(b Versailles, April 1760; d Lisieux, 9 April 1825). French musician and inventor of instruments. He was the son of a cook in the service of the Duke of Burgundy, and went to England, a refugee from the Revolution, in the early 1790s. By 1793 he was playing the serpent in the Ancient Concerts orchestra and he is listed in Doane’s Musical Directory of 1794. A memoir in the Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review of 1825 described a ‘very extraordinary performance’ by Frichot during the 1790s on what was very probably an early Bass-horn (perhaps one like no.284 of the Carse Collection, now in the Horniman Museum, London), an instrument of his own invention. In 1800 the London music publisher and instrument dealer George Astor published A Compleat Scale and Gamut of the Bass-Horn: a New Instrument, Invented by M. Frichot. Astor also began to make bass-horns; a fine specimen, signed by Astor & Co. and dated 1807, is in F-Pc.
After the Peace of Amiens, Frichot returned to France and submitted his bass-horn to a jury of Paris music professors. Sachs referred to this instrument as ‘die erster Name der Basse-trompette’; Frichot indeed patented a Basse-trompette in 1810, but although closely related to the bass-horn the two instruments were in fact distinct (the basse-trompette having interchangeable bows of different length – pièces de rechange – for pitch adjustment). Pierre noted another instrument by Frichot, mainly wooden, with a substantial section made of brass. He described it as an early wooden two-keyed ophicleide, dating from about 1812, which had apparently been awarded a medal in England.
Frichot eventually settled at Lisieux as a teacher of music.
FétisB
Grove5 (R. Morley-Pegge)
C. Pierre: ‘Un ophicleide en bois de L.A. Frichot’, La Musique des familles (18 Nov 1886), 35
C. Sachs: Real-Lexicon der Musikinstrumente (Berlin, 1913/R)
HOWARD MAYER BROWN/STEPHEN J. WESTON