Crumhorn
(from
Ger. Krummhorn, Krumbhorn: ‘curved horn’, also Krummpfeife:
‘curved pipe’; Fr. tournebout, ?douçaine; It. storto, cornamuto
torto, piva torta).
A
double-reed wind-cap instrument with cylindrical bore and a curved lower end to
the body (hence its name). The crumhorn was the most important wind-cap
instrument during the 16th and early 17th centuries and is mainly associated
with Germany, Italy and the Low Countries. (See Wind-cap
instruments.)
1. Construction and
sizes.
2. Surviving
instruments and typology.
3. Makers.
4. History.
5. Repertory and
usage.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BARRA R. BOYDELL
Crumhorn
1. Construction and sizes.
The
crumhorn consists of three sections: the body, the cotton reel (or cap housing)
and the wind cap; the reed is attached to a brass staple which is inserted into
the top of the bore and enclosed by the cap (fig.1). The body, commonly of maple, was made
of centre-grain wood to facilitate the drilling of the very narrow bore, and
the bend was normally made by heating the wood after the bore had been drilled
out. Although basically cylindrical, the bore normally expands slightly in the
curved lower section of the instrument, the end of the bore being hollowed out
to a flare; this, together with the upcurved end, has a small but significant
effect on the tone of the instrument. Owing to its narrow cylindrical bore and
wind cap, the crumhorn does not overblow; its basic range is therefore
restricted to a 9th unless increased downwards by keys, as on some larger
sizes. Agricola (1529) referred to the technique of underblowing on bass
crumhorns, by which the range could be extended downwards by a 5th. This
additional lower range is called for in some music specifying crumhorns. There
is no historical evidence of keys to increase the upper range.
The
crumhorn has a thumb-hole, seven finger-holes and one or more vent-holes in the
curved lower section. On smaller, keyless instruments the lowest finger-hole is
doubled to allow for left- or right-handed playing, the hole which is not in
use being filled with wax; on larger sizes a key with fish-tail touch is used.
Some instruments have a second keyed hole, which increases the range by one
extra note, and two vent-holes equipped with sliding keys that must be set
before playing. On these ‘extended’ crumhorns the range is thus increased
downwards by a 4th, though only one of the three possible additional lower
notes can be chosen for use at any one time owing to the cumbersome, if
ingenious, system of preset vent-hole keys. The keys on the larger sizes of
crumhorns are protected by a fontanelle, usually of brass.
The
cotton reel, permanently fixed to the top end of the body, provides the tenon
on to which the wind cap fits (fig.2). The player blows through a hole in the
wind cap, which is at the top on smaller sizes of crumhorn and at the edge or
on the side on larger instruments. The bottom of the wind cap is normally
reinforced with a brass ferrule.
Like
most Renaissance wind instruments, crumhorns were made in different sizes: the
soprano (Ger. Exilent, klein Diskant; It. stortino) had a
range c'–d''; the alto (Diskant) g–d'; the tenor (Alt, Tenor)
c–d'; the extended tenor (Tenor) G or A–d'; the
bass (Bassus) F–g; the extended bass (bass Chorist, bass
Canter), C–g; the great bass (gross Bass, Contrabass),
B
'–c or C–d;
and the extended great bass, G'–d. With underblowing, the bass sizes
could play up to a 5th lower. The most common sizes were alto, tenor and
extended bass. An intarsia (c1510) by Giovanni da Verona in the Stanza
della Segnatura in the Vatican shows that soprano, alto, tenor and (unextended)
bass were known at that time. (This and other pictorial sources referred to
here are reproduced in Boydell, 1982.) The earliest evidence of the extended
type is an extended tenor crumhorn dated 1522, now in the Kunsthistorisches
Museum, Vienna.
The
earliest reference to a great bass crumhorn is a letter dated 1542 from Georg
Neuschel to Duke Albrecht V of Prussia, and the only surviving great bass was
made by Jörg Wier (ii), who died in about 1549. Praetorius (2/1619–20), who
provided the most detailed contemporary description and illustration of
crumhorns, mentioned all sizes except the extended tenor. He also illustrated
an instrument that he termed ‘Basset: Nicolo’, effectively a straight crumhorn
with keys giving a range equivalent to that of the great bass.
