An early variety of upright Serpent invented by Louis Alexandre Frichot in the 1790s. It is classified as a trumpet. The instrument consists of a conical tube about 230 cm long and generally made of copper. The larger end terminates in a widely flared bell and the smaller in a graceful swan-neck crook, this last accounting for nearly one-third of the instrument’s total length. The tube is cut at a distance of about 81 cm from the bell and the two straight sections are set at a very acute angle into a short butt which ensures the continuity of the air column (see illustration).
The bass-horn has six finger-holes and usually either three or four keys. It was always considered to have C as its true fundamental. Compass, fingering and manner of blowing are the same as for the serpent, but its tone was said to be more powerful. With its more convenient playing position, it probably lent itself more readily than the serpent to the display of virtuosity.
The instrument enjoyed considerable popularity in England for more than 30 years but, just as the more conventional types of upright serpent and Russian bassoon never found favour in Britain, so the bass-horn was never taken up on the Continent, though the word is sometimes met in Germany to denote one of these other instruments, as in russisches Basshorn (It. corno di basso, for Russian bassoon), and Johann Streitwolf’s chromatisches Basshorn of c1820.
Its natural place was, of course, the wind band, but it was also occasionally found in the large festival orchestras. There were actually four in the orchestras of the 1825 and 1828 York festivals, but by 1835 they had given place to ophicleides with, however, one exception, a sort of contrabass bass-horn called the Hibernicon. As late as 1840 there was still one London maker who described himself as a ‘bass-horn and serpent maker’, but by that time the bass-horn had become obsolete. It is likely that the ophicleide part in the overture to Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream was initially played in England on the bass-horn.
There are only two other instruments that can be considered as structurally allied to the bass-horn: Frichot’s Basse-trompette, a truly remarkable instrument, and Joseph Cotter’s hibernicon mentioned above.
REGINALD MORLEY-PEGGE/ANTHONY C. BAINES/R