a sound on different wind instruments then you are > wrong. > > When I lost that best of instruments (due to age, cigareets, whuskey - and > the wild, wild wimmen probably had nothing to do with it - but they were > fun), lost the voice, I took to the penny whistle. (And there may be some > on > the lute list, and harp lists, that wish I'd stuck to it). > > No one can accuse the penny whistle of being complex - there is no > "embouchere" to produce the sound, just blow. But yet there is a > difference > between instruments as to pitch shift. I have a collection of whistles, > some > cheap and some expensive. As I'm sure you know the whistle is basically a > two octave instrument (can go more with skill) that changes octaves on the > "overblow". I have whistles, of the same basic pitch, that have a subtle > octave break, but need a contining addition of wind to continue in the > upper > octave - and I have others that need a real push to jump from C to D (most > whistles are D scale based), but then nothing additional to go to the top > of > the upper D scale. > > The same must apply to trumpets and cornetti, and the horns. I've not > played > them, but have to feel that the overall construction and pitching of the > horn may not define it's particular comfortable pitch level. I believe > Daniel is correct, although in the whistle of my experience the breath > control is the defining factor, while in the trumpet/horn group the > embouchere comes in. > > Best. Jon > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html >