Crumhorn
2. Surviving instruments and typology.
56
Renaissance crumhorns, including all known sizes, are in the following
collections: Augsburg (Städtische Kunstsammlungen); Berlin
(Musikinstrumenten-Museum, Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung); Boston
(Museum of Fine Arts); Brussels (Conservatory); Leipzig
(Musikinstrumenten-Museum, University of Leipzig); Linz (Oberösterreichisches
Landesarchiv); Nuremberg (Germanisches Nationalmuseum); Rome (Museo nazionale
degli strumenti musicali); Salamanca (Cathedral); Verona (Accademia
Filarmonica); and Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum). A further set of crumhorns
is reported in Barcelona (Museo Municipal de Musica).
The
surviving crumhorns have been classified by Boydell into five main types:
Type
I,
represented by crumhorns now in Verona, and others, is considered to be of
Italian make and, on the basis of details of design and comparison with
iconographical evidence, the earliest known type. It is characterized by a
conical wind-cap tenon, whereas on all other types the tenon is cylindrical;
the cotton reel is externally much simpler than on other types, and the wind
cap is relatively heavy and undecorated, with straight sides. The keys and key
cover, or fontanelle, are also distinctive, being of cast iron rather than
brass, and the keys are pivoted differently from those on other types. Type I
is subdivided into type Ia, in which the curve was made in the normal
way with heat, and type Ib, in which triangular segments of wood were
cut away from the edge which was to form the inside of the bend, the resulting
piece glued into a curve and the whole instrument covered in leather. Type Ib
may represent the earliest known stage in crumhorn-making techniques.
Type
II, a
transitional form of which only one certain example survives (in Vienna), has a
cylindrical wind-cap tenon, but the design of the cotton reel is simpler than
that on type III. The surviving instrument was made by Jörg Wier (i) in
Memmingen, south Germany, probably at the beginning of the 16th century.
Type
III is the
classic form of the crumhorn (see figs.1 and 2), represented by the majority of
surviving instruments, including those made by Jörg Wier (ii) and the set of
six, in their original case, probably made by the Bassano brothers (see §3
below) and now in Brussels (fig.3). The cotton reel has
a broad tenon band and three or four raised bands of rounded section beneath.
The body expands slightly in external diameter towards the bell, and the
double-lever system of keys and the fontanelle, where present, are of brass.
Type III may have been developed by the Wiers.
Type
IV is
represented by a set of crumhorns with the maker’s mark HC or HG, now in Berlin
but listed in inventories from St Wenzelskirche, Naumburg, during the 17th and
early 18th centuries. Although similar in general characteristics to type III,
they are distinguished by an uneven quality of design and workmanship, having
unusually large finger-holes and a body diameter that does not increase towards
the bell.
Type
V differs
radically from all other types: although it is similar to type III at the upper
end, the bend is a separate piece from the body and was not bent with heat but
carved from solid wood, the bore being drilled in sections afterwards. The
curve is sharp and the section ends in a widely expanded bell. Only one type V
crumhorn is known; it was first mentioned in the inventory of Archduke
Ferdinand of the Tyrol at Innsbruck in 1596 and is now in Vienna. Three
miniature ivory models of crumhorns of this type, but without wind caps (also
in Vienna), have the same provenance and may have been modelled on this
instrument.
Crumhorn
3. Makers.
Most
original crumhorns carry a maker’s mark, normally branded on the front of the
instrument above the first finger-hole but sometimes also at the bottom of the
bell. At least eight different makers can be distinguished, but the names of
only two, possibly three, have been identified. Of these the more important are
the makers of the Wier family, who were active in Memmingen: Jörg Wier (i), who
died before 1530, Jörg Wier (ii) (b c1485–90; d ?1549),
the leading crumhorn maker of the Renaissance, and possibly Jörg Wier (iii) (fl
?1557–65), who may have continued to make crumhorns after the death of Jörg (ii).
