Keyed bugle [key bugle, Kent bugle, Royal Kent bugle, Kent horn etc.]

(Fr. bugle à clefs, trompette à clefs, cor à clefs; Ger. Klappenhorn, Klappenflügelhorn; It. cornetta a chiavi; Dutch Klephoorn).

A conical, wide-bore, soprano brass instrument, with sideholes controlled by keys similar to those found on woodwind instruments. It is the precursor of the modern flugelhorn. In the Hornbostel-Sachs system it is classified as a trumpet.

Keyed bugles are important in the brass band movement on both sides of the Atlantic. Early examples had only five keys, but instruments with up to 12 are found. The key closest to the bell (B on an instrument in C) is the only one that remains open when the instrument is at rest; the others are opened to provide a chromatic sequence (C, D and E by the right hand, E and F, on the lower part of the instrument, by the left), which may be augmented by alternatives and trill keys. Some later instruments have a whole-tone valve in place of the E and F keys. Most have a single loop (see fig.1), but short, double-wound models are also found. Most early keyed bugles were pitched in C with a crook to B; later, others appeared in high E.

Most keyed bugles were made of copper with brass or German silver keys and fittings; instruments made of solid silver, gold and tortoiseshell also exist. Most of the fingering systems are extensions of the original concept, but the instruments made by Kersten of Dresden are notable exceptions: here an attempt was made to divide the arrangement of six keys equally between the hands. Keyed bugle mouthpieces are similar to those used on modern flugelhorns and 19th-century cornets in that they have a deep and conical cup. The mouthpieces are made of brass or ivory and are sometimes silver-plated. The rims tend to be flatter and sharper in shape than modern ones. As a result of the wide conical bore and the deep conical mouthpiece, a very mellow and woolly sound is produced, similar to but not identical with the sound of the modern flugelhorn. Because of the sonic phenomena associated with venting, the keyed bugle has a unique timbre.

The bandmaster of the Cavin Militia, Joseph Haliday (c1772–1827), added five keys to the common military bugle in Dublin in 1810. Haliday’s patent (British patent no.3334) is dated 5 May 1810. Shortly after the instrument’s invention, Haliday is believed to have sold the patent rights to the Dublin maker Matthew Pace for £50. It must have been about this time that a sixth key was added. While Haliday was stationed in Wexford with his band, J.B. Logier wrote his Introduction to the Art of Playing on the Royal Kent Bugle (1813), dedicating it to the Duke of Kent. It is probable that Logier made Haliday’s ‘bugle horn’ commercially successful by stamping ‘Royal Kent Bugle’ on instruments sold to military bandsmen (which Haliday, as a nationalistic Irishman, was unlikely to have done). Haliday attempted to discredit Logier, but he no longer had control of his invention.

One of the most famous English keyed bugle players was John Distin, whose playing may have inspired keyed bugle obbligato parts in some English operas of the period. Many English orchestral trumpeters also played the keyed bugle. Keyed bugles were commonplace in most British bands by the time of the Allied occupation of Paris in 1815. After Grand Duke Konstantin of Russia heard Distin playing with the Grenadier Guards Band, he asked the Parisian instrument maker Halary (Jean Hilaire Asté) to duplicate the English instruments. Halary’s instrument (French patent no.1849, 1821) extended the idea of the keyed bugle to a whole consort of instruments, the tenor and bass members of which he called ophicleides. In 1822 a rider was attached to the original patent allowing for an even greater range of instruments, some of which were apparently never produced. Halary’s instruments were approved by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, and the Athénée des Arts awarded him a medal for his achievement. This provoked a surge of keyed bugle making in London and the main European musical centres as well as in the USA. The American names of Graves and E.G. Wright and the British firms of Percival, Pace and Köhler represent a high standard of craftsmanship; many beautiful instruments survive in museums and private collections.

In Germany, catalogues mention Klappenhorn or Klappenflügelhorn frequently among listings of military and wind music, but the keyed bugle was not considered seriously as an orchestral or solo instrument. However, it met with great success in the USA where famous soloists like Richard Willis (the first director of the West Point Military Academy Band), Francis (‘Frank’) Johnson (a black bandmaster in Philadelphia) and Edward (‘Ned’) Kendall performed solos and band pieces that were to establish an important tradition. The earliest documented use of the keyed bugle in the USA occurred in 1815. Many performers received ornate gift or presentation bugles: Frank Johnson was given a handsome silver one by Queen Victoria; some performers are known only through the inscriptions on the bugles they were given.