29 of the 56 known original crumhorns were made by the Wiers, the majority by
Jörg (ii), to whom the development of extended crumhorns and of the great bass
size may be attributable. Also documented are the ‘Bassani brothers’ of London
(originally from Venice), referred to by Johann (Hans) Jakob Fugger of Munich
in 1571 in a description of a large case containing various wind instruments,
including 12 crumhorns. Lasocki (1985) has shown that the ‘rabbit’s feet’
‘silkworm moth’ mark on the boxed set of crumhorns in Brussels (and on numerous
other woodwind instruments of the period) is probably that of the Bassanos. The
crumhorns now in Berlin bear the mark HC (or perhaps HG), possibly to be
identified with Hans Creutzer, who worked near Nuremberg in 1612 (Nickel,
1971). Kinsky’s assumption (1925) that Georg Neuschel made crumhorns as well as
brass instruments has been shown to be incorrect (Nickel).
Crumhorn
4. History.
The
earliest evidence of the crumhorn is a painting by Lorenzo Costa dated 1488, in
Bologna, depicting the triumph of Death. However, the term ‘Krummhorn’ (and
cognates) was used in Germany from about 1300, apparently to describe a curved
lip-reed instrument. From the mid-15th century it becomes increasingly possible
that this ambiguous term may signify the true crumhorn: references to players
of ‘Krummpfeyffen’ at the court of Albrecht Achilles of Ansbach (1440–86) are
likely to refer to crumhorns. Although Sachs’s suggestion (1909–10) that the medieval
douçaine (see Dolzaina) was a crumhorn is no longer accepted,
Meyer (1983) argued that this name, which in Romance languages (Fr. douçaine;
Sp. dulçayna) clearly referred to some sort of soft-toned wind instrument
earlier in the Middle Ages, was applied to crumhorns when these were developed
during the 15th century.
The
crumhorn was probably developed in Germany, which remained the main area of its
use. The characteristic curved shape may have evolved from bladder pipes and
bagpipes with curved animal-horn bells, or it may be attributable to the growth
of neo-classical ideas, which led to attempts to construct an instrument based
on the Tibia with animal-horn bell known from late classical sources.
While the curve does help to project the sound, the technical difficulties
involved in making it and the fact that it was not applied to other instruments
suggest that this was not the sole reason for its existence. The origins of the
use of the wind cap are also somewhat obscure, but can probably be traced to
developments from bladder pipes and bagpipes (see Bagpipe and Bladder
pipe).
From
the beginning of the 16th century evidence for the crumhorn becomes much
clearer and more widespread. At the wedding of Duke Johann of Saxony to Sofia
of Mecklenburg at Torgau in 1500, the Mass was accompanied by instruments
including four crumhorns, and in Bremen in 1504 the town musicians played
crumhorns and other instruments during a Te Deum on Ascension Day. The
first known reference to a crumhorn in the Low Countries concerned a new stop
on the organ of Antwerp Cathedral (1505); the stop was designed to sound ‘like
crumhorns or douçaines’. It has been stated that a crumhorn stop was
included on an organ in Dresden in 1489, but this stop too dates from 1505.
During
the early part of the 16th century the crumhorn spread rapidly through the
German-speaking areas of Europe, the Low Countries and Italy. Crumhorns appear
in a number of paintings of this period, including The Presentation of
Christ in the Temple by Vittore Carpaccio in Venice (1510; fig.4),
the altarpiece in Freiburg Cathedral by Hans Baldung (1512–16), the Memorial
Picture for Lorenz Tucher by Hans Süss von Kulmbach in Nuremberg (1513) and
the Coronation of the Virgin by a Czech master (c1520), now in
Prague. Other illustrations of crumhorns in the early part of the century
include the intarsia in the Vatican already referred to, Virdung’s Musica
getutscht (1511), which depicts four crumhorns not very accurately drawn,
and the engravings (1512–19) by Hans Burgkmair I for the Triumphzug
Maximilians (1526), which show two crumhorns with shawms and sackbut.
Crumhorn stops on organs also occurred widely. By 1522, the date on two of his
known instruments, Jörg Wier (ii) was producing crumhorns of a fully developed
design which remained virtually unchanged during the rest of the period of their
use. Crumhorns are mentioned in treatises by Virdung (1511), Agricola (1529),
Zacconi (1592), Cerone (1613), Praetorius (2/1619–20), Mersenne (1636, 1636–7)
and Trichet (c1640; see Lesure, 1955). Well over 100 references to
crumhorns from the late 15th century to the early 17th have been recorded, the
majority relating to German court and town bands, whose inventories nearly
always include one or more sets.
Although
the Bassano brothers apparently made crumhorns in England, there is little
evidence for their use there. Sets were owned by Henry VIII and the earls of
Arundel at Nonsuch House, and Sir William Leighton mentioned them among many
other instruments in a poem from The Teares or Lamentations of a Sorrowful
Soule (1613), but they do not occur in inventories or other documents of
English town waits, who would certainly have used them had they been generally
known. When he wrote that crumhorns (‘tournebouts’) ‘are made in England’,
Mersenne (1636) was probably referring to earlier crumhorns made by the
Bassanos.
The
position of the crumhorn in France is unclear because of the absence of any
unambiguous name for the instrument before Mersenne (1636) first described and
illustrated it under the name Tournebout (he used the term Cromorne
(i)
exclusively as an organ stop). It seems improbable that an instrument that
enjoyed widespread use in neighbouring countries during the 16th century should
not also have been known in France, and it has been plausibly argued that
crumhorns may have been referred to there as douçaines – in which case
they can be shown to have been widely used. There is, however, no recorded
iconographical evidence for the crumhorn in France during the 16th century.
Crumhorns
were certainly used in Spain, although the evidence is again largely
inconclusive owing to uncertainty about what the instrument was called. An
inventory of the instruments brought by Mary of Hungary from Mechelen to Madrid
in 1559 includes 11 ‘orlos de Alemania, hechos a manera de cornetas’, which
Vander Straeten (1888) suggested were crumhorns. While the Spanish ‘orlo’
cannot be assumed to refer specifically to the crumhorn, the identification in
this case seems likely. The 1602 Madrid inventory lists two sets of ‘cornamusas
de madera de Alemania’ as well as a ‘dulçayna … a manera de cayado’ (‘shaped
like a crook’); both of these entries may refer to crumhorns. The most
compelling evidence is a set of crumhorns in the old cathedral in Salamanca,
which are thought to have been there since the Renaissance.
Crumhorns
remained in use into the 17th century – one was depicted in a ‘Vanitas’
painting by the Dutchman Pieter Claesz in 1628 – but they rapidly lost ground
during the middle of the century as musical taste changed and their limited
compass and expressive range no longer met the requirements of composers. A
carving on an ivory cabinet by Christoph Angermaier of Munich (c1620)
shows a crumhorn played without the wind cap; this and other isolated pieces of
evidence for the practice, beginning in the 16th century, may represent an
attempt by players to make the crumhorn more expressive by exerting direct lip
pressure on the reed. The crumhorn’s decline in popularity is demonstrated by
the set owned by the city of Nuremberg: bought from Memmingen in 1539, the
instruments were listed in inventories during the later 16th and early 17th
centuries and were repaired and presumably still in regular use in 1620, but in
1643 they were played at a ‘historical concert’, which featured various
‘old-fashioned’ instruments. Crumhorns continued to appear in isolated literary
sources and inventories into the 18th century, though it is clear that they had
fallen out of use: Diderot included the crumhorn (‘tournebout’) in his Encyclopédie
(vol.xvi, 1765) in the context of instrumens anciens. A ‘Stort’ used at
Breslau in 1668, sometimes considered to be one of the latest references to
performance on a crumhorn, has been shown to have been a curtal. In the
Netherlands ‘kromhoorn’ was used as a synonym for ‘cornett’ by Douwes (1699),
and it is doubtless with that meaning that ‘kromhoorens’ are referred to in the
text of a theatrical presentation that took place in Amsterdam in 1678.