By the 1840s most bands in the USA were supplied with valved instruments, and both keyed and valved instruments were used. Kendall’s famous duel with the great cornet player Patrick S. Gilmore in 1856 has been thought to signal the demise of the keyed bugle in the USA. Keyed bugles were, however, still used on both sides of the Atlantic up to the mid-1860s.

Most method books for the keyed bugle contain a selection of operatic airs and popular tunes (in solo and duet form). Band arrangements with parts for keyed bugle are common in catalogues of the period. Contemporary programmes indicate that vocal solos with keyed bugle obbligato were popular, but few selections were published in this format. An example of this type of parlour literature is a ballad by T. Phillips, entitled The Last Bugle (Philadelphia, 1822). The keyed bugle was assigned important parts in a number of stage works including Bishop’s The Miller and his Men (1813) and Guy Mannering (1816), Phillips’s The Opera of the Russian Imposter (1822), Rossini’s Semiramide (1823) and Rudolphe Kreutzer’s Ipsiboé (1824). The parts for trompettes à clefs in the Paris score of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell and in Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable were, according to Dauverné, played on valved instruments and not the keyed bugles that the score indicated. At least two substantial works for solo bugle and orchestra are known, A.P. Heinrich’s Concerto for Kent Bugle or Klappenflügel (1834) and Joseph Küffner’s Polonaise pour le cor de signal-à-clef obligée (1823).

Substantial parts for the keyed bugle appear in the repertory of the Cyfarthfa Band, a 19th-century ensemble formed from the ranks of the Cyfarthfa Iron Works at Merthyr Tydfil, Wales; a sample of this repertory was recorded by the Wallace Collection on period instruments in 1995. The interest in period instrument performances of American Civil War brass band music has encouraged the use of keyed bugles in such ensembles. The Chestnut Brass Company has been a leader in this area, recording the music of Frank Johnson and other 19th-century American popular composers. The English composer Simon Proctor has contributed a Concerto (1991) for keyed bugle and orchestra which was given its first performance by Ralph Dudgeon and the Richmond (Virginia) Philharmonic in 1994.

See also Regent’s bugle.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Grove5 (R. Morley Pegge)

J.B. Logier: Introduction to the Art of Playing on the Royal Kent Bugle (Dublin, 1813, 2/c1820–23)

J. Hyde: A New and Complete Preceptor for the Royal Kent or Keyed Bugle (London, c1818)

E. Goodale: The Instrumental Director (Hallowell, 3/1829) [only this edn has keyed bugle instructions]

Noblet: Nouvelle méthode de bugle (Paris, 1831)

Z.T. Purday, ed.: Tutor for the Royal Kent Bugle (London, c1835)

Tully: Tutor for the Kent Bugle (London, c1838)

Scherer: Méthode de bugle (Paris, 1845)

B.A. Burditt: The Complete Preceptor for the Bugle (Boston, c1850)

H.B. Dodworth: Dodworth’s Brass Band School (New York, 1853)

A. Carse: Musical Wind Instruments (London, 1939/R)

A. Carse: The Orchestra from Beethoven to Berlioz (Cambridge, 1948/R)

R. Morley Pegge: ‘The Horn and Later Brass’, Musical Instruments through the Ages, ed. A. Baines (Harmondsworth, 1961, 2/1966/R), 266–85

A. Baines: European and American Musical Instruments (New York, 1966)

J. Wheeler: ‘New Light on the Regent’s Bugle, with some Notes on the Keyed-Bugle’, GSJ, xix (1966), 65–70

R.E. Eliason: Keyed Bugles in the United States (Washington DC, 1972)

R.E. Eliason: Graves & Company, Musical Instrument Makers (Dearborn, MI, 1975)

A. Baines: Brass Instruments: their History and Development (London, 1976/R)

R.E. Eliason: ‘The Dresden Key Bugle’, JAMIS, iii (1977), 57–63

R.T. Dudgeon: The Keyed Bugle, its History, Literature and Technique (diss., U. of California, San Diego, 1980)

R.T. Dudgeon: ‘Joseph Haliday, Inventor of the Keyed Bugle’, JAMIS, ix (1983), 53–67

R.T. Dudgeon: The Keyed Bugle (Metuchen, NJ, and London, 1993)

RALPH T. DUDGEON