Crumhorn
5. Repertory and usage.
Like
other Renaissance instruments, crumhorns can in principle play any music of the
period that suits their limited range, although musical, social and
geographical contexts may impose constraints. Transposition was widely
practised by crumhorn players and is referred to by both Agricola and
Praetorius (Syntagma musicum, iii), as well as being demonstrated in
Thomas Stoltzer’s setting of Psalm xxxvii. A small but significant amount of
music survives in which the use of crumhorns in one or more parts is specified,
or in which it is known from contemporary sources that crumhorns were played.
In the dedication to Duke Albrecht of Prussia of his setting of Psalm xxxvii, Erzürne
dich nicht (1526), Stoltzer said that he had crumhorns in mind (‘hab an die
Khrumphörner gedacht’) when he wrote the piece. As written, the six parts (a
seventh part, in the final section, is stated by Stoltzer to be unsuitable for
the crumhorn) would require one soprano crumhorn, three altos in f (not
the usual g), and two tenors in B (not c), one with an extension to F.
Since instruments with these compasses are not known to have existed, the music
must have been transposed down a 4th to suit the normal sizes of alto in g,
three tenors in c, and two basses in F, one making use of the
technique of underblowing to extend its range diatonically down to C.
Two sets of partbooks in Copenhagen (DK-Kk), dated 1541 and 1556 and originally
prepared for the Prussian court band, contain some pieces in which crumhorns
are specified; these include an anonymous setting of D’Andernach auff dem
Reine in which the bass part is marked ‘Krumbhörner’ and the five parts
suit alto, two tenor, bass and extended bass crumhorns. Schein included in his Banchetto
musicale (1617) a Padouana für 4 Krummhörner, for alto, two tenors
and bass. A ‘Passamezzo’ in Praetorius’s Terpsichore(1612) is described
as being playable on crumhorns or other instruments (‘welcher auff Krumbhörnern
oder andern Instrumenten gespielet wird’), but there is evidently some
confusion here since some of the parts cannot be played on crumhorns.
Crumhorns
are known to have been used in the music for the celebrations at the wedding of
Cosimo I de’ Medici to Eleonora of Toledo in Florence in 1539. They occur in
three pieces (Sacr’et santo Hymeneo, Guardane almo pastore and Bacco,
Bacco, euoe) from the intermedii, twice in mixed ensembles of many
instruments with voices, and once in an ensemble of five crumhorns (including
soprano) with one cornett and six voices. Brown (1973) pointed out that in this
and other Florentine intermedii later in the century, for which the
music has not survived, crumhorns were normally associated with strange or
unusual groups, such as Calumny, Ignorance and Fear (1568), and Frauds and
Deceptions (1565); in 1548 they participated in a celebration of the Age of
Bronze.
These
pieces of music for crumhorns, or connected with them, included sacred music,
polyphonic settings of secular songs, homophonic dance music and theatrical
music with voices, a wide range of uses that is reflected in the documentary
and iconographical evidence. There emerges from these sources the important
point that, when they were not playing on their own, crumhorns were most
commonly associated with sackbuts: in Torgau in 1500 four crumhorns and an
organ played with three sackbuts, a cornett and a second organ; in the Triumphzug
Maximilians crumhorns are shown with two shawms and sackbut; some pieces in
the Copenhagen partbooks specify crumhorns and sackbuts together; and in Syntagma
musicum Praetorius discussed the use of a double choir of crumhorns and
sackbuts. In mixed ensembles crumhorns often played the inner parts, especially
the cantus firmi in pieces such as Tenorlieder. Clearly, crumhorns had a much
stronger sound than is often thought.
The
crumhorn was essentially an instrument played by professional musicians at
courts and in the larger town bands. This was doubtless chiefly because
crumhorns were relatively expensive to make and were supplied in sets of three
or more sizes, requiring a group of musicians for normal use. Besides
inventories and accounts of payments for the purchase or repair of crumhorns,
there are other documents proving their use by town musicians, especially in
Germany: the regulations governing the town players of Tallinn in 1532 refer to
crumhorns in the context of dance music; the instructions for the watchmen of
Trier in 1593–4 mention that ‘recorders, crumhorns, cornetts or shawms’ are to
be played from the church tower in the morning, at noon and in the evening. In
court records crumhorns occur not only in inventories and accounts but also in
descriptions of weddings, banquets and other festivities. See also Cornamusa
(i).
Crumhorn
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MersenneHU
PraetoriusSM
PraetoriusTI
Vander StraetenMPB
VirdungMG
YoungHI
M. Agricola: Musica
instrumentalis deudsch (Wittenberg, 1529/R, enlarged 5/1545)
L. Zacconi: Prattica di
musica (Venice, 1592/R)
P. Cerone: El melopeo y
maestro (Naples, 1613/R)
M. Mersenne: Harmonicorum
instrumentorum libri IV (Paris, 1636); pubd with Harmonicorum libri (Paris, 1635–6) as Harmonicorum libri XII (Paris, 1648, 2/1652/R)
C. Douwes: Grondig
ondersoek van de toonen der musiek (Franeker, 1699/R)
‘Tornebout’, Encyclopédie,
ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (Paris, 1751–80)
D. Diderot: Recueil de
planches, v (Paris, 1767)
C. Sachs: ‘Doppioni
und Dulzaina: zur Namensgeschichte des Krummhorns’, SIMG, xi (1909–10),
590–627, esp. 590–93
G. Kinsky: ‘Doppelrohrblatt-Instrumente mit Windkapsel’, AMw, vii (1925), 253–96
F. Lesure: ‘Le Traité des instruments de musique de Pierre Trichet’, AnnM, iii (1955), 283–387; iv (1956), 175–253; edn pubd separately (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1957)
H. Moeck: Zur
Geschichte von Krummhorn und Cornamuse (Celle, 1971)
E. Nickel: Der
Holzblasinstrumentenbau in der Freien Reichsstadt Nürnberg (Munich, 1971)
H.M. Brown: Sixteenth-Century
Instrumentation: the Music for the Florentine Intermedii, MSD, xxx (1973)
D. Macmillan: ‘The Crumhorn: a Historical Survey’, The Consort, no.30 (1974), 63–6
I. Hechler: ‘Die Windkapselinstrument: Geschichte, Spielweise, Besetzungsfragen’, Tibia, ii (1977), 265–74
B.R. Boydell: The Crumhorn
and other Renaissance Windcap Instruments (Buren, 1982)
R. Pérez-Arroyo: ‘Importante descubrimento de instrumentos renacentistas en la catedral
de Salamanca’, Ritmo, no.526 (1982), 34–6
L. Ujházy: ‘Acoustical Data on the Curve of the Crumhorn’,
SM, xxiv (1982), 233–45
K.T. Meyer: The
Crumhorn: its History, Design, Repertory, and Technique
(Ann Arbor, 1983)
T. Moonen: ‘The Brussels Crumhorns: Hypotheses on their Historical Construction’, GSJ, xxxvi (1983), 49–70
T. Bergstrøm: ‘On Crumhorn Bores’, GSJ, xxxvii (1984), 122
only
D. Lasocki: ‘The Anglo-Venetian Bassano Family as Instrument Makers and Repairers’, GSJ, xxxviii (1985), 112–32
L. Cervelli: Antichi
strumenti musicale in un moderno museo (Rome, 2/1986)
J. Hanchet and R. Schlenker: ‘Bedeutender Fund in Salamanca, Spanien: Entdeckung und Untersuchung
der Pommern und Krummhörner in der mittelalterlichen Kathedrale im November
1983’, Tibia, xi (1986), 125–30
C. Foster: ‘Praetorius’ “Basset: Nicolo”: “lang Stack basset zu den Krumbhörner”,
or “Centaur, Mythical Beast”?’, FoMRHI
Quarterly, no.64 (1991), 20–25
B. Gire: ‘Praetorius’ “Basset: Nicolo”: a Reply’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.65 (1991), 17–18, 20 only
C. Foster: ‘More on Praetorius’ “Basset: Nicolo”’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.66 (1992), 34–